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Raspberry Vinegar
Put a quart red raspberries in a bowl. Pour over them a quart strong apple vinegar. After standing twenty-four hours, strain through a bag, and add the liquid to a quart of fresh berries. After twenty-four hours more, strain again, and add the liquid to a third quart of berries. After straining the last time, sweeten liberally with pounded loaf sugar, refine and bottle. Blackberry vinegar may be made by the same recipe.--Mrs. C. N. Raspberry Vinegar.
Put two quarts ripe, fresh gathered berries in a stone or china vessel, and pour over them a quart of vinegar. After standing twenty-four hours, strain through a sieve. Pour the liquid over two quarts fresh berries, which strain after twenty four hours. Allow one pound loaf sugar to each pint of juice. Break up the sugar and let it melt in the liquid. Put the whole in a stone jar, cover closely, and set in a kettle of boiling water, which must be kept boiling water, which must be kept boiling briskly an hour. Take off the scum, and, when cold, bottle.--Miss N. L.
Two versions of the same drinking vinegar, or shrub: fruit steeped in vinegar through successive batches of berries, then sweetened heavily. The second is pasteurised in a water bath, the first is not.
- The hinge: use glass, stoneware or stainlessMiss N. L. specifies a stone or china vessel for good reason. Vinegar at full strength will pit aluminium, copper and cast iron and pick up a metallic taste; the same goes for the strainer and any funnel.
- A quart of raspberriesRoughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb, depending how they are packed. Frozen berries work and in fact release juice more freely, since freezing ruptures the cells.
- Strong apple vinegarOrdinary bottled cider vinegar at 5 percent acidity is what to buy. Nineteenth-century household vinegar was variable in strength and could be stronger; if you find a 6 or 7 percent cider vinegar the result will be sharper and keep better.
- Loaf sugar and \"break up the sugar\"Loaf sugar came as a hard cone that had to be nipped and pounded. Plain granulated sugar is the direct substitute, one pound to each pint of strained juice in the second recipe -- a very heavy syrup, which is what makes it keep.
- \"Strain through a bag\" and \"refine\""Strain through a bag" and "refine" -- A jelly bag or a double layer of muslin. Refine here most likely means clarify: let the sweetened liquid settle, skim the froth, and pour or siphon off the clear vinegar rather than squeezing the pulp through, which clouds it.
- The water bathAn hour at a brisk boil with the jar covered pasteurises the syrup. Stand the jar on a folded cloth or rack so it is not in direct contact with the pan bottom, and top up the water as it evaporates.
- KeepingThe unpasteurised first version is best treated as a refrigerator preserve and used within a few months; the boiled version, bottled full and sealed, keeps a year or more in a cool dark cupboard. Discard any bottle that ferments, hazes or smells yeasty.
- Yield and servingThe yield is hard to predict, but expect upwards of a pint of finished syrup from the second recipe. It is a cordial, not a salad dressing: one to two tablespoons in a tall glass of cold or sparkling water. It also does well spooned over a robust vinaigrette or brushed on roasting duck.
Raspberry vinegar belongs to the family of shrubs -- fruit, vinegar and sugar syrups that predate reliable refrigeration and gave households a way to hold summer fruit in drinkable form. A spoonful in cold water was a common hot-weather refresher, and such vinegars were also carried into the sickroom, where the acid was thought to cut fever and quench thirst better than plain water. The repeated steeping here is the whole point of the method: each new quart of berries loads the same vinegar with more fruit, so the finished syrup tastes of raspberry rather than of cider. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1877, gathered contributions from many Virginia households, which is why two variants sit side by side under one heading, initialled by their separate authors and differing on whether the syrup should be boiled at all.