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Strawberry Vinegar, of Delicious Flavour

A homemade strawberry vinegar made by infusing strawberries in wine vinegar and sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,776 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Strawberry Vinegar, of Delicious Flavour

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the vinegar

  1. Place the strawberries in a large glass jar or wide-necked bottle.

  2. Pour 1½ pints of wine vinegar over the strawberries.

  3. Cover with thick paper and let sit for 3 to 4 days.

  4. Strain the liquid through a jelly bag or cloth without pressing.

  5. Replace the strawberries with an equal weight of fresh fruit and repeat the process.

  6. After 3 days, drain the liquid again and strain it through a linen or flannel bag.

Make the syrup

  1. Weigh the liquid and mix with an equal amount of sugar.

  2. Stir the mixture over low heat until the sugar is nearly dissolved.

  3. Boil the syrup for 5 minutes and skim off any foam.

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. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 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

Ripe strawberries
Provide the fruit flavour and aroma that the vinegar draws out during infusion.
White wine vinegar
Acts as the infusing liquid that extracts flavour from the fruit and gives the sharp acidity.
Sugar
Sweetens the infused vinegar and, once boiled into syrup, helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Stirring the sugar over low heat. Heating gently until the sugar is nearly dissolved avoids scorching and crystallisation, so the syrup stays smooth and clear. Sugar dissolves more readily when the liquid is warm, and the boil that follows concentrates it.

“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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