Important: Safety Warning
This page presents medical treatment from an era before modern medicine. The remedies described are ineffective against the conditions named, and some of the ingredients or doses are harmful. Do not use them to treat any illness; consult a qualified medical professional.
In addition, this page prescribes plants as medicine according to pre-modern medical theory. Several of the plants named are toxic, correct identification is difficult, and the doses given have no scientific basis. Do not ingest or apply any preparation described here.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Home › A Cluster of Berries › Blackberry Vinegar
Blackberry Vinegar
Allow two gallons of water and a half-pound of sugar to each gallon of mashed blackberries. Mix and place in cask, with tablespoon of yeast. Set in warm place and shake every few days. May be drained off in three months to get rid of pulp or new holes bored in cask to prevent inconvenience.
BLACKBERRY WINE No. I For each quart of fully ripe fruit mashed and placed in tub, allow a quart of boiling (soft) water. Pour on berries and let stand till next day, stirring once in a while. Then press out, strain and measure juice, allowing a halfpound of sugar to each quart of the liquid (first placing sugar in a cask and straining juice into it). Stir till dissolved, then let cask remain unstopped till fermentation is over. At this point stir in the beaten whites of four eggs or a half-ounce of gum arabic dissolved in a little water. Leave open till next day, when it may be bunged. Will be ready to bottle in two months.
BLACKBERRY WINE No. 2 Scald berries; press and strain juice, allowing for each quart of juice two quarts of soft water and three pounds of white coffee sugar. Keep bung open till fermentation ceases, when stop, and place barrel in cool place for eight months, then bottle.
BLACKBERRY CORDIAL No. 1 Crush and strain berries, allowing for each quart onehalf pound loaf sugar, a teaspoon each of cloves and cinnamon (powdered) and a grated nutmeg. Boil all together fifteen minutes; cool, and for each quart of syrup add onehalf pint brandy. Bottle. Dose: From one teaspoon to wineglassful.
BLACKBERRY CORDIAL No. 2 To three pounds uncooked berries allow one pound white sugar and let stand twelve hours. Then press and strain, adding one-third rum or brandy and allowing one teaspoon allspice (powdered) to each quart of cordial. It must be bottled some time before it is fit for use.
Four related preparations from a single page: a fruit vinegar, two wines, and two brandy cordials. The instructions assume a wooden cask, ambient wild fermentation, and a cook who already knows what a bung is.
- The hinge: air for vinegar, none for wineVinegar needs continuous air contact so acetic bacteria can work, which is why the cask is shaken. Wine needs the opposite once fermentation slows. Never bung a vessel that is still actively working; the pressure will blow the stopper or split the container. The odd line about boring "new holes" is obscure, and seems to be offered as an alternative to draining the liquid off the pulp.
- Casks and modern vesselsSubstitute food-grade glass or plastic fermenters. For the wines, a demijohn with a water airlock replaces the open bung and the later bunging in one step. For the vinegar, a wide crock covered with cloth gives better surface area than any barrel.
- Soft waterMeans water low in dissolved minerals — rainwater in the original context. Filtered or distilled water is the closest modern equivalent; hard tap water can throw off the fermentation and leave a mineral edge.
- Sugars"Loaf sugar" was refined sugar broken from a cone; "white coffee sugar" was a commercial grade of white sugar, the name apparently from its association with coffee. Both are simply granulated white sugar now, measured by weight as written.
- A tablespoon of yeastThis meant ale barm or a piece of compressed baker's yeast, both unpredictable in fruit musts. A packet of dried wine yeast gives a cleaner ferment and a more reliable finish; bread yeast is less alcohol-tolerant and can leave a bready note.
- Egg white and gum arabicBoth are finings, added to clear a hazy wine by binding suspended solids so they settle. Modern practice more often just racks the wine off its sediment two or three times and waits. If you do fine with egg white, the wine must be racked off the resulting deposit.
- Cordial No. 1 timingFifteen minutes of boiling with a teaspoon each of clove and cinnamon and a whole grated nutmeg per quart produces a heavily spiced syrup. Cool it fully before adding the brandy, as the recipe directs, or you lose alcohol to evaporation and dull the aroma.
- "Dose"The cordials are written as household medicine, not drinks — hence teaspoon to wineglass. Treat them as a liqueur for pouring over ice cream or into soda water. Cordial No. 2, with a third of its volume in spirit, is the better keeper of the two; both are best refrigerated once opened.
- SanitationNothing here is heat-processed after fermentation. Sterilise bottles and any equipment that touches the must or juice, and expect a slow ferment or a mousy off-flavour if you do not.
Blackberries were the classic free fruit of the American and English countryside, gathered in quantity from hedgerows and fencerows by anyone with a bucket and a tolerance for thorns. The vinegar, wines and cordials here all descend from the same domestic logic: a glut that will not keep must be converted into something that will. The cordial's "dose" instruction is not a joke u2014 blackberry cordial and blackberry brandy were standard household remedies for summer diarrhoea and dysentery through the nineteenth century, and the fruit's astringency was generally credited with the effect. Blackberry root and berry preparations appeared in period pharmacopoeias and patent medicines alongside the homemade versions, and the spices u2014 clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice u2014 carry the same medicinal-warming associations they had in older cordial recipes.