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Herbs, Essence of, for Seasoning
Squeeze the juice from four fresh lemons, strain it, and put it into an earthenware jar, and with it a bottle of white wine, and half a pint of vinegar. Add a salt-spoonful each of powdered cloves, mace, basil, thyme, and nutmeg, also an ounce of dried parsley, half a pound of salt, and two ounces of pepper. Put the pan in the oven, and bring the contents to the point of boiling, then put on the cover, and keep them simmering gently for four hours. Strain the liquid, filter it through blotting-paper, and keep it in closely stoppered bottles till wanted for use. Probable cost, 1s., exclusive of the wine. Three drops of the essence are about enough for a pint. Taste, and add more if required.
A Victorian store-cupboard seasoning: a salted, acidulated herb and spice extract meant to be dosed by the drop. The instructions are for a cook who kept an all-day fire, and a few of the vessels and units need translating.
- Salt is the whole point of the preservationHalf a pound of salt in roughly a quart of wine, vinegar and lemon juice makes a very heavily salted liquid, which is why three drops season a pint. Do not reduce it thinking the result is a marinade; it is not meant to be tasted neat.
- Jar, then panThe recipe starts in "an earthenware jar" and then tells you to put "the pan" in the oven. They are the same vessel. Use a heavy non-reactive pot with a tight lid; the acid and salt will pit bare cast iron or aluminium.
- Oven as a low simmer"Bring to the point of boiling" then simmer four hours means the cooler part of a Victorian range oven. On a modern hob use the lowest setting with the lid on, and check that the liquid is barely moving rather than reducing away.
- A salt-spoonfulThe salt spoon of a Victorian cruet set holds roughly a quarter teaspoon. Five of them, plus an ounce of dried parsley and two ounces of pepper, is a lot of solid matter for the liquid, so expect a thick sludge before straining.
- A bottle of white wineTake this as a standard 750 ml bottle. Something dry and unoaked; the wine here is a solvent and an acid, not a flavour you will be able to pick out.
- Blotting-paperNineteenth-century blotting paper was unsized, which is what let it work as a filter here. An unbleached paper coffee filter does the same job; strain through muslin first or the filter will clog on the parsley and pepper.
- Bottling and keepingFill scalded bottles while the liquid is hot and stopper tightly. The salt and acid do the preserving, but the flavour flattens with light and air, so keep it dark and use small bottles rather than one large one.
- Yield and dosingExpect somewhere around a pint and a half after straining, which at three drops per pint of soup or sauce is years of seasoning. Add it at the end of cooking and taste before adding more, since it carries salt as well as aroma.
An essence of herbs was infrastructure: a bottle on the shelf that let a cook flavour a soup, gravy or made dish in seconds without a herb garden or a spice grinder. Victorian kitchens ran on a whole family of such store sauces and essences "" essence of anchovy, essence of celery, mushroom ketchup, browning "" most of them preserved by the same combination of salt, vinegar and long slow reduction seen here, and many available commercially as well as made at home. The list of aromatics is conservative and typically English: cloves, mace and nutmeg beside basil, thyme and parsley, a spice cabinet that had barely shifted since the eighteenth century. Concentrated bottled seasonings of this kind are generally regarded as the domestic ancestors of the commercial extracts and bouillon products that seem to have gradually supplanted them towards the end of the century, which is roughly when recipes like this one begin to disappear from household manuals.