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Extract of Garlic
Peel one teacupful of cloves of garlic, put them in a bottle, pour in half a pint of spirits of wine, and cork tightly. Shake the bottle occasionally for eight or ten days and the extract will then be fit for use. A very small quantity of the extract will be found sufficient for flavoring.
A flavoring tincture rather than a dish, and one whose single ingredient needs care in translation: "spirits of wine" means drinkable rectified alcohol, nothing else.
- Spirits of wineThis is rectified ethanol, roughly 95 percent, sold in the period for food, medicinal and perfumery use. The modern equivalent is a neutral grain spirit such as 190-proof Everclear where it is legal, or the highest-proof unflavored vodka available.
- What not to useDo not read "spirits of wine" as methylated or denatured spirit, surgical spirit, rubbing alcohol or isopropanol. All are poisonous, and the denaturants in modern methylated spirits are there specifically to make them undrinkable.
- MeasuresHalf a pint is one US cup, 8 fl oz. A teacupful is conventionally reckoned at about 6 fl oz, less than a modern measuring cup; the number of heads needed to fill it will vary with their size.
- Prep the clovesPeeled whole cloves give up their flavor slowly. Halving or lightly crushing them speeds extraction considerably and gives a stronger tincture in the same eight to ten days.
- Strain itThe recipe never says to remove the garlic. Strain the solids out at the end of the steeping period; left in, the extract may darken further and take on a harsher, more sulfurous character.
- Not garlic in oilThe botulism risk that attends garlic stored in oil does not apply here. High-proof alcohol will not support Clostridium botulinum.
- DosageThe warning about a very small quantity is not decorative. Work in drops from a dropper, tasting as you go, particularly in dressings and cold sauces where nothing will cook off.
- Storage and yieldStraining leaves slightly under a cup of extract. Keep it corked in a dark cupboard; a high-proof tincture keeps well, though the top note fades first.
Oscar Tschirky was maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf, not a chef by title, and his 1896 book appeared at a moment when garlic was still regarded with suspicion in polite Anglo-American cooking. Refined diners were understood to dislike it, or to say they did, so kitchens reached for indirect methods: a crust of bread rubbed with a clove and tossed through a salad, garlic vinegar, and tinctures like this one, which let a cook lay in a trace of the flavor without a visible fragment ever reaching the plate. Alcoholic extracts of aromatics were standard pharmacy practice of the period, and the same logic is plainly at work in a preparation like this one.