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Vinegar
Vinegar is an acid liquid, obtained by fermentation, and, either plain or flavoured, is used largely in cookery. White-wine vinegar is generally considered the best. It is by no means the most wholesome. Bordeaux vinegar is, perhaps, to be preferred to any other for salads, sauces, and home-made pickles, and other preparations for which common vinegar is too strong in flavour. It may be obtained by order from any grocer. Vinegar may be economically made at home, either with a vinegar plant or with sugar and water (see SUGAR, VINEGAR), or with sour wine, or even strong sour beer. All that is necessary is to provide at first a small cask of good vinegar, to keep it in a place where the temperature is mild, and, as it is drawn off, to fill it, and also to keep it always filled up with spoiled or sour wine. If a cask is chosen which has not contained vinegar before, a large bottleful of boiling vinegar should be poured into it, shaken about till cold, and left in it for some hours. Vinegar may be made, too, from the pulp and husks of fruit which has been used for making wine. To make it, pour boiling water on the refuse; let it stand some hours, and stir occasionally till the taste is completely drawn from the fruit. Strain the liquor, and add to every gallon a pound of strong coarse sugar and a table-spoonful of yeast. Let it work four or five days, put it into a vinegar cask, cover the bunghole with a piece of tile or slate, and leave it in a warm situation for ten or twelve months till the vinegar is made. Put it in a cool place, and if the vinegar is not clear and bright, mix a little dissolved isinglass with it. Bung it up, or bottle for use. Vinegar made from the refuse of raisin wine is excellent. Vinegar was known for many ages before any other acid. It is mentioned by Moses, and, indeed, seems to have been common among the Israelites and other Eastern nations at a very early period. It was at first made from wine, and the formation of wine vinegar is probably as ancient as the liquor itself from which it was produced, although the improvement of the process has been the result of the observation of ages. Vinegar was much in use among the Greeks and Romans, who employed it both in their cookery as a luxury and as a medicine. It was found highly useful in their armies; the soldiers being always obliged to carry some, for the purpose of mixing a little with water to obtain a grateful drink both cooling and excellent to quench thirst. The practice is still followed in some of the warmer parts of Europe; particularly among the Spanish peasantry, who are accustomed to mix about a gill of wine vinegar with a gallon of water and a tea-spoonful of salt for a common beverage; and with this drink alone, and bread, they frequently sustain the labours of the field, exposed to the heat of the sun in their warm climate, and are as healthy and athletic a race as any in Europe.
Beneath the essay is a workable method for turning the pressings left from fruit wine into vinegar. It relies on wild acetic bacteria and open-air fermentation, so the variables worth controlling are air, warmth and time.
- The hinge: air, not a sealAcetobacter needs oxygen to turn alcohol into acetic acid, which is why the bunghole is covered with a loose tile or slate rather than bunged. Cover any modern vessel with cloth and a rubber band; seal it and the fermentation stalls.
- VesselA cask is unnecessary. Use a wide-mouthed glass jar or a food-grade plastic bucket, filled no more than two-thirds so there is surface area for the mother to form. Avoid copper, brass, aluminium and unglazed metal, all of which react with acetic acid.
- "A vinegar plant"This is the mother of vinegar, the gelatinous mat of bacteria and cellulose that forms on the surface of live vinegar. A bottle of unpasteurised cider vinegar with visible sediment does the same job as a starter.
- "Strong coarse sugar"Unrefined cane sugar, close to modern demerara or a light muscovado. One pound to the gallon is roughly 450 g to 4.5 litres, which gives a weak wash of perhaps 4-5 per cent alcohol before it sours.
- Warmth and timingThe recipe's ten to twelve months assumes the 'warm situation' it specifies, with no controlled heat. Held steadily at 25-30C with good air contact, a wash of this strength will usually sour in two to three months. Below about 15C the bacteria slow almost to a stop.
- IsinglassA collagen fining made from fish swim bladders, traditionally sturgeon. Modern equivalents are gelatin or bentonite finings from a brewing supplier, or simply letting the vinegar settle for a few weeks and racking it off the lees.
- A gillA quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz or about 142 ml. The Spanish field drink described is a gill of vinegar to a gallon of water with a teaspoon of salt.
- Bordeaux vinegarRed wine vinegar from the Bordeaux region, softer and less aggressive than the white wine vinegars then sold in Britain. Any decent red wine vinegar stands in for it.
- Acidity, and what not to use this forHomemade vinegar has no known strength. Do not use it for pickling, preserving or canning, where 5 per cent acetic acid is the safety threshold; use commercial vinegar of stated acidity for that. Home vinegar is for dressings, sauces and drinking.
The word comes through Old French vin aigre, sour wine, and the process is genuinely as old as winemaking: any wine left open to air will sour on its own, so vinegar is less an invention than an unavoidable consequence. The drink described at the end of the entry is close to the Roman posca, vinegar cut with water, issued to legionaries as a cheap, keeping ration that made questionable water palatable and was believed to slake thirst better than water alone. The confident closing sentences about the health of the Spanish peasantry belong to a nineteenth-century habit of dietary moralising and should be read as period colour rather than observation.