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Cucumber Vinegar
Wipe as many cucumbers as you may intend to use, slice them, without paring them, into a wide-mouthed bottle, and put with them two or three shallots, if the flavour is liked. Pour over them as much vinegar as will cover them, and add a clove of garlic, a tea-spoonful of white pepper, and a tea-spoonful of salt for every quart of vinegar. Let them infuse for eleven or twelve days, then strain the vinegar into small bottles, and cork these tightly. Cucumber vinegar is very good to flavour salads, hashes, etc., or to eat with cold meat. The young leaves of burnet when soaked in vinegar give just the same flavour as cucumber. Probable cost of cucumbers, 6d. each when in full season. As much vinegar should be poured over as will just cover the slices.
A cold infusion with almost nothing to go wrong, provided the vinegar is strong enough to do its work. The one thing that matters is acidity: use a vinegar labelled 5 per cent acetic acid or higher, since the raw cucumber and garlic sit in it for nearly two weeks at room temperature and the acid is the only preservative in the jar.
- Which vinegarThe recipe does not specify a type; use any full-strength household vinegar. Avoid "reduced acidity" or diluted seasoning vinegars, and avoid anything already sweetened.
- Quantities and the quartAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 1.14 litres, not the 32 fl oz US quart. Scale the pepper, salt and garlic accordingly if you are working in US measure, or simply use a teaspoon of each per litre.
- CucumbersSome supermarket cucumbers are waxed or wrapped, which is one reason to wipe them well; ridge or Persian cucumbers are said to give more flavour and less water. Leave the skin on as directed, since much of the green, melon-like aroma sits just beneath it.
- Fill the jar properlyThe slices must stay submerged for the whole infusion. Any cucumber sitting above the vinegar line will spoil and taint the batch, so weight it down with a small saucer or a clean glass lid if it floats.
- Where to stand itA cool, dark cupboard rather than a sunny windowsill. Eleven or twelve days is a generous infusion; taste from day five and strain when it suits you, as the pepper and garlic keep strengthening while the cucumber note fades.
- Straining and keepingStrain through a fine sieve lined with muslin, discard the solids, and bottle in scalded bottles. Kept sealed and cool it will hold six months or more, though the fresh green flavour is best in the first couple of months.
- BurnetSalad burnet (Sanguisorba minor) is the plant meant, an old kitchen-garden herb with a genuine cucumber scent. Use the young leaves only; older growth turns bitter and woody.
- Yield and useAbout the volume of vinegar you started with, less what the slices absorb. It makes a sharp, savoury dressing vinegar rather than a pickle liquor, good in a mustard vinaigrette, over cold roast lamb, or stirred into a mayonnaise for cold salmon.
Flavoured vinegars were the Victorian answer to keeping a garden's taste past its season, and Cassell's gives a long run of them alongside this one. Cucumber vinegar in particular belongs to the cold-meat and salad end of the table, in an era when a sideboard sauce had to be made at home rather than bought in a bottle. The costing of sixpence a cucumber is a reminder that these were frame- or glasshouse-grown in Britain and priced accordingly. The note on burnet is older still: the herb appears in English garden and salad writing from the sixteenth century onwards and is often said to have been grown chiefly for its cucumber scent, useful in cool summers when the cucumbers themselves failed.