Name: Common Vinegar
Ingredients: 8 gallons rain water; 3 quarts molasses; 2 yeast cakes

Common Vinegar

Ingredients

8 gallons rain water
3 quarts molasses
2 yeast cakes

Directions

Prepare the mixture

Shake the rain water and molasses together well.
Place the mixture in a warm location.

Form the mother

After ten days, add a sheet of wrapping paper covered with molasses, torn into strips to create the mother.

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses: Supplies sugar that the fermentation feeds on, later turning into vinegar's acidity.
Yeast cakes: Start fermentation by converting sugars into alcohol.

“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.