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Strawberry Vinegar

A fermented strawberry vinegar made by steeping strawberries in wine vinegar, then adding sugar and boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,776 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Strawberry Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the vinegar

  1. Remove the stalks from the strawberries and place them in a large glass jar or wide-necked bottle.

  2. Pour 1½ pints of vinegar over the strawberries and cover with thick paper.

  3. Let the mixture sit for 3 to 4 days.

  4. Strain the liquid through a jelly bag or cloth without pressing.

  5. Add an equal weight of fresh strawberries to the strained vinegar.

  6. Repeat the process after 3 days, using slightly fewer strawberries each time.

Make the syrup

  1. After the final strain, mix the liquid with an equal amount of powdered sugar.

  2. Heat the mixture over a clear fire for 5 minutes, skimming off any foam.

  3. Pour the syrup into a clean stone pitcher or large china jugs and cover with a cloth until the next day.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle the vinegar in pint or half-pint bottles and cork tightly with new velvet corks.

  2. After 4 to 5 days, cork the bottles closely and store in a cool, dry place.

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. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

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

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

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

  3. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe strawberries
Provide the fruit flavour and aroma that the vinegar takes up during infusion.
White wine vinegar
Acts as the sharp, acidic base that extracts and preserves the strawberry flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar's acidity and helps give the syrup body.

The step that matters

Straining without pressing. Squeezing the strawberries forces through pulp and solids that can cloud the liquid and spoil the clarity and keeping quality of the 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.

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