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Drink

Capital Sugar Vinegar

A fermented vinegar made from sugar and yeast.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

  1. Boil spring water and coarse sugar together, skimming off any scum that rises.

  2. Pour the mixture into a vessel and let it cool.

Ferment

  1. Add the toast spread with yeast to the cooled mixture.

  2. Let it ferment for 1–2 days.

  3. Beat the yeast into the mixture.

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

  5. Place the barrel in a sunny spot.

  6. Make it in March or early April; it will be ready by July or August.

  7. If not sour enough, let it stand for another 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.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Coarse sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, which then becomes vinegar.
Yeast
Drives the fermentation that converts the sweetened water into a sour liquid.

The step that matters

Checking sourness before bottling. Vinegar forms slowly and at varying rates depending on warmth and time, so the liquid may need extra standing time to become sour enough. Bottling too early leaves it sweet or weakly acidic.

“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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