Why it works: Honey and spirit work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 79 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells sweet. The science ↓
White Vinegar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the mixture
Dissolve the honey in rain or distilled water.
Pour the mixture into a 7‑gallon cask, add the white spirit, then shake the cask well.
Ferment in the sun
Fill the cask with rain water.
Place the cask in the sun for five months.
Drain off the vinegar by piercing the lower part of the cask when the mother of vinegar forms.
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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Honey + spirittop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together79 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Honey
- Supplies sugars that microbes convert into alcohol and then acetic acid, giving the vinegar its flavour.
- White spirit
- Provides alcohol that acetic acid bacteria oxidise into vinegar.
The step that matters
Drain the vinegar when the mother forms. The mother is a cellulose film produced by acetic acid bacteria as they convert alcohol to acetic acid. Its appearance signals that fermentation has progressed, so draining at that point helps you collect vinegar rather than an unfinished liquid.
“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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