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Raspberry or Blackberry Vinegar

A fermented vinegar made by crushing raspberries or blackberries, steeping them in cider vinegar, then sweetening and boiling the resulting liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Raspberry or Blackberry Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the berries

  1. Crush the berries in a large crock using a wooden mallet.

  2. Cover the crushed berries with cider vinegar by 1 inch.

  3. Place the crock in the sun for a day and leave it overnight in a cool place. Stir the mixture six times during the day.

  4. Strain and squeeze the berries to extract the liquid, then discard the solids.

  5. Repeat the process with another gallon of mashed berries, leaving it in the sun and cool place again.

Make the syrup

  1. Measure the liquid obtained and for each quart, add 1 pint of water.

  2. For every pint of water, add 5 pounds of sugar.

  3. Pour the mixture into a porcelain-lined or agate-iron kettle and heat over the fire, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  4. Bring to a boil and boil hard for 1 minute to remove scum.

Bottle and seal

  1. Skim the scum, strain the liquid, and while warm, bottle it.

  2. Seal the bottles with a mixture of beeswax and resin.

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cider + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Berries
Provide the flavour and colour base of the vinegar, extracted by soaking in vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Extracts the fruit flavour and colour and gives the drink its tart acidity.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the vinegar's acidity.

The step that matters

Boiling the strained liquid. A hard one-minute boil after the sugar dissolves brings the mixture to a full boil, which helps remove scum and aids preservation. Skimming the scum before bottling keeps the final syrup clear.

“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.

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