[Sca-cooks] making vinegar

[Stefan li Rous]

Cadoc commented:
> On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 09:19:32 -0500, Sandra Kisner <sjk3 at cornell.edu>
> wrote:
> > To turn wine to vinegar or ale to alegar or cider to eisell
> > Take a pot and fill it full of wine, eisell or good ale and stop the 
> mouth
> > well so that nothing may get in or out and put in a vessel full of 
> water
> > and set the vessel on the fire and let the pot of wine boil in the 
> same way
> > a long while until it is turned.
>
> That sounds like an explosion and a trip to the burn ward.
If the vessel is so tightly sealed that the whatever is stopping the 
mouth doesn't blow out.

  However, for this I think I'd want to see the original rather than the 
translation. I'm wondering if the translation is wrong for "boil" and 
that it wasn't originally something more like warm or possibly simmer. 
Besides the danger, I don't think boiling would do any good. It also 
doesn't say how long to do this other than a "long while". Perhaps what 
is really being called for is to keep the wine warm for a long time. 
Cold and even cool air is a preservative. That is the reason wine is 
usually stored in cellars. Perhaps all that is meant here is to raise 
the temperature to a point where the vinegar making beasties (they are 
different from the yeasts that make wine?) can live and continue their 
work. Perhaps 75 or 85 degrees? This also assumes that the wine already 
has had some contamination which was being kept in check by keeping the 
wine cool. Otherwise the filling the pot to the top and stoppering it 
doesn't make much sense.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
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