Why it works: Sugar and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,638 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Sugar Vinegar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the liquid
Boil the water and sugar together, then skim off any foam.
Cool the mixture in a clean tub until lukewarm.
Add the soaked bread to the cooled mixture.
Ferment
Barrel the mixture.
Place it in the sun during summer or by the fire in winter for six months.
Keep the bung-hole covered with thin canvas or an inverted bottle to keep out flies.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,638 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Coarse brown sugar
- Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into acid, forming the vinegar.
- Bread soaked in fresh yeast
- Supplies yeast to start the fermentation of the sugar water.
The step that matters
Keep the bung-hole covered. A cover lets air in slowly while keeping flies and other contaminants out. Flies and stray microbes can spoil the batch or introduce unwanted growth during the long 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.
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