Robin Mather Jenkins
| Times Herald-Record
Without a little sour, one can’t appreciate the sweet.
So says Lawrence J. Diggs, who calls himself “the vinegar man” and is the curator of the International Vinegar Museum in Roslyn, S.D.
“It’s hard to say why we love vinegary tastes,” Diggs says. “The brain uses sourness to make sense of many of the scents we smell. It’s as if the brain needs that contrast as a palette to paint the rest of our tastes on. It’s hard to tell where the evolution comes from; is it just our genetic code?”
Something about vinegar enchants us. Vinegar sales have been rising since 1993, and sales topped $200 million in 2004, the Vinegar Institute in Atlanta reported; it predicts sales of more than $415 million by 2010.
Balsamic vinegar made up nearly half of all sales in North America, according to Mintel Custom Solutions Data, which gathered the data for the Vinegar Institute. But other new flavors and types keep appearing to sit on shelves once stocked with only cider and white varieties.
“Vinegars can be made from anything that has enough sugar or starch in it,” Diggs says. “We can make vinegars out of fruits like raspberries and pineapples, out of root crops like potatoes and beets and onions; we can make it out of animal products such as honey or milk, and out of tree saps like maple syrup. Or grasses, like cane.”
Many cultures have sweet-and-sour dishes that use some form of vinegar to balance other components in the dish’s flavor. Perhaps that’s because vinegar has been with us as long as wine, and maybe longer.
If vinegar’s origins are ancient, so, too, are vinegar’s uses in the kitchen. Some people theorize that our love of tart, sour foods comes from centuries of eating pickled foods — foods pickled to preserve them out of season — and now we eat them just because we like them. But Diggs disputes that as the reason why humans love vinegar’s tang.
“Look at the four reasons why we use vinegar in food processing at home and in industry,” Diggs says. “It’s an excellent food preservative; at (a strength of) 5 percent (acetic acid), it kills all the organisms that cause foodborne illness and decay.” That’s the logic behind the vinegar-based brines in pickling, he says.
“We use it to change the texture of food, to soften meats in a marinade, or to curdle milk to make ricotta cheese. It makes pie crusts flakier. We use it as a flavor carrier; if we put some tarragon in it, the vinegar will carry the flavor better than milk, water or oil,” Diggs says.
But its premier use, he says, is to provide the base for the brain to process flavor.
The taste for sour foods “does seem to be universal. I don’t know anywhere where the taste of sour isn’t incorporated. The ‘su’ in ‘sushi’ means ‘vinegared.’ (Vinegar) allows the Japanese to bring out flavors in otherwise bland food.”
“Think outside the box about how you can use it,” Diggs says. “We use it in cakes and pies and toppings for ice cream. Use it in homemade mayonnaise — make a little batch of mayonnaise each time and use a different vinegar for a different flavor. Add a little when you’re making bread; the yeast like the acidity, so the bread will rise more.”
And, Diggs says, the next time a dish just tastes flat or blah, add a little vinegar. It can make all the difference:
“It helps amplify all the other flavors, so you can ‘get’ them.”
The word “vinegar” derives from the French “vin aigre,” or “sour wine.”
“It’s what wine wants to be,” says the self-proclaimed “vinegar man” Lawrence J. Diggs.
Wine sours because oxygen oxidizes it, creating a friendly environment for the ubiquitous bacteria called Acetobacter. As the bacteria consume the alcohol, they convert it to acetic acid. Although there’s some argument about it, Diggs said, most vinegar specialists believe that a sugary juice of some kind must first ferment into alcohol before becoming vinegar.
Dining and Cooking