Vinegar you'll never know when your character might need some

Vinegar is one of the most common and yet a very important ingredient for folks during the 19th Century. Below are some recipes from Mackenzie's Five Thousand Receipts in A. the Useful and Domestic Arts ©1846 Many recipes call for using different types of vinegar but rarely do you find recipes to make it. You'll see many recipes listed below. Perhaps one of your characters might be making some vinegar and perhaps they might have a mishap with vinegar. Enjoy and use your imagination.

To make vinegar.
Vinegar is used principally as a sauce and to preserve vegetable substances; but it is employed externally when an over dose of strong wine, spirit opium, or other narcotic poison has been taken. A false strength is given to it by adding oil of vitriol, or some acrid vegetable, aspellitory of Spain, capsicum, &c. Tt is rendered colourless by adding fresh burned bone black, 6 ounces to a gallon, and letting it stand for two or three days to clear. Mix cider and honey, in the proportion of 1 lb. of honey to a gallon of cider, and let it stand in a vessel for some months, and vinegar will be produced so powerful, that water must be mixed with it for common use.
Another method.—Scheele, a celebrated chemist, has recommended the following recipe: Take 6 spoonsful of good alcohol; to this add 3 pints of milk, and put the mixture into vessels to be corked close. Vent must be given from time to time to the gas of fermentation. In the course of a month, this will produce very good vinegar.
Another.—Put into a barrel of sufficient dimensions a mixture composed of 41 wine pints of water, about 8 pints of whiskey, {Veau de vin de grain) about 2 wine pints of yeast, and 2 pounds of charcoal, and place it in a proper situation for fermentation. At the end of 4 months a very good vinegar will be formed, as clear and as wnite as water.
Common vinegar. This is made from weak mait liquor, brewed for 'the purpose: its various strength is, in England, denoted by numbers, from 18 to 24. Another.—To every gallon of water put 1 lb. of j coarse Lisbon sugar; let the mixture be bo!led and ! skimmed as long as any scum arises. Then let it be poured into proper vessels: and when it is as cool as beer, when worked, let a toast, rubbed over vith yeast, be put to it. Let it work about 24 hours, and then put it into an iron-hooped cask, fixed either n ar a constant fire, or where the summer sun shines the greater part of the day; in this situation it should not be closely stopped up; but a tile, or something similar, should be laid on the Dung hole, to keep out the dust and insects. At the end of about 3 months (sometimes less) it will be clear and fit for use, and may be bottled off. The longer it is kept, after it is bottled, the better it will be. If the vessel containing the liquor isto be exposed to the sun's heat, the best time to begin making it is in the month of April.
Wine vinegar. Take any sort of wine that has gone through fermentation, and put it into a cask that has had vinegar in it; then take some of the fruit or stalks of which the wine has been made, and put them wet into an open-headed cask in the sun, with a coaise cloth over the top of it, for six days—after which, put them in the vinegar, and stir it well about— then put it in a warm place, if in winter, or if in summer, put it in a yard in the sun, with a slate over the bung. When the vinegar is sour enough and fine, rack it off into a clean sour cask, and bung it up; then put it in the cellar for use. Those wines that contain the most mucilage are fittest for the purpose.
The lees of pricked wine are also a very proper ingredient in vinegar.
Sugar vinegar. To each gallon of water add 2 lbs. of brown sugar, and a little yeast; leave it exposed to the sun for six months, in a vessel slightly stopped. Gooseberry vinegar. Bruise the gooseberries, when ripe, and to every quart put three quarts of water; stir them well together, and let the whole stand for 24 hours, then strain it through a canvass hag. To every gallon of liquor add 1 lb. of brown sugar, and stir them well together before they are put into the cask. Proceed in all other respects as before. This vinegar possesses a pleasant tante and smell; but raspberry vinegar, which may be made on the same plan, is far superior in these respects. The raspberries are not required to be of the best sort, still they should be ripe and well flavoured.
Currant vinegar. This is made in the same way as that from gooseberries, only pick off the currant i from the stalks. Primrose vinegar. To 15 quarts of water put 0 lbs. of brown sugar; let it boil ten minutes, and take off the scum; pour on it half a peck of primroses; before it is quite cold, put in a little fresh yeast, and let it work in a warm place all night; put it in a barrel in the kitchen, and when done working, close the barrel, still keeping it in a warm place.
Raisin vinegar. After making raisin wine, lay the pressed raisins in a heap to heat, then to each cwt. put 10 gallons of water, and a little yeast Cider vinegar. The poorest sort of cider will serve for vinegar, in managing which proceed thus.—First draw off the cider into a cask that has had vinegar in ;.t before; then put some of the apples that have been pressed into it, set the whole in the sun, and in a week or 9 days it may be drawn off into another cask.—This is a good table vinegar.
Vinegar from the refuse offruits. Take the skins of raisins after they have been used in making wine, and pour three times their own quantity of boiling water on them; stir them veil about and then set the cask in a warm place,
[ close covered, and the liquor, in a week, when I drawn off from its sediment, put into another cask and well bunged down, will be a good vinegar for the table.
