Name: Gooseberry Vinegar
Ingredients: 3 quarts spring water; 1 quart bruised gooseberries; 1 pound coarse sugar; yeast

Gooseberry Vinegar

Ingredients

3 quarts spring water
1 quart bruised gooseberries
1 pound coarse sugar
yeast

Directions

Prepare the mixture

Boil the spring water and let it cool.
In a large tub, combine the cooled water with the bruised gooseberries.
Let the mixture sit for 60 hours, stirring often.
Strain the mixture through a fine cloth.

Ferment

For each gallon of liquid, add 1 pound of coarse sugar.
Transfer the mixture into a barrel and add yeast.
Cover the bung-hole with a piece of slate.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries: Supply the fruit flavour and acidity that give the vinegar its character.
Coarse sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation, providing the sugar that becomes alcohol.
Yeast: Converts the sugars in the liquid into alcohol, starting the fermentation.
Spring water: Makes up the bulk of the liquid and carries the fruit and sugar through fermentation.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.