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Pineapple Vinegar
Pineapple parings should never be thrown away as there is no finer vinegar in the world in flavour and colour than that made from pineapples. The fruit parings (fruit may also be added) should be placed in crocks and covered with water, sugar or syrup being added in quantity according to the condition of the fruit, and allowed to ferment thoroughly. When this has been accomplished-watched and skimmed meantime--the vinegar must be strained from the fruit and placed in jars or bottles.
CHAPTER XX THE BANANA, (Musa, Nat. Ord. Musacea) PERHAPS no form of plant-life, with the exception of the palm, is more typically tropical in appearance than the Musa (including both plantain and banana); none is more widely cultivated through the variations of the warmer climates, and nothing has ever been found in the vegetable kingdom which could with such entire satisfaction or in so wholesale a manner take its place in the countries where it grows. The names of the plantain ("type of the species"), M. paradisiaca, and a variety of it, M. sapientum, or "horse banana," indicate the esteem in which this fruit-food is held its honour "in its own country." The former was so called by the early oriental Christians, it is said, who, venturing boldly to differ from those idealists mentioned in connection with other fruits, betrayed a certain materialistic tendency in imagining the banana to have been the cause of the dissension in the original garden. If it was there was indeed irony in the wisdom of the serpent's choice (or must we credit him with kindly foresight?), as the plantain provides not only food and drink for man and beast but shelter, since the large leaves make an excellent thatch, and also, we are told, readily furnish "table covers and parasols!" "Sapientum" means "of the wise men," in allusion to the choice of the banana as food by the wise men of India-this according to Theophrastus. The banana is certainly, with many hot-country peoples, the "staff of life." It is perhaps the best of all starch-foods and healthful when eaten with an understanding of the fruit's very substantial and sustaining nature. From its composition and wholesome qualities a likeness is directly traceable to wheat bread. The nourishment to be derived from the banana is very great and it has been stated that "one pound of bananas is equal to three pounds of meat in nutriment," which, however, should be considered conditionally or relatively. Lean beef, for instance, contains chiefly protein (no carbohydrates) while bananas are essentially a starchy food, containing an exceedingly small per cent. of protein and made up almost entirely of the carbohydrates.
With children the banana should be cut into bits or mashed, not merely because of the danger of choking on the larger, solid, slippery pieces so often mistakenly given them, but because, as with adults, it is usually not sufficiently masticated, gives trouble in the process of disintegration and so is considered indigestible: the difficulty being plainly with the people and not with the banana. (The M. Cavendishi, or Cavendish, and M. Orientum, or Hart's Choice, or Lady Finger, are the most delicate for eating uncooked).
The luxuriance of the banana plant is typified in the long and broad rich leaves of soft, satiny texture, (though firm and somewhat velvety in the earlier stages). But these elongated, vegetable, elephant's ears soon have their smooth surface disturbed, for the wind, brushing their helpless delicate weight, quickly tears them into fine-frayed ribbons. These, when first unfolding, have their tender, pea-green breadths cut up for cooking like vegetables among some of the tropical peoples.
The banana blossom is one of the most beautiful creations of nature. It consists of fold after fold of close-sheathed, shell-like leaves, under each of which a circle of embryo bananas lies. These leaves, the lining of which is of a deep, delicate maroon, and the outside of dusty, silverygray richness, rise slowly up and back as the little bananas grow, protecting them from too great degree of sun or dampness, finally curling and withering as the stem lengthens and the bananas, filling out gradually, need no longer their care.
The instructions here assume a cook who already knows what a working vinegar crock looks like; the quantities are left entirely to judgement. The notes below fill in what the original leaves unsaid. (The banana text that follows the recipe is the opening of the next chapter and has nothing to do with it.)
- The hinge: air, then patienceThis is a two-stage ferment. Yeasts turn sugar to alcohol in the first week or two, then acetic bacteria turn alcohol to acid over several more weeks. Both stages need air, so cover the crock with cloth tied down against fruit flies, never with a sealed lid.
- How much sugar"According to the condition of the fruit" is the vaguest line in the recipe. Pineapple parings and cores carry only modest fermentable sugar on their own; a commonly used starting point is somewhere between a quarter and a half cup of sugar per quart of water. Too little sugar gives a weak, unstable liquid that is more likely to spoil than to sour.
- CrocksStoneware or glass only. Do not use metal, glazed earthenware of unknown origin, or anything reactive; acetic acid will attack it. A wide vessel is better than a tall one because the surface area drives the second stage.
- Watched and skimmedA film on the surface may be a mother of vinegar or harmless kahm yeast; if it smells clean, it can be left alone. Fuzzy growth in green, black or blue is mould and means the batch goes out. Any parings that float above the liquid may mould, so keep everything submerged with a weight.
- TimingThe original gives none. Expect one to two weeks of visible bubbling, then four to eight weeks at 65-80F before it tastes sharply of vinegar rather than of stale wine. Cooler rooms take longer.
- Strain and settleStrain through cloth, bottle, and leave loosely stoppered for another few weeks to finish. Vinegar that is corked tight too early can build pressure or turn cloudy.
- Do not can with itHomemade fruit vinegar is of unknown strength. Commercial vinegar is standardised at 5 per cent acidity, which is what pickling and canning recipes are calculated on. Use this for dressings, drinks and marinades, and buy vinegar for preserving unless you test the acidity.
- YieldWhatever you put in, less the parings: parings from four or five pineapples with water to cover will give roughly two to three quarts.
Fruit vinegars made from peelings belong to the household economy that runs through nearly every fruit book of this period, when a paring bucket was a resource rather than compost. Pineapple is the classic candidate because the skin and core carry both sugar and a heavy dose of the fruit's aroma, and the discarded portion of a pineapple is very large relative to what reaches the table. The technique is standard across the tropics and the Caribbean, where vinagre de piña is still made from rind and water in an open crock, and where the same starting ferment, caught early and drunk sweet and barely alcoholic, becomes Mexican tepache. Vinegar-making of this kind long predates any understanding of what caused it: the role of acetic acid bacteria was only worked out in the nineteenth century, and cooks before that judged progress exactly as this writer instructs, by watching the surface and skimming.