Comment: The making of herb-flavored vinegar is neither complicated nor, as we see here, at all a new idea. But this receipt is of interest for another hint about life in the 19th century. Note the phrasing for directions on when to pick the herb: “..between midsummer and Michaelmas.” People simply did not think about specific dates that often, in part because printed calendars were rare to nonexistent. Just as time of day was denoted vaguely as before or after sunrise, noon or sunset, and days of the week were noted. But dates of the year were more often described by easily remembered signposts. Midsummer is easily detected, and usually the occasion of large scale celebration in cultures in temperate climates. And the calendar of saints, or at least the notable ones like Nicholas and Michael, was familiar to all in a day when Christian church attendance was nearly universal. As those days are long gone we will simply note that the feast day of St. Michael is September 29.
Fresh tarragon leaves
Vinegar (use the best, which is to say strongest, you can find)
This is a very agreeable addition to soups, salad sauce and to mix mustard. Fill a wide-mouthed bottle with fresh-gathered tarragon-leaves, i.e. between midsummer and Michaelmas (which should be gathered on a dry day, just before it flowers), and pick the leaves off the stalks, and dry them a little before the fire; cover them with the best vinegar; let them steep fourteen days; then strain through a flannel jelly bag till it is fine; then pour it into half-pint bottles; cork them carefully, and keep them in a dry place.
Obs.– You may prepare elder-flowers and herbs in the same manner; elder and tarragon are those in most general use in this country. Our neighbours, the French, prepare vinegars flavoured with celery, cucumbers, capsicums, garlic, eschalot, onion, capers, chervil, cress-seed, burnet, truffles, Seville orange-peel, ginger, &c; in short, they impregnate them with almost every herb, fruit, flower and spice, separately, and in innumerable combinations. Messrs. Maille et Aclocuque, Vinaigriers a Paris, sell sixty-five sorts of variously flavoured vinegar, and twenty-eight different sorts of mustard.
From The Cook’s Oracle and Housekeeper’s Manual, William Kitchiner M. D. New York 1832.
