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GOOSEBERRY VINEGAR (excellent for pickling)
Pick and bruise a quart of ripe gooseberries. Put them into a bowl, and mix with them three quarts of spring water which has been boiled and grown cold. Let them remain for two days, stirring frequently; then strain, and add two pounds of sifted sugar to each gallon of liquid. Put this into a cask, and with it a piece of toasted bread, dipped in yeast. Put a piece of muslin over the bunghole, to keep out the flies, and set it in a warm place, but not in the sun. The vinegar may be bottled in nine months. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. per gallon. Sufficient for a quart of vinegar.
This is a two-stage ferment: the sugared gooseberry water goes to alcohol first, then air-borne Acetobacter turns the alcohol to acetic acid. The nine months is not a misprint, and most of it is the second stage.
- Air is the hingeAlcoholic fermentation wants shelter, but the souring stage needs oxygen and a wide surface. The muslin over the bunghole is doing real work: it admits air and the wild acetic bacteria while keeping out vinegar flies. Never seal the vessel.
- Imperial measuresCassell's quarts and gallons are imperial: a quart is 40 fl oz (about 1.2 US quarts) and a gallon is 160 fl oz (about 1.2 US gallons). A quart of gooseberries is a volume, roughly 1 lb 4 oz of fruit.
- The vesselA small oak cask is optional. A wide-mouth stoneware crock or a glass jar, filled no more than three-quarters so there is headspace and surface area, does the same job and lets you see what is happening.
- Sifted sugarSifted sugar — Sifted sugar here means fine white sugar free of lumps, not modern icing sugar with its cornstarch. Ordinary granulated or caster sugar is correct.
- Yeast on toastThe toast dipped in yeast is a Victorian pitching method using barm, the live froth from brewing. A quarter-teaspoon of dried wine or ale yeast stirred into the liquid accomplishes it; the bread is only a raft.
- A warm place, not the sunAim for 70-80F for the alcoholic stage and keep it there for the souring, in the dark. Sunlight heats unevenly and degrades the flavour; a cool room will stall the bacteria and leave you with weak wine instead of vinegar.
- Judging it doneNine months is a guide, not a rule. It is finished when it smells sharply of vinegar with no trace of alcohol and a gelatinous mother has formed. Strain, bottle, and cork loosely for a week before sealing.
- Strength, and what pickling requiresThe subtitle promises a pickling vinegar, but the acidity of a wild ferment is unknown and often falls short of the 5 percent acetic acid that safe pickling depends on. Without testing it with titration strips, keep it for dressings and refrigerator pickles eaten soon, and use commercial vinegar of stated strength for anything shelf-stable.
- YieldThe closing line is muddled: three quarts of water plus fruit will give appreciably more than a quart. Expect roughly two and a half to three quarts after straining and losses.
Fruit vinegars were a thrift measure in the English kitchen garden, where gooseberries ripened all at once and in quantities no household could eat. Malt and wine vinegar had to be bought, so a bush crop that could be turned into pickling liquor for the price of a little sugar was worth the cellar space; the costing of 1s 2d a gallon is there because Cassell's priced everything. Gooseberries suit the purpose because they are high in acid, and the alcohol produced is readily converted through by the bacteria. The toast-and-yeast trick belongs to a period when kitchens might beg barm from a brewer or a bread-baking neighbour, and it survived in print long after bottled and dried yeasts made it unnecessary.