Why it works: Cider and molasses work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Home-made Table Vinegar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
In an open cask, combine 4 gallons of good cider and 1 gallon of molasses.
Cover the top with thin muslin.
Ferment in the sun
Leave it in the sun, covering it at night and when it rains.
After 4 weeks, it will be good vinegar.
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.
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Cider + molassestop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together470 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
- Cider
- Provides the liquid base and the sugars that ferment into acetic acid, giving vinegar its sourness.
- Molasses
- Adds extra sugar to feed the fermentation, supplying more material for the acetic acid to form.
The step that matters
Cover the top with thin muslin. The cloth lets air reach the surface, which acetic acid bacteria need to turn the alcohol into acetic acid, while keeping out insects and dust that could spoil the batch.
“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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