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Home-made Vinegar

A fermented liquid made by dissolving sugar in water, adding treacle, beer, vinegar, or gooseberries, and fermenting with yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beer and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 302 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Home-made Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cask

  1. Combine 5 pounds of coarse brown sugar with 4 gallons of water in a cask.

  2. Cover the cask with muslin to keep out insects.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix 1 pint of treacle with very sour beer.

  2. After 2 days, add 1 pint of vinegar.

  3. Boil 3 quarts of spring water.

  4. Add 1 quart of bruised gooseberries.

  5. Let the mixture sit for 4 days, stirring frequently.

  6. Strain through a fine bag.

  7. Add 1 pound of coarse sugar for each gallon of liquid.

Ferment

  1. Place the mixture in a barrel with a toast dipped in yeast.

  2. Cover the barrel and set it in the sun until fermentation stops.

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. Beer + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + beertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together699 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse brown sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, which then becomes acetic acid.
Treacle
Adds sugars and molasses flavour that feed the fermentation.
Very sour beer
Supplies acidity and live microbes that start the vinegar fermentation.
Vinegar
Adds existing acetic acid, giving the mixture a head start toward sourness.
Bruised gooseberries
Contribute fruit acids, flavour and wild microbes to the fermenting liquid.
Yeast
Starts alcoholic fermentation on the toast, feeding the process before acetic fermentation.

The step that matters

Leaving the barrel in the sun until fermentation stops. Vinegar needs a first alcoholic fermentation followed by acetic fermentation driven by oxygen-loving bacteria. Covering the barrel with muslin-type cloth lets air in while keeping insects out, and steady warmth keeps the bacteria active. Stopping too early leaves sweet or weak vinegar.

“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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