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Raspberry Vinegar Syrup
Pour a quart of cider vinegar over one pint of raspberries and let stand for several days. Strain through a jelly bag, add two quarts of sugar and bring to the boiling point. Skim, and again strain. Cool, and bottle.
This is a raspberry shrub — a sweetened drinking vinegar meant to be diluted, not sipped straight. The proportions are sound; only the vessels and the vagueness of "several days" need translating.
- Two quarts of sugarSugar is measured by volume here, as was usual in American cookbooks of the period: two quarts is about 8 cups, or roughly 3 lb 8 oz / 1.6 kg. That is a heavy syrup by design, and the sugar is what makes the finished bottle keep.
- Fruit-to-vinegar ratioOne pint of raspberries is about 12 oz / 340 g. Cider vinegar at the standard 5% acidity is what you want; leave aged or unfiltered artisan vinegars for other uses, since their own flavour will fight the fruit.
- "Several days"Three to five days is the useful range. Cover the jar, keep it out of the light, and refrigerate it rather than leaving it on the counter — the acid protects the mixture, but cold keeps the raspberry flavour fresh instead of stewed.
- Jelly bagA jelly bag is a cone of closely woven cloth on a stand. Two layers of damp cheesecloth in a sieve, or a coffee filter for the second straining, does the same work. Let it drip; squeezing pushes pulp through and clouds the syrup.
- Bring to the boiling pointReach a full boil to dissolve the sugar completely, then stop. A long boil drives off the volatile raspberry aroma and begins to cook the vinegar's sharpness into something flat.
- Non-reactive pans onlyVinegar at this concentration will pick up metallic flavours from aluminium, unlined copper or chipped enamel. Use stainless steel or a well-glazed pot for both the steeping and the boiling.
- Bottling and keepingFill clean bottles while the syrup is still warm and cap them once cool. High sugar plus 5% acid makes this stable, but this is not a canning procedure — store it in the refrigerator and use it within a few months.
- Yield and servingExpect roughly 2 quarts of syrup. A dilution of about 1 to 2 tablespoons in a tall glass of cold or soda water, over ice, is the usual way to take it; it also works as a glaze for pork or a splash in a vinaigrette.
Drinking vinegars of this kind were called shrubs, a name generally traced to the Arabic sharāb, a noun meaning "drink," from the root shariba, to drink — a root it shares with sherbet and syrup, though those words reached English by different paths. Fruit steeped in vinegar and sweetened was a standard summer refresher in Anglo-American households long before commercial soft drinks, valued because it kept without ice and because the acid made plain water palatable. If the collection is a temperance one, its appearance here would be no accident: books of that kind were assembled to prove that a hostess could set a full table of interesting drinks with nothing fermented in them, and raspberry vinegar — tart, coloured like wine, served in a stemmed glass — did that job better than most. Raspberry vinegar also had a long parallel life as a household remedy for sore throats and fevers, which is part of why the recipe survived in print well into the twentieth century.