Name: Treacle Vinegar
Ingredients: 4 pints treacle; 4 pints white wine vinegar

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 ↓

Treacle Vinegar

Ingredients

4 pints treacle
4 pints white wine vinegar

Directions

Mix the treacle and white wine vinegar together in a large container.
Bottle the mixture for use.

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.

White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,776 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

Treacle: Provides sweetness and a deep, rich flavour that gives the mixture its character.
White wine vinegar: Adds acidity and sharpness, which balances the sweetness of the treacle.

“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.