Very Fine Raspberry Vinegar

Instructions

1. Fill glass jars or large wide-necked bottles with very ripe but perfectly sound freshly gathered raspberries, freed from their stalks (6 lbs.).
2. Cover them with pale white wine vinegar (9 pints). They may be left to infuse from a week to ten days (7 to 10 days) without injury, or the vinegar may be poured from them in four or five days when more convenient.
3. After the vinegar is drained off, turn the fruit into a sieve placed over a deep dish or bowl, as the juice will flow slowly from it for many hours.
4. Put fresh raspberries (6 lbs.) into the bottles and pour the vinegar back upon them. Leave 3 to 5 days.
5. Two or three days later change the fruit again (6 lbs. more), and when it has stood the same space of time (3 to 5 days), drain the whole of the vinegar closely from it.
6. Pass it through a jelly-bag or thick linen cloth.
7. Boil it gently for four or five minutes with its weight of good sugar roughly powdered - or a pound and a quarter to the exact pint - and be very careful to remove the scum entirely as it rises.
8. On the following day bottle the syrup, following the directions given for the strawberry vinegar.
9. When the fruit is scarce it may be changed twice only, and left a few days longer in the vinegar.
10. Obs.: where the process of sugar-boiling is well understood, Acton says it is an improvement to boil the sugar to CANDY HEIGHT before the liquid is mixed with it; all the scum may then be removed with a couple of minutes' simmering, and the flavour of the fruit will be more perfectly preserved. For fuller directions she refers the reader to her chapter of confectionary.