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Spring Vinegar of Herbs

A vinegar made by fermenting wine with herbs, flowers, fruits, or spices, then optionally colored or distilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,493 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Spring Vinegar of Herbs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vinegar

  1. Add 1 quart of wine to a barrel every eight days until it is half full.

  2. Ensure the vinegar remains strong by maintaining the same strength as the initial wine.

  3. Once full, draw off two-thirds into another cask.

  4. Continue adding wine gradually to the original barrel for a constant supply.

Finish the vinegar

  1. For colored vinegar, add mulberry or blackberry juice.

  2. For white vinegar, boil a portion until reduced by a fourth, then distill.

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

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. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Wine suitable for vinegar
Provides the alcohol that acetic acid bacteria convert into acetic acid, giving the vinegar its sourness.

The step that matters

Adding wine gradually. Adding wine in small amounts every eight days keeps the acetic acid bacteria active and the vinegar strong. Adding too much at once can overwhelm the culture and slow fermentation.

“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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