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Another Way to Make Gooseberry Vinegar

A homemade vinegar made by fermenting ripe gooseberries with water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Another Way to Make Gooseberry Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the ripe gooseberries thoroughly.

  2. Mix the mashed gooseberries with 3 gallons of cold boiled water and let it stand for 24 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture through a cloth.

Sweeten and age

  1. Add 1 pound of brown sugar to each gallon of the strained liquid and mix well until dissolved.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a cask and let it stand for 9 to 10 months before bottling.

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
Provide the fruit flavour and acidity that give the vinegar its character.
Brown sugar
Supplies sugar that yeast and bacteria ferment, and adds a molasses-like sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for 9 to 10 months in the cask. Fermentation converts the sugar into alcohol and then acetic acid over a long period. Rushing or bottling early leaves the liquid sweet, cloudy, or unstable rather than sharp and vinegary.

“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.

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