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Raspberry or Blackberry Vinegar
Four quarts of berries, one quart of vinegar, covered over them, and let stand three days. Then mash and strain; add to each pint of juice one pint of granulated sugar, boil twenty minutes; skim, bottle and seal. One tablespoon of this syrup to a glass of ice water is very refreshing.
— Mrs. Edith E. Hubbard
A drinking vinegar, or shrub — berry juice extracted with vinegar and boiled down with sugar into a syrup for diluting. The proportions are sound; only the vessels and the storage need translating.
- QuantitiesFour quarts of berries is roughly 5-6 lb, or about 13-16 standard 6-oz supermarket clamshells. Expect somewhere near 2 quarts of strained juice, which will take an equal 2 quarts (about 3 1/2 lb) of sugar.
- The vinegarUse a plain cider or white wine vinegar at 5 percent acidity. Nineteenth-century household vinegar was variable in strength; anything labelled "reduced acidity" or a sweet balsamic will throw the balance off.
- Steeping vesselGlass, glazed stoneware or stainless steel only. Three days of vinegar in aluminium, copper or unglazed earthenware will pull metal into the syrup. Cover the bowl and keep it in the refrigerator or a cool cellar rather than a warm kitchen.
- "Covered over them"One quart of vinegar will not actually submerge four quarts of berries. Press the fruit down and stir once a day so the top layer stays wet; the berries collapse and release juice as they sit.
- StrainingMash with a potato masher, then strain through a jelly bag or several layers of cheesecloth. Let it drip rather than squeezing if you want a clear syrup; squeezing gives more volume and a cloudy result.
- The boilTwenty minutes of boiling dissolves the sugar, thickens the syrup and kills off yeasts. Stir until the sugar is fully dissolved before it comes up to heat, or the bottom will scorch.
- Bottling and storageFill clean, hot bottles or jars while the syrup is still boiling hot and cap at once. Treat it as a refrigerator syrup: the original 'seal' most likely meant wax or a corked-and-sealed bottle in a cold cellar, and modern practice is to keep it chilled and use it within a few months.
- Yield and servingAround 3 quarts of syrup — a tablespoon to a tumbler of ice water gives roughly 190 drinks. It is also good over vanilla ice cream, or with soda water and a little gin.
Raspberry vinegar belongs to the family of shrubs and drinking vinegars that carried English and American households through hot weather before bottled soft drinks and reliable ice. The word shrub comes through English from the Arabic sharāb, meaning a drink, and the technique — steeping fruit in vinegar, then preserving the juice with sugar — was a practical way to keep a July raspberry crop drinkable into the following winter. Nineteenth-century domestic manuals also recommended raspberry vinegar to invalids and to people with fevers, on the reasoning that an acid drink was cooling and would tempt an appetite that plain water would not.