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Garlic Vinegar
Peel and chop three-quarters of an ounce of garlic, pound three cloves and grate half a nutmeg; put them all into a bottle, pour over a pint of vinegar, cork the bottle, shake it every day for a week, strain and put into small bottles, and cork securely.
A simple cold infusion that needs almost no equipment, though a few of Oscar's terms and quantities need translating.
- Three-quarters of an ounce of garlicThat is roughly 20 g, or about five to six average supermarket cloves. Weigh it if you can; garlic is the whole point of the vinegar and eyeballing it swings the result hard.
- "Three cloves" means the spiceWhole dried cloves, not garlic cloves; the garlic has already been measured by weight. The recipe uses both senses of the word in one sentence. Pound them in a mortar so the oils are released.
- The vinegarA pint is 16 fl oz (475 ml). Use a plain cider or white wine vinegar of at least 5 percent acidity; the acid is what keeps the infusion stable and preserves the garlic. Distilled white works but is harsher.
- NutmegHalf a whole nutmeg grated is about a teaspoon and a half of fresh gratings. Pre-ground nutmeg from a jar has usually lost most of its volatiles and will read as dusty rather than warm.
- The daily shakeNot decorative. Chopped garlic settles and packs at the bottom of the bottle, and agitation is what keeps the whole mass in contact with the vinegar. Keep it at room temperature and out of direct light for the week.
- Strain properlyPour through a fine sieve lined with a coffee filter or muslin. Any garlic solids left in the finished bottles will keep softening and eventually cloud the vinegar and turn the flavour muddy.
- Yield and keepingSomething close to the original pint, less whatever the solids absorb. Strained and sealed, it holds for months in a cool cupboard. Garlic left submerged in vinegar is safe because of the acidity; the same garlic left in oil is not.
- How to use itA teaspoon or two in a vinaigrette, or a splash into a pan sauce at the end. It is a seasoning, not a salad dressing on its own.
Flavoured vinegars were standard equipment in a nineteenth-century kitchen long before they became a specialty-shop item: tarragon, shallot, chilli, celery and garlic vinegars all appear routinely in American and English household books of the period, kept in small corked bottles on the store shelf and drawn on for sauces, salads and cold meats. They solved a practical problem — a hotel or a household could carry the flavour of an aromatic through the winter in a stable, shelf-safe form. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, published his Cook Book in 1896, and its long back sections of pickles, catsups, essences and vinegars reflect a kitchen that still made most of its own condiments rather than buying them. The daily shaking and the week's wait are the giveaway that this belongs to a period when the pantry was worked on a schedule, not restocked from a delivery.