Vinegar from the refuse of bee-hives. When honey is extracted from the combs, by means of pressure, take the whole mass, break and separate it, and into each tub or vessel put one part ol-combs, and two of water; place them in the sun, ! or in a warm place, and cover them with cloths. Fermentatiou takes place in a few days, and continues from 8 to 12 days, according to the higher or lower temperature of the situation in which the operation is carried on. During the fermentation, stir the matter from time to time and press it down with the hands, that it may be perfectly soaked. When the fermentation is over, put the matter to drain upon sieves or strainers. At the bottom of the vessels will be found a yellow liquor, which must be thrown away, because it would soon contract a disagreeable smell, which it would communicate to the vinegar. Then wash the tubs, put into them the water separated from the other matter; it immediately begins to turn sour; when the tubs must be again covered w;th cloths, and kept moderately warm. A pellicle or skin is formed on their surface, beneath which the vinegar acquires strength; in a month's time it begins to be sharp, it must be left standing a little longer, and then put into a cask, of which the bung-hole is left open. It may then be used like any other vinegar. To strengthen vingar. Suffer it to be repeatedly frozen, and separate the upper cake of ice, or water from it.
All vinegars owe their principal strength to the acetic acid they contain; but the vinegar of wine contains also a tartar, a small portion of the malic i acid, alcohol, and colouring matter: that of cider I contains merely the malic acid, little or no alcohol, and a yellowish colouring matter. Vinegars from orange and elder fiotaers, clove, gillifloxvers, mush roses, &c. Dry an ounce of either of the above flowers, (except the orange flowers, which will not bear urying), for two days in the sun; then put them into a bottle, pour on them a pint of vinegar, closely stop the bottle, and infuse 15 days in moderate heat ol the sun. Vinegars of any other flowers, as tarragon, etc. may be made in a similar manner. To prepare ice vinegar. Saturate 3 or 4 pounds of purified potash with wine or beer vinegar, which has been distilled over charcoal powder; evaporate the saturated liquor to the consistence of a d. y powder, of which put 3 lbs. accurately weighed, when still warm, into a glass, previously heated, and shut it with a glass stopper. Then pour 3 lbs. of sulphuric acid into a retort, provided on its upper part with a pipe, and join to it a receiver, large enough for containing about 20 pints of water. Begin to add to the sulphuric acid the above salt in small portions: shaking and stirring it frequently. After having mixed all the salt, add by degrees 1 lb. more of sulphuric acid, and shut the pipe with a wet bladder: suffer the whole to stand quietly one night. The next morning place the retort into the sand-pot of a furnace so deeply, that the sand between the bottom of the pot and the retort be oiAy about half an inch thick; put the receiver into a refrigeratory filled with very cold water, after which apply a gentle fire. About an hour after, the distillation commences by white fumes appearing in the vessels, at which time the fire must be very carefully managed. The drops that go over may succeed one another quickly, without any danger of the vessels being cracked: but be very careful that no coherent streams run over, and likewise take care that the thick ana
white fames only lodge in the lowest part of the receiver; and when they begin to rise, particularly with a whirling motion, take the tire immediately out of the furnace. It is, besides, necessary to refrigerate often the upper part of the receiver with cold water, or, which is still better, with snow or ice. The ending of the distillation is known by the disappearance of the white fumes, by the drops running over much slower, and particularly by the liquefaction of the residuum to a black frothing fluid, that goes easily over into the receiver. At the moment of the liquefying and frothing of that substance, the receiver ought to be taken off, and another put on, into which 5 or 6 dr. of a much weaker and disagreeably smelling acetous icid will go over; that, however, may be used for purifying the ice vinegar from the adherent sulphurous acid; when, after having diluted with water, it is saturated with barytes, filtrated, and evaporated to dryness. The residuum is ground to a fire powder, and, together with charcoal powder, added to the ice vinegar; after which the mixture ought to be rectified over a gentle fire, to the dryness of the residuum. Of 3 lbs. of acetate of kali, 22 oz. of ice-vinegar were obtained by this method. To make guass.
Mix rye flour and warm water together, and leave it till it has turned sour. Th-s vinegar is much drank in Russia; it loooks thick and unpleasant at first, but becomes agreeable by use. Distilled vinegar. This is obtained from vinegar by distillation, rejecting the 4th or 8th part that comes over first, -find avoiding its acquiring a burnt flavour.
Distilled vinegar is weaker than the common, but is used sometimes in pickles, where its want of colour is an advantage.
Improved distilled vinegar. Obtained from wood distilled in large iron cylinders for the manufacture of charcoal for gunpowder; when rectified it is used for all the purposes of distilled vinegar. To deprive vinegar and otlier vegetable liquids of their colour.
To take away the colour of vinegar, a litre of red wine vinegar, cold, is mixed with 45 grammes of bone-charcoal, in a glass vessel. Shake this mixture from time to time, and in two or three days the colour completely disappears. When the process is to be performed in the large way, throw the charcoal into a cask of vinegar, which must be stirred from time to time. The highest coloured red wines treated in the same manner become perfectly limpid. Ivory black possesses the same property as bone black.