[Sca-cooks] Query about verjus...urgent!!

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Dec 29, 2010, at 3:08 AM, <stefanlirous at austin.rr.com> wrote:

> Ian of Oertha replied to my inquiry with:
> =======
> uh.....brown verjuice?
> 
> Just kidding.
> 
> maybe fuzzy, rancid verjuice.  I do note that modern producers of verjuice
> do put "refrigerate after opening" on the bottle....
> =======
> 
> You say, just kidding, but maybe.
> 
> But how would adding some bread keep this from happening?  Some of the earlier commentary on verjuice here was suggesting that the verjuice would keep for most of a year.  But yes, now I'm wondering just how long it would last. I would think it wouldn't take much in the way of natural sugars or carbs to make it spoil and adding bread to it sure doesn't seem as likely to inhibit spoilage as to accelerate it.
> 
> Stefan

Okay, with the caveat that I have never done this, and am looking at this as purely a mental exercise, let's play with this a little...

I wonder if perhaps this is a situation of translator's inexactitude, but if you think of verjuice as a bunch of stuff suspended in water (acids, sugars, bits of plant matter, etc.), it might conceivably do what ale does, and undergo a fermentation process that causes its relative density to change (alcohol and various other things having less density than sugar and water, mass being lost to escaping gases, etc.,), and therefore some Stuff to sort of drop to the bottom. 

It may be that if this happens to verjuice, the flavor and color are considered to be adversely affected. Again, not sure, but it seems like a possibility. With ales this is generally regarded as a good thing, but not necessarily with verjuice.

In order to prevent this, it strikes me as conceivable that one thing you could do is thicken it, which would serve as a stabilizer to some extent (think of the gum emulsifiers in some bottled salad dressings, ice creams, etc.)

Well, what does a medieval French kitchen thicken liquids most often with? Bread, a lot of the time? 

As for crusts, I'm not sure if the white crumb is more prized for other thickening jobs, or if it's the result of trimming crusts off of loaves, leaving some of those crusts for kitchen use.

Adamantius






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