Mint Vinegar
INGREDIENTS.
Vinegar, mint.
Procure some nice fresh mint, pick the leaves from the stalks and fill a bottle or jar with them. Add vinegar to them until the bottle is full; cover closely to exclude the air and let it infuse for a fortnight.
Then strain the liquor and put it into small bottles for use, of which the corks should be sealed.
SEASONABLE. - This should be made in June, July, or August.
A cold infusion with almost nothing to go wrong, provided the mint stays under the vinegar and the jar is clean. The whole point is a mint flavouring that keeps through the winter, when fresh mint sauce is not an option.
- QuantitiesThe recipe gives none because the jar sets the scale: leaves packed loosely to the top, then vinegar poured in until it covers them. A 500 ml jar takes only a handful of picked leaves, though the weight varies a good deal with how tightly they are packed. Malt or cider vinegar suits mint better than distilled white.
- Use vinegar of known strengthModern bottled vinegar at 5 per cent acidity is what makes this shelf-stable. Diluted or homemade vinegars of unknown strength are not a safe medium for a two-week infusion of raw plant material.
- Keep the leaves submergedMint floats, and anything sitting above the liquid will discolour and go slimy. Push it down with a small glass weight or a folded strip of baking parchment, and top up with vinegar if the level drops.
- "Cover closely to exclude the air"A plastic-lined screw lid or a glass clip-top does this. Bare metal lids corrode in vinegar vapour and will taint the flavour with a metallic edge.
- A fortnight, and no longerA fortnight -- Two weeks in a cool dark cupboard is what the recipe specifies. Longer is not necessarily stronger and the flavour may flatten, so strain on time even if you cannot bottle immediately.
- Bruise, do not chopBeeton says only to pick the leaves, but pressing them lightly against the side of the jar as you pack releases the oils. Finely chopped mint clouds the vinegar and makes straining tedious.
- Straining and sealingStrain through muslin, then through a coffee filter if you want it clear. The recipe says only that the corks should be sealed, without saying how; a well-fitting cap and a cool cupboard do much the same job, though the colour will fade over time.
- How to use itA spoonful in gravy or in the water for boiling new potatoes, or as the acid in a mint sauce for lamb made without fresh leaves. It also makes a sharp dressing for cucumber and for cold peas.
Flavoured vinegars were the Victorian kitchen's answer to a problem that a freezer now solves: how to have the taste of a summer herb in February. Beeton's book carries a whole run of them - tarragon, cucumber, garlic, chilli, camp vinegar - and they sit alongside the ketchups and bottled sauces in the same preserving logic, acid doing the work of refrigeration. The seasonal note is the practical heart of the entry: mint is picked in June, July or August, when the leaves are at their most aromatic. Mint's long association with roast lamb in England is generally traced to the older practice of serving sharp, sweet-sour sauces with rich meat, and a bottle of mint vinegar let a cook produce something like mint sauce out of season, when the garden had nothing to give.