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Drink

Vinegar

A homemade vinegar made by boiling sugar and water, adding yeast and cream of tartar, fermenting for two weeks, then straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wash

  1. Boil the sugar in the water for 30 minutes, skimming off any foam.

  2. Let the mixture cool to room temperature.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add the yeast and cream of tartar, stirring well.

  2. Cover the mixture with a cloth and let it sit for about 2 weeks until it ferments.

  3. Strain the vinegar and bottle it 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.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse moist sugar
Provides the sugars that yeast converts into alcohol, which then becomes acetic acid.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar solution, producing alcohol that bacteria later turn into vinegar.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps keep the mixture stable during fermentation.

The step that matters

Skimming the boil. Foam that is left on the surface can carry impurities and off-flavours into the fermenting liquid, so removing it during the boil gives a cleaner-tasting 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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