Name: An Excellent Vinegar
Ingredients: 1 gallon soft water; 1 pint sugar or sorghum molasses; 1 gallon ripe tomatoes

Why it works: Sugar and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,667 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

An Excellent Vinegar

Ingredients

1 gallon soft water
1 pint sugar or sorghum molasses
1 gallon ripe tomatoes

Directions

Combine the soft water and sugar or molasses in a large container.
Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.
Add the ripe tomatoes to the mixture.
Let it sit for a few days until it turns into pickles and vinegar.

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.

Sugar + tomatotop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,667 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 tomatoes: Provide the fruit and juices that ferment into the vinegar and pickles.
Sugar or sorghum molasses: Feeds the fermentation that converts the liquid into vinegar.
Soft water: Forms the liquid base in which the tomatoes and sugar ferment.

“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.