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Sugar Vinegar

A fermented vinegar made from sugar water, egg whites, yeast, and toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Sugar Vinegar

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sugar Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar liquor

  1. Combine water and brown sugar in a large pot.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites while the water is cold.

  3. Heat the mixture until near boiling, then skim off any foam.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes, then cool to just warm.

Ferment

  1. Pour into a cask with the yeast spread on the toast.

  2. Keep in a warm place, stirring frequently until ready 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.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Brown sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast converts into alcohol and then vinegar.
Whites of 4 eggs
Bind impurities and rise to the top, so they can be skimmed off as foam while heating.
Yeast
Starts the fermentation that turns the sweet liquid into alcohol.

The step that matters

Cool to just warm before casting. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the liquid must cool to just warm before it is poured onto the yeast-spread toast. Too hot and fermentation will not start.

“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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