Mint Vinegar

A cold herb infusion that needs no cooking and almost no equipment. The only real variables are the strength of the vinegar and how long you leave it.

• Use vinegar of known strength"good vinegar" in a 19th-century household usually meant cider or white wine vinegar, though home-made vinegar varied a good deal in strength. Modern bottled vinegar is standardised at about 5 percent acidity; stay at 5 percent or above, since the acidity is what keeps the packed leaves from spoiling.
• QuantityA wide-mouthed pint bottle or jar loosely filled with leaves takes somewhat less than 2 cups of vinegar, and yields less again once the herbs are strained out and squeezed.
• Keep the leaves submergedMint floats. Any leaf sitting above the vinegar line will discolour and can go slimy, so weight the herbs down or top up the jar. Use a glass or plastic lid, not bare metal, which corrodes.
• Two or three weeks is generousMint gives up its flavour quickly. Taste at one week; ten days or so is usually enough, and longer steeping mostly darkens the colour and dulls the fresh top notes.
• Bruise, do not chopCrushing the leaves lightly in the hand before packing releases the volatile oils. Finely chopping them makes the vinegar cloudy and harder to strain clean.
• Strain properlyPour through a fine sieve lined with muslin or a coffee filter before bottling. Stray leaf fragments left in the finished bottle continue to break down and cloud it.
• Celery seed variantThe recipe says to use the seed "in the same way," but seeds are far more concentrated than leaves; a couple of tablespoons to a pint of vinegar will likely be closer than filling the bottle.
• KeepingCorked and kept in a cool dark cupboard it will hold flavour for six months to a year. Refrigeration slows the colour loss.
• "Bread-dressings"This means bread stuffing for roast meat. A tablespoon or two stirred into the crumbs and onion takes the place of fresh chopped mint.