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RASPBERRY VINEGAR (another way) (Fill a jar with raspberries)
Fill a jar with raspberries; pour vinegar over them till the jar is full. Let it stand nine days, stirring it every day. Strain it off, and to every pint of juice add three-quarters of a pound of white sugar. Boil it as long as any scum rises, and bottle off for use.
A fruit shrub syrup rather than a salad vinegar: sweet, sharp and meant to be diluted. The recipe is workable as written, but it leaves the vessel, the vinegar and the boiling time to your judgement.
- The hinge: steep cold, boil onceNo heat is called for during the nine-day steep, so treat it as a cold infusion: the flavour comes from the fruit macerating in acid. Only after straining does anything go on the stove, and then only until the scum stops rising, which the recipe leaves to your eye rather than the clock.
- "Fill a jar" is genuinely vagueCassell's assumes whatever jar is to hand. If you want a starting point, 2 lb (about 900 g) raspberries in a 2-quart jar with enough vinegar to cover by an inch is a workable scale; how much strained juice you get will depend on the fruit.
- Which vinegarThe book does not say. A plain white wine vinegar or a mild cider vinegar suits a drinking syrup; malt vinegar is more assertive and distilled white vinegar harsher.
- Vessel and utensilsUse glass, glazed stoneware or stainless steel, never copper, aluminium or bare iron — nine days of vinegar will strip metal and take the taste with it. Cover the jar loosely rather than sealing it hard, and stir with a wooden or plastic spoon.
- Where to stand itThe recipe does not say; a cool larder is the likely assumption. In a warm modern kitchen keep it in the refrigerator for the nine days; the fruit may ferment or grow surface mould otherwise, and any fuzzy or coloured mould means the batch goes out.
- StrainingDrip through a jelly bag or a double layer of muslin and resist squeezing if you want a clear syrup. Pressing the pulp gives more liquid and a cloudier, more astringent result.
- Sugar in modern termsThree-quarters of a pound of sugar is 12 oz, about 340 g or roughly 1 3/4 cups, to each imperial pint (20 fl oz, about 2 1/2 cups) of juice — a heavy syrup, and the sweetness is what balances the vinegar. "White sugar" here is ordinary refined sugar; granulated will do.
- Bottling and keepingFill clean, scalded bottles while the syrup is hot and cap once cool. The combination of acid and sugar keeps it for months in a cool dark cupboard, but refrigerate after opening.
- Yield and servingYield depends on the scale you use and on how much juice the fruit gives up. Use 1 to 2 tablespoons in a tumbler of cold or sparkling water, or over ice with gin; it also works as a deglazing splash for duck or pork.
Raspberry vinegar belongs to the family of drinks the English called shrubs — fruit steeped in vinegar or spirit, sweetened, and kept as a concentrate to be let down with water. It was a fixture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century household books on two grounds: it preserved a glut of a fruit that spoils within a day or two of picking, and it was widely reckoned a remedy, given warm for sore throats and fevers and offered cold to harvest workers and invalids. Its appearance in Cassell's reflects that dual character, half storecupboard preserve and half domestic medicine. American cooks kept the tradition alive under the name raspberry shrub, and shrubs have lately been revived in bars.