Skip to main content
Drink

Black Currant Vinegar

A fermented vinegar made from black currants, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 fruit

  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.

Strain and boil

  1. Strain the juice from the fruit.

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

  3. 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
Supply the main fruit flavour and the juice that becomes the syrup.
Vinegar
Acidifies the fruit, helping draw out juice and giving the finished drink its tang.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and binds water, thickening the syrup and helping it keep.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with sugar. Boiling gently concentrates the sugar and thickens the syrup, which helps it keep. Skimming the foam removes impurities from the fruit that would otherwise cloud the syrup and spoil it.

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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesBlack Currant CordialBlack Currant Cordial11 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipes