Home › The Principles of Cookery › SHALLOT VINEGAR (another way)
SHALLOT VINEGAR (another way)
Skin five or six ounces of shallots, and put them into a jar with a quart of good vinegar; keep the jar closely corked for three weeks, then strain for use. If a stronger flavour be desired, use more shallots. Garlic vinegar is made in the same way, only using half the quantity of garlic to one quart of vinegar. Time, from two to three weeks.
A cold infusion that needs almost no technique, only patience and a vinegar worth infusing. Two things decide the result: the acidity of the vinegar and how much surface area the shallots present.
- Quantities in modern termsFive or six ounces of shallots is roughly 140-170 g, or four to six medium shallots. An imperial quart is 40 fl oz (1.14 litres); a US quart is 946 ml, so if you are working from a US measure use about a fifth less shallot to keep the recipe's proportions.
- "Good vinegar"Use a vinegar labelled at 5 per cent acidity or higher — cider or white wine vinegar both work, malt if you want something more assertive. Low-acid or diluted "seasoning" vinegars will not preserve the alliums reliably over three weeks.
- Whole or cutThe recipe implies whole peeled shallots. Halving or bruising them extracts flavour faster, at the cost of a slightly cloudier infusion.
- The jarA corked jar was standard; a glass jar with a plastic-lined or glass lid is better. Avoid bare metal lids, which vinegar corrodes, and keep the jar somewhere cool and dark so the vinegar does not pick up colour or off-flavours.
- Submersion is the hingeEvery piece of shallot must stay below the surface of the vinegar for the whole three weeks. Anything bobbing in the air can mould, and one mouldy shallot spoils the quart. Top up with more vinegar if the level drops.
- Straining and keepingStrain through a fine sieve or muslin and bottle. Discard the spent shallots rather than leaving them in — the book is right to strain. Kept sealed and cool, the finished vinegar holds its flavour for six months to a year.
- The garlic versionHalf the quantity means about 2 1/2 to 3 oz (70-85 g) of peeled cloves per quart, and that is still forceful. Garlic in vinegar is safe; garlic in oil is the preparation that carries a botulism risk, and the two are often confused.
- Yield and useYou get back very nearly the quart you started with. It is a seasoning, not a salad dressing on its own: a teaspoon or two into a vinaigrette, a mayonnaise, a mint sauce, or the deglazing liquid for a steak sauce.
Flavoured vinegars fill several pages of Victorian and Edwardian cookery books because they solved a problem the modern kitchen no longer has — how to keep a sharp allium note on hand out of season, before refrigeration and before shallots were available all year. Shallot vinegar in particular underpins a whole family of classical sauces and dressings; a spoonful of it is the traditional seasoning for oysters and remains so in the French mignonette. The name comes by way of French échalote and ultimately, it is generally traced to, the ancient port of Ascalon in the Levant, from which Greek and Roman writers believed the onion had come.