Vinegar
Said the prophet Mahomet, "If there is no vinegar in a house it is a sin: there is no blessing neither." To the cook vinegar is far more than wine, though wine also is much. Nearly all fresh fish will take a dash of vinegar with advantage, either in the sauce which accompanies it, or in the liquor in which it is boiled. Most vegetables are improved with acid, not only when they are eaten raw, as in salads, but when-like asparagus, cauliflowers, artichokes-they are prepared with a butter sauce for entremets. It is to be remembered, however, that there is a great difference in vinegars, so that it is difficult to be precise in naming quantities. White-wine vinegar is often very sharp; red-wine less so; malt vinegar is often mild enough; and there is sometimes in like manner a difference between lemons, according to the tree or according to the ripeness, which is nearly as well marked as the difference between oranges. "Malt vinegar," says Pereira, "consists of water, acetic acid, acetic ether, colouring matter, a peculiar organic Vinegar matter commonly denominated mucilage, a small portion of alcohol, and sulphuric acid. Vinegar makers are allowed to add one-thousandth part by weight of sulphuric acid." But good vinegar does not require this addition. Perhaps the Prophet did not know that there was alcohol in vinegar when he gave it his blessing. Perhaps Sir Wilfrid Lawson and his friends of the Band of Hope will give up vinegar, and consume nothing but lemons, crabs, rhubarb, sorrel, and docks, when they know of the poison which flourishes in their cruets.
Wine vinegar has much the same chemical constitution as malt. The white-wine sort is to be had everywhere; but as it is difficult to procure the mild red-wine vinegar in London, it may be well to state that it will be found good at Perelli-Rocco's, Greek Street, Soho.
The flavoured vinegars ought to be well known. Tarragon vinegar plays a grand part in the kitchen, and at table it becomes important for a salad in the season when the tarragon leaf is not to be had. It is best to buy chili vinegar with the chilies in it-that is, to buy a bottle of West India chilies, to use the vinegar in which they are immersed, and to renew at need. Still better, any one who has a garden can make these and other flavoured vinegars for himself. Put a few fresh tarragon leaves, or a few dozen fresh-gathered chilies, into a bottle of white-wine vinegar. In ten days the vinegar will be sufficiently charged with the flavour. And so for shalot, and for composite flavours. Vinegar is easily made for private use; and many English families in the shires delight in home-made Primrose Vinegar-for which take the following receipt. Boil six pounds of moist sugar in sixteen quarts of water for ten minutes, and carefully take off the scum. Then shake into it a peck of primroses, and before it is quite cold a little yeast. Let it ferment in a warm place all night; then put it in a barrel, and keep it in a warm part of the kitchen Vol-au-vent till it has done working. There should be an air-hole in the top of the barrel. It will take several weeks before the fermentation is at an end and the vinegar is quite fit for bottling.
VOL-AU-VENT is often made with great elaboration, and in that case had better be ordered from a professed pastrycook. For a very simple vol-au-vent the following receipt may suffice. The explanation will be clearest if we take the small vol-au-vents, commonly called Petites Bouchées (Little mouthfuls). Roll out some of the finest puff paste (No. 3) to about a quarter of an inch in thickness. Cut out of it two circles, each the size of a crown piece. The one is to be put on the top of the other; but before doing so two things are required: first, to cut a half-crown piece out of the topmost one, which will then be a half-crown with a ring round it; next, to wet the lower piece all round its edge, so that the ring of the upper piece may adhere to it. When the two sheets thus joined are baked, they will together rise to the height of two inches. The half-crown piece will be loose in the middle; it can be lifted out, leaving a hollow; and it will form a lid for the small vol-au-vent. Fill the hollow with any of the ragouts-the Financial one and the Toulouse are most in favour. A large vol-au-vent is done in the same way-only that according to its size the paste is rolled out thicker-say half an inch. The ornamentation of the paste in the way of printing or cutting must be left to fancy. the
The entry is half essay, half receipt: a discussion of vinegars, a method for primrose vinegar, and a short lesson in bouchées. The practical parts need translating before either can be attempted.
- The measures in the primrose vinegarSixteen quarts is four gallons (imperial, so about 18 litres) and six pounds of "moist sugar" means unrefined soft brown sugar, not white. A peck is a dry measure of eight quarts, so the flowers are roughly two gallons of loose blossom, which is an enormous quantity to gather.
- This is a two-stage fermentThe yeast makes alcohol; acetic bacteria then make vinegar from the alcohol, and they need air. That is what the air-hole in the barrel is for. Sealing the vessel airtight leaves a weak primrose wine rather than vinegar.
- Acidity is not guaranteedThe receipt gives no way of knowing the finished strength. Home vinegar can land anywhere from very weak to sharp, so do not use an untested batch as the acid in pickles, preserves or anything shelf-stable; that requires vinegar of known strength, conventionally 5 per cent acetic acid.
- The primroses themselvesCommon primrose (Primula vulgaris) and cowslip flowers were the traditional gathering. Both are now protected or scarce in many places and should not be stripped from the wild; some Primula species, most notably P. obconica, can cause contact dermatitis in susceptible people.
- Ignore the sulphuric acid passagePereira's analysis records a legal allowance for British vinegar makers of the period, not an instruction. Nothing in the receipt calls for it, and the author says plainly that good vinegar does not need it.
- Flavoured vinegarsThe tarragon and chilli method still works exactly as written: a handful of leaves or a few dozen chillies in a bottle of white-wine vinegar, ten days at room temperature. Keep the solids fully submerged and strain if you want the flavour to stop developing.
- Coin sizes for the bouchéesA Victorian crown is about 1.5 inches across, a half-crown about 1.25 inches. Those cutters give a very narrow rim; the proportion of ring to lid is the point.
- Baking the puff paste"Puff paste (No. 3)" refers to the book's own pastry entry; any all-butter puff will do. Chill the assembled rings before baking and cut straight down without dragging the knife, or the layers seal and the case will not rise. The receipt gives no oven heat; a modern hot oven, around 425-450F, until the sides are set and coloured.
- The fillingsFinancière and Toulouse are both white ragouts bound with a rich sauce, the first with quenelles, cockscombs and truffle, the second with chicken, sweetbread and mushroom. Fill the cases at the last moment; a wet ragout collapses puff pastry within minutes.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas and named for Auguste Kettner, the Soho restaurateur; the book carries a confident aside directing readers to a particular Greek Street shop for mild red-wine vinegar. The jibe at Sir Wilfrid Lawson and the Band of Hope is period argument: Lawson was the leading parliamentary advocate of prohibition and the Band of Hope a children's temperance movement, and Dallas is needling them with the traces of alcohol that survive in the cruet. Pereira, quoted for the chemistry, is Jonathan Pereira, whose materia medica was the standard English reference of the mid-century; the one-thousandth part of sulphuric acid he mentions was a legal allowance for British vinegar brewers, long since abolished. Primrose vinegar belongs to the older tradition of country flower wines soured on purpose.