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Herbs, Vinegar Of
The flavour of herbs may be extracted by being soaked in vinegar, and in this form may be used for soups and sauces, when fresh herbs cannot be obtained. Gather the herbs on a dry day, and at the proper season. Pick the leaves from the stalks, and fill a wide-mouthed bottle with them. The leaves may be shaken together, but must not be pressed down. Pour the best pickling vinegar over them, let them infuse for a month, then strain and bottle for use. Probable cost, 10d. per pint.
A straightforward cold infusion that still works exactly as written. The only real variables are the vinegar's strength and how dry the leaves are when they go in.
- "Best pickling vinegar"In Cassell's day this generally meant a strong malt vinegar, sold sharper than the vinegar used at table, though strengths were not standardised. Use any vinegar labelled 5 per cent or above — cider or white wine vinegar suit delicate herbs, malt suits mint and tarragon. Avoid low-acid or diluted "drinking" vinegars, which will not preserve the infusion.
- The hinge: dry leavesGathering "on a dry day" is not sentiment. Surface water dilutes the vinegar at the leaf surface and encourages spoilage before the acid takes hold, and wet leaves also cloud the finished vinegar. Pick after the dew has burned off, or wash and dry thoroughly in a salad spinner and on a towel.
- Which herbsThe recipe names none, leaving the choice open; the herbs usually treated this way are tarragon, mint, thyme, marjoram, savoury, basil and burnet. Tarragon vinegar is the classic and the one most worth making. Firm, woody-stemmed herbs tend to give the cleanest result; soft ones such as parsley and chervil go muddy and are better used fresh.
- Not pressed downPacking the jar tight leaves too little vinegar in contact with the leaves and traps air pockets where a leaf can sit above the liquid. Fill loosely and make sure everything is submerged — anything poking above the surface will discolour and can mould.
- A month is generousMost herbs give up their flavour well before that at room temperature, and warmth speeds it further. Taste at two weeks and strain when it suits you rather than necessarily waiting out the full month.
- Straining and bottlingStrain through muslin or a coffee filter to catch the fine particles that make a vinegar cloudy, then bottle in clean glass with a plastic or plastic-lined cap — bare metal corrodes. A single fresh sprig dropped in for looks must stay under the surface.
- Yield and keepingA loosely filled jar takes rather less vinegar than its stated capacity, and most of it strains back out. Kept cool and dark it holds good flavour for many months, though the colour fades much sooner.
- The cost noteTenpence a pint is pre-decimal currency and of no practical use beyond showing this was reckoned a cheap store-cupboard item.
Herb vinegars belong to the long era before reliable year-round greengrocery, when a cook's access to fresh tarragon or basil ended with the first frost. Drying, salting, potting in butter and steeping in vinegar were among the usual ways of carrying summer flavour into winter, and vinegar had the advantage of producing something that could be poured straight into a sauce or a salad dressing. The entry is treated as a piece of basic kitchen provisioning, like stock or browning — a preparation you kept on the shelf so that other dishes were possible. Tarragon vinegar in particular was a fixture of nineteenth-century British and French kitchens, including as a base for sauces of the béarnaise family, and the technique described here, a cold steep in strong vinegar followed by straining, is essentially unchanged in modern practice.