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Pear Vinegar
The water in which pears have been boiled for preserves may be used for vinegar or vinegar may be made from crushed pears as from apples at cider-making time. Or pears may be cut, boiled, and crushed and the resulting liquor sweetened with molasses and allowed to ferment. CHAPTER III THE QUINCE (Cydonia cydonia: Malacee) THE Quince, or Cydonia, is a near relative of the apple and pear, sometimes in form resembling one, sometimes the other, according to variety. Its history is as fragrant as the fruit itself, which among the ancient Greeks was typical of happiness and love, and bears about it a still more ancient suggestion, through the old Hebrew writers: that it was the forbidden fruit. And surely no fruit was ever more tempting in perfume; more disappointing in reality before cookery creates chemical change. (The Japanese Quince [Cydonia Japonica] is not a general cooking fruit.) The quince is native to Greece and is now known almost as widely as the apple and pear. Its name was bestowed upon it, it is said, in the days when flourished the ancient city of Cydonia in Crete.
As an adjunct to or basis of preserves, and as a cordial or unfermented drink, made as is cider, the quince is a food success and the mucilage which surrounds its seeds is considered of value in several ways, one of its uses being as a cure for sore throat, or applied, externally, to other irritated surfaces.
Three sketched routes to the same end, none with quantities. Fruit vinegar is a two-stage ferment, and the original assumes you already know that; the notes below fill in what it leaves out.
- The hinge: two ferments, not oneYeast first converts sugar to alcohol in a covered but not sealed vessel, then acetic bacteria convert alcohol to acetic acid, and that second stage needs steady air contact. Cover the jar with cloth rather than a lid, and never fill it more than about two-thirds so there is surface area for the bacteria to work on.
- No quantities are givenThe recipe offers none, which is normal for period vinegar-making. If you sweeten the molasses version, published figures vary widely; something in the region of 6-8 percent sugar by weight is one starting point, and a thinner sugar content tends to give a weak vinegar that is more liable to spoil before it sours.
- The preserve water routeWater pears have been boiled in has been heated, so it starts out largely free of spoilage organisms, and it carries some sugar from the fruit. If what you have is a heavy preserving syrup rather than thin cooking water, it will need diluting; a very sugary liquid ferments poorly and may stall as a sweet, alcoholic liquid rather than turning acid.
- A starter helpsLeft to wild organisms this can go several ways, not all of them pleasant. Adding a few tablespoons of raw unpasteurised cider vinegar, or a piece of vinegar mother, once the alcoholic stage has finished pushes the culture in the right direction.
- Time and temperatureThe alcoholic stage takes one to two weeks at room temperature; acetification takes anywhere from three weeks to several months, faster at 75-85F than in a cold pantry. Taste periodically rather than working to a fixed date.
- Do not use it for preservingHomemade fruit vinegar has an unknown and usually variable acidity. It is fine for dressings, deglazing and drinking shrubs, but pickling and canning recipes assume a guaranteed 5 percent acetic acid, and this will not reliably supply it.
- Signs it has gone wrongA wrinkled grey-white film with fuzzy growth is mould, not mother; a mother is smooth, gelatinous and translucent. Discard the batch at any sign of pink, black or green growth, or a smell of nail polish remover that does not resolve into clean sourness.
- The quince textThe paragraphs after the vinegar note are the opening of the following chapter, not part of the recipe. Ignore them when working.
Fruit vinegar was a byproduct economy rather than a project: any sweet liquid a household could not otherwise use — preserve syrup, windfall pears too bruised for the pantry, the last pressing of the cider mill — went into a crock and came back as something useful. Pears ferment more sluggishly than apples because their sugars include a large share of sorbitol, which yeast handles poorly. The suggestion to proceed "as from apples at cider-making time" reflects a period when cider vinegar was familiar enough to need no explanation.