Chili Vinegar
INGREDIENTS.- 50 fresh red English chilis, 1 pint of vinegar.
Pound or cut the chilis in halves, and infuse them in the vinegar for a fortnight, when it will be fit for use. This will be found an agreeable relish to fish, as many people cannot eat it without the addition of an acid and cayenne pepper.
A two-ingredient infusion that still works exactly as written. The only real decisions are the vinegar you start with and how long you leave the chillies in.
- The pintMrs Beeton's pint is the imperial one, 20 fl oz, or about 2 1/2 US cups. Fifty chillies to that volume gives a fierce condiment; halve the chillies if you want something merely warm.
- "Fresh red English chilis"The phrase most likely means pods grown in Britain rather than a named variety, and Victorian kitchen gardens and glasshouses did raise long red cayenne-type capsicums. Modern supermarket red chillies are a reasonable substitute; a bird's eye is far hotter, so use fewer.
- Vinegar to useA plain malt or cider vinegar at 5 per cent acidity is right, and the acidity matters more than the type. Do not dilute it, and do not substitute a low-acid or seasoned rice vinegar, since the acid is what keeps the infusion stable.
- Whole fresh chillies in liquidCut or pound them as directed rather than dropping them in whole. A whole pod can trap air and float above the vinegar; anything not submerged can mould, so keep the chillies pushed under and top up with vinegar if the level drops.
- The fortnightTwo weeks at room temperature out of direct sunlight is the traditional steep and gives a well-coloured, hot vinegar. Taste at a week if you prefer it milder.
- Straining and keepingStrain through muslin into clean bottles once the heat suits you, or the flavour keeps building and the fragments cloud the liquid. Stored capped and cool it holds for a year or more, though the bright red fades to rust after a few months.
- HandlingFifty chillies pounded in one go releases a great deal of capsaicin. Gloves are sensible, and pound in a bowl rather than face-down over a mortar.
- Yield and useJust under a pint after straining. A few drops on oysters, whitebait, fried fish or into a shellfish sauce is the intended use; it also stands in for hot sauce in a dressing.
Chilli vinegar belongs to the Victorian family of "store sauces" and flavoured vinegars - tarragon, garlic, cucumber, horseradish, camp vinegar - that a household kept bottled on the shelf and used the way we now use bought condiments. Mrs Beeton's own note explains its place at table: fish was felt to want both an acid and a pepper, and this supplied the two in one bottle. That chillies could be called "English" says something about nineteenth-century gardening, since capsicums were raised under glass and in frames in Britain well before Beeton's day. Cayenne itself was a commercial powder of long standing, and was reported in the period as adulterated with red lead and brick dust, which is one reason a cook might have preferred to make her own heat from whole pods she could see.