Why it works: Sugar and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,638 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Sugar Vinegar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Boil the water and add the raw sugar, skimming frequently.
Pour the mixture into a barrel and let it cool to lukewarm.
Ferment and seal
Soak a slice of bread in yeast and add it to the barrel.
Let it stand in a warm place until it stops hissing.
Seal the barrel.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
-
Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,638 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Raw sugar
- Serves as the food the yeast ferments into alcohol, the base for the vinegar.
- Yeast
- Starts the fermentation that turns the sugar water into alcohol.
- Bread
- Soaked in yeast to carry the culture into the liquid.
The step that matters
Cool the mixture to lukewarm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to hot liquid can stop fermentation before it starts. Lukewarm liquid keeps the culture alive while it works.
“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
Vegetable Soup350 recipes
Raspberry Vinegar214 recipes
Brown Coffee with Egg175 recipes
Blackberry Cordial129 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.