Vinegar
1 tablespoon peppercorns 2 teaspoons salt 1 quart best cider vinegar 2 tablespoons sugar 1 small handful crushed celery leaves Heat one-half the vinegar to the boiling point. Add the celery leaves, sugar, and seasonings. Stir well. Boil three minutes. When cool, add the remaining vinegar. Let stand in a jug or bottle two or three weeks, shaking occasionally. Strain and bottle. Excellent in apple, or "Winter" salads.
A celery-flavoured cider vinegar for dressings, steeped cold after a brief hot start. Nothing here is difficult, but a few details in the original are worth pinning down.
- Why only half the vinegar is boiledThe recipe does not say, but heating dissolves the salt and sugar and draws out the celery and pepper quickly, while the reserved cold half presumably keeps the sharper, fruitier character of the cider vinegar from being driven off. Following the split as written is the safer course.
- Vinegar strength"Best cider vinegar" presumably indicated a sound, fully soured product, though the recipe does not specify a strength. A commercial cider vinegar labelled 5 percent acidity works well. Unpasteurised cider vinegar with mother works too, though it may cloud on standing.
- PeppercornsWhole black peppercorns, not ground. Ground pepper will not strain out cleanly and turns the finished vinegar muddy and gritty.
- The celery leavesThe leafy tops from the heart of a bunch, bruised or crushed to break the cell walls. "A small handful" is imprecise; take it generously rather than sparingly. Celery leaf from the pale inner stalks is the most fragrant.
- VesselUse glass or food-grade plastic with a non-metal lid. Vinegar this strong will corrode bare metal and pick up an off taste from a metal cap over three weeks.
- Steeping and temperatureTwo to three weeks at cool room temperature, out of direct sun. Shake every few days. You can taste it at ten days and strain early if the celery is already forward.
- StrainingStrain through a fine sieve lined with a coffee filter or a doubled square of muslin, then bottle. Any leaf fragments left behind will keep softening and eventually taste stale.
- Yield and keepingMakes about 1 quart. Kept sealed in a cool dark cupboard it holds its flavour for six months to a year; the acidity keeps it safe well beyond that, but the celery aroma fades.
- Using itThe recipe says only that it is excellent in apple or "Winter" salads. Three parts oil to one part vinegar, with a little mustard, is a serviceable modern dressing for apple, celery, cabbage or cold cooked root vegetables. It is also good splashed into a pot of bean or lentil soup.
Flavoured vinegars were a standing item in American and British household books from the eighteenth century onward, alongside tarragon, shallot, garlic, raspberry and horseradish versions, and they did the work that a rack of bottled dressings does now: one jug on the shelf turned oil into a dressing that tasted of something. Celery vinegar in particular was a stand-in for fresh celery out of season, and it lived a second life as a table seasoning for oysters, tomatoes and cold meat. The closing note about "Winter" salads is the real clue to its purpose: in the era before year-round produce, a winter salad drew on what would keep, apple among them, and a herb vinegar was one of the few ways to make that combination taste fresh. The three-week standing time is typical of the genre, and generally reflects cold extraction in an era when a cook could simply set a jug at the back of a cool pantry and forget it.