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Sugar Vinegar

A fermented sugar vinegar made from spring water, coarse sugar, and yeast toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Sugar Vinegar

Why it works: Sugar and spread match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sugar Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the spring water with coarse sugar and skim off any scum.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the yeast toast.

Ferment

  1. Allow it to ferment for 1-2 days.

  2. Transfer to a bag or barrel, covering the bung-hole with a piece of tile or slate.

Age and bottle

  1. Place it in a sunny spot and let it sit until July or August.

  2. If not sour enough, let it sit for an additional month before bottling.

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.

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.

  1. Sugar + spreadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sugar
Provides the sugar that the yeast converts during fermentation, producing the sour acids of the vinegar.
Yeast toast
Supplies the yeast and microbes that start the fermentation of the sweet liquid.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast toast. Yeast cells are killed or weakened by heat, so adding the yeast to hot liquid can stop fermentation before it starts. Cooling first keeps the culture alive to begin converting the sugar.

“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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