Name: Blackberry Vinegar
Ingredients: 1 quart blackberries; 1 quart sharp vinegar; 2 pounds sugar

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 ↓

Blackberry Vinegar

Ingredients

1 quart blackberries
1 quart sharp vinegar
2 pounds sugar

Directions

Infuse the vinegar

Combine blackberries and vinegar in a container.
Let the mixture sit for 24 hours.
Squeeze out the juice from the mixture.
Add more blackberries to the vinegar for two consecutive days.
Press out the juice each time.

Sweeten and bottle

For each quart of prepared vinegar, add 2 pounds of sugar.
Boil for about 10 minutes.
Allow to cool.
Bottle and seal.

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.

Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 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

Blackberries: Provide the fruit flavour, colour and juice that give the vinegar its character.
Sharp vinegar: Extracts and preserves the berry flavour through acidity, and gives the drink its tang.
Sugar: Sweetens the finished vinegar and balances its sharp acidity.

“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.