Name: Clover Bloom Vinegar
Ingredients: 1 bushel clover blooms (cleaned of leaves); 6 pounds brown sugar; 4 gallons water; 3 pints hop yeast

Clover Bloom Vinegar

Ingredients

1 bushel clover blooms (cleaned of leaves)
6 pounds brown sugar
4 gallons water
3 pints hop yeast

Directions

Make the mash

In a tub, combine the clover blooms and brown sugar.
Pour the water over the mixture.
When cool, add the hop yeast.
Cover the tub with a folded sheet to keep it tight.

Ferment and store

Let it stand for 14 days.
Strain and rack it off into a keg.
Store in a shady place while making.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Clover blooms: Provide the floral flavour base for the vinegar.
Brown sugar: Feeds the yeast, providing the sugar that is fermented into acid.
Hop yeast: Starts the fermentation that turns the sweet liquid into vinegar.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.