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Shallot Wine
Shallot wine is a preparation largely used and highly esteemed. When an acid taste is not required, and, consequently, when shallot vinegar would be objected to, shallot wine will flavour a hash or ragout with onion most pleasantly, and the wine extracts the flavour of shallots even better than vinegar does. Skin, mince, and bruise four ounces of shallots; put them into a bottle with a pint of sherry, and let them infuse ten days or a fortnight; strain the liquor, and bottle for use. When a very strong flavouring is desired, pour the pint of sherry over three ounces of shallots; let them infuse ten days; pour off the liquor, and put it into a clean bottle with three ounces of fresh shallots, skinned and bruised. Infuse ten days longer, strain, and bottle for use. Time, ten days or more.
A cold infusion, not a cooked preparation: shallots steeped in sherry to make a seasoning liquid for hashes, ragouts and sauces. Nothing here is difficult, but the measures are imperial and the keeping qualities deserve a word.
- The pint is imperialCassell's pint is 20 fluid ounces, about 570 ml. Four ounces of shallots is roughly 115 g, which may be three or four large shallots or twice that number of small ones.
- Choose the sherry deliberatelyA dry fino or manzanilla gives a clean savoury result; an amontillado or oloroso brings nuttiness and a little sweetness that suits brown ragouts. Cream sherry will make the finished flavouring cloying.
- Bruise, don't puréeMincing and bruising is meant to break cell walls so the alcohol can draw out the flavour. A food processor turns the shallots to a wet paste that clouds the wine and makes straining tedious; chop by hand and crush with the flat of the blade.
- The double infusionThe second, stronger method passes the same pint of sherry over two successive lots of three ounces of shallots, six ounces in all against the four of the simple method. It is not an increase in the quantity of wine, only in the shallot, and the result is markedly more pungent.
- Strain properlyPass the liquid through a fine sieve lined with muslin or a coffee filter. Any solids left in the bottle continue to soften and will eventually throw a sediment and dull the flavour.
- KeepingSherry at around 15 to 20 per cent alcohol is a reasonably stable medium, but this is a home infusion with vegetable matter in it. Keep the strained, solid-free bottle in the refrigerator and use it within a few months; discard it if it turns cloudy, gassy or smells sour.
- Yield and useRather under a pint after straining and absorption. Treat it as a seasoning, not an ingredient: a tablespoon or two stirred into a gravy, a deglazing splash for a pan of kidneys, a little in a vinaigrette where raw onion would be too aggressive.
Flavoured vinegars and flavoured wines were the Victorian cook's answer to a problem the modern kitchen has largely forgotten: how to have the taste of a fresh aromatic on hand at a moment's notice, in a form that keeps. It belongs to the store cupboard, alongside tarragon vinegar, mushroom ketchup, essence of anchovy and the various "store sauces" that stood in the larder ready to correct a dull hash. The shallot itself was prized in nineteenth-century English cooking as the gentler, sweeter cousin of the onion, and the point made here is a genuinely useful one: acid changes a dish as much as flavour does, so an alcohol extraction lets you season a delicate ragout with onion without simultaneously sharpening it. Sherry was the obvious solvent, being plentiful in Victorian Britain through the Anglo-Spanish wine trade, and its fortified strength gave the finished flavouring better keeping quality than plain wine would.