[Sca-cooks] What other sour seasonings are covered by German"essig"?

[Volker Bach]

The Niederdeutsches Kochbuch (aka Wolfenbüttel MS) describes cakes made of dried, crushed crabapple or sloe as "dry vinegar". Crabapples also feature in other sources and it is not clear to me whether they are talking of juice that is fermented and acidified, or whether they just use the sour juice or crushed apples. That would be something like verjuice, but I'm just sopeculating here as yet.

There are also recipes for using powdered grape pips infused with vinegar to make an 'instant' version. I haven't tried it, but I doubt any flavour derived will owe much to the vinegar. 





TerryDecker <t.d.decker at att.net> schrieb am 21:35 Donnerstag, 20.Februar 2014:
 
"Essig" specifically and modernly is a reference to acetic acid, vinegar, 
and acetates.  It might be stretched to verjuice dialectically, but the 
general term for verjuice is "der Sa:uer" and may also appear as 
"Sa:uerwasser," "Sa:uerbrennen," or "Sa:uerwein."  All liquid unripened 
fruit souring agents can be described as "unreiben Obstsaft" and can be made 
specific by adding the type of fruit to the phrase (unreiben Apfelsaft, for 
example).

Lemons and oranges were probably available to the wealth in Germany by the 
16th Century as there is at least one Fugger recipe that has lemon as a 
major ingredient.

Sour cream is "der Sauerrahm."

In some of the dialects, "Sauer" can refer to vinegar or yeast.

Bear


-----Original Message----- 

Giano replied to my question about vinegar vs. verjuice with:
<<< As to interpreting German recipes, it is important to keep in mind essig 
does not always mean vinegar at all, though. Any sour seasoning could be 
given that name. I assume in most cases it means vinegar, but I can't be 
sure, and there are cases where it clearly doesn't. >>>

So what other items besides vinegar and possibly verjuice might be meant by 
"essig"?

Probably not lemon or orange juice, since until very late they probably 
weren't that available in Germany.

Sour cream?

This is a good example of my comment on the problem of using translations to 
try to count the uses of vinegar vs. verjuice. :-). Sigh.

Thanks,
   Stefan

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