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Pepper Vinegar (One dozen pods red pepper)
One dozen pods red pepper, fully ripe. Take out stems and cut them in two. Add three pints vinegar. Boil down to one quart; strain through a sieve, and bottle for use.--Mrs. Dr. J.
A one-ingredient condiment that depends entirely on the peppers you choose, since the book assumes a garden variety no longer sold by name. Cook it in a nonreactive pan and keep the kitchen ventilated.
- Quantities in cupsThree pints is 6 cups of vinegar, reduced to 1 quart (4 cups) — a loss of about a third. Yield is roughly four cups, enough to fill two pint bottles.
- Which peppers"Pods red pepper, fully ripe" in a nineteenth-century Virginia garden most likely meant a small hot cayenne type, roughly two to four inches long. A dozen fresh red cayennes or red Fresnos gives broadly comparable heat; a dozen habaneros would make something far fiercer than intended.
- The fumes are the hazardSimmering capsaicin in acid drives it into the air and it stings eyes and throat. Run the hood, open a window, and do not lean over the pan to check it.
- Nonreactive pan onlyBoiling vinegar attacks aluminum, unlined copper and cast iron, picking up metallic flavor and gray color. Use stainless steel or enamel.
- Vinegar strengthStandard supermarket cider or white vinegar at 5 percent acidity is what you want; cider suits the Southern style. Boiling down concentrates the pepper flavor, though acetic acid is itself volatile, so the finished vinegar is not necessarily sharper than what went into the pan; its keeping quality comes from the vinegar's acidity in the first place.
- Cut side down, seeds inSeeds in -- Halving the pods, as directed, exposes the interior placenta where most of the heat sits. Nothing in the recipe calls for seeding or de-membraning them — this is a hot vinegar, not a merely flavored one.
- Straining and bottlingPress the softened pods against the sieve to extract the liquid, then strain again through cloth if you want a clear bottle. Fill clean bottles while hot and cap; store in a cool dark place, or the refrigerator once opened.
- How it is usedA few drops sprinkled over turnip greens, collards, black-eyed peas, fried fish or oysters. It is chiefly a table condiment, and a little goes a long way.
Pepper vinegar is the plainest member of the Southern hot-sauce family: hot pods steeped or boiled in vinegar and set on the table beside the greens. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from the contributions of some 250 Virginia housewives, gives this version signed "Mrs. Dr. J.", as it does much of the book. Boiling down rather than steeping cooks the pods to mush, giving a stronger result than the alternative practice of simply packing whole peppers into a cruet and pouring vinegar over them — a habit that survives in the pepper-sherry and pepper-vinegar bottles still found on Southern tables.