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Black Currant Vinegar

A homemade vinegar made by bruising black currants, steeping with vinegar and sugar, then boiling the juice with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Black Currant Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the currants

  1. Bruise the currants and pour the vinegar over them, adding a little sugar to draw out the juice.

  2. Let it stand for 3 to 4 days, stirring well each day.

  3. Strain the juice from the fruit.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 1 pound of sugar with 1 pint of juice and boil gently for 45 minutes.

  2. Skim off any foam and let it cool before bottling.

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

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

  2. Black currant + vinegartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Black currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and the juice that is drawn out during standing.
Vinegar
Extracts juice from the fruit and gives the finished syrup its tartness.
Sugar
Draws out juice from the currants and, boiled down, sweetens and thickens the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with sugar. Boiling gently for the full time concentrates the syrup and dissolves the sugar fully. Skimming foam keeps the finished syrup clear and stable in the bottle.

Swap the black currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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