To Make Vinegar
Ingredients
Directions
Make the liquid
Boil water and sugar together, skimming off the scum as it rises.
Pour the mixture into tubs and let it cool to room temperature.
Ferment and store
Toast a piece of bread and rub it with yeast, then add it to the cooled mixture.
Let it ferment for 24 hours in a sunlit spot in a well-painted, iron-hooped vessel.
After fermentation, draw off the vinegar into small stone bottles and store until needed.
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
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Provides the sugars that yeast converts into alcohol, which then becomes acetic acid.
- Yeast
- Starts fermentation, converting the sugary liquid into alcohol that acetic bacteria later turn into vinegar.
The step that matters
Letting the cooled mixture ferment undisturbed. Adding yeast to liquid that is still warm can kill it, stopping fermentation. Cooling to room temperature keeps the yeast alive so it can start converting sugar into alcohol.
“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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