Skip to main content
Drink

Fruit Vinegar

Fruit vinegar is made by macerating ripe fruit in vinegar and sugar, then filtering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fruit Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure the fruit is ripe, fresh, well-picked, and dry.

  2. Place one-third of the fruit into large glass jars or wide-necked bottles.

Steep

  1. Add 1½ pints of vinegar for each pound of fruit.

  2. Cover the jars with thick paper and let them stand for 3 to 4 days.

  3. Pour off the vinegar.

Strain and repeat

  1. Suspend the fruit in a jelly bag or cloth until all liquid has passed through without pressure.

  2. Add another third of fresh fruit to the jars.

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

Strawberries or raspberries
Provide the main fruit flavor, aroma, and color that the vinegar takes up.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent that draws flavor and color out of the fruit and adds sharp acidity.
Sugar
Sweetens the finished vinegar and balances its sharpness.

The step that matters

Let the liquid drip through without pressure. Squeezing the fruit forces out pulp and fine solids, which makes the vinegar cloudy and can add harsh, bitter notes. Gravity alone yields a clearer, cleaner-tasting liquid.

“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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes