Don't forget to put vinegar on your chips!

Yes. Vinegar from alcohol cannot really contain any other acid, it's the most usual decomposition product of ethanol by oxidation.

Acetic acid is the old name for ethanoic acid. Unless it's all changed again...

Likewise. It's not the "bite" of the acid, it's the sweaty-feet taste/smell that accompanies it. I'm not sure whether that taste is confined to malt vinegar or is common to all vinegars including wine and rice.

Is "vinegar" always acetic/ethanoic acid, or do some vinegars contain acids of other alkanes such as methanoic, butanoic (*), propanoic acid?

I see that a lot of "vinegar" available in fish and chip shops is "non brewed condiment" made from synthetically produced acetic acid and caramel.

(*) Actually, no, you *definitely* want to avoid butyric/butanoic acid. It's a major constituent of vomit. I remember working in a chemistry lab in my year off before going to university. Someone was working with butyric acid, in a fume cupboard because of its obnoxious smell. The big boss happened to be showing a visitor round at the time, and my colleague accidentally spilled a few drops on his lab coat, without realising it, and then withdrew his arms. The whole lab stank of puke. The big boss rather hesitantly asked "Is everybody... all right. Has someone been... ill?" The smell remained for the next few weeks - the Wikipedia article says that humans can detect it at 10 parts per million and dogs, poor buggers, can smell it at 10 parts per *billion*. Apparently it is present in Hershey bars, but not in non-US chocolate which doesn't use Hershey's secret process.

Hopefully IUPAC names will not change again. I can see why acetic acid became ethanoic acid, to make the connection with ethane, ethanol and other two-carbon compounds, but the old names live on - formic acid (secreted by ants) and formaldehyde are much better known names than methanoic acid and methanal (with an all-important -al ending).

How/why does that work?

Tim

Yeast. It's everywhere.

He gets it off the spaghetto bush.

-- “It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since ... it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought.”

Sir Roger Scruton

Completely wrong. It's a tree, not a bush.

Apparently the "spaghetto" will generate the so called "mother" of the vinegar. I don't know why but it works. Good quality wine vinegar is quite pricey in UK, but you can get one of these rubbish wines from Home Bargains (£1.99 a bottle) and make good vinegar from that.

Le 29/07/2024 à 21:03, Joe a écrit :

Pity the spaghetti trees are all in Switzerland.

Le 30/07/2024 à 11:04, Ottavio Caruso a écrit :

If I remember correctly, one could also put a bit of vinegar into a bottle of red or white wine, leave the bottle open for a few days and the wine would magically rot into vinegar. I haven't tried but I will.

Don't ever buy the so called "Balsamico". It's just vinegar with tons of sugar. Balsamico is for American tourists. Italians rarely use balsamico.

Amazing export market they have there.

Surprised it happens in days, rather than months ...

Ah... Sarson's.

Wigan-made.

And definitely the best for fish and chips.

Seconded (and what is "Spaghetto"?).

And why bother anyway?

Even the cheapest red available in the UK is now about £4.75 for 70cl.

You can get red wine vinegar in Morrison's (own brand) for about £2.80 for 70cl (35cl x 2).

And Morrison's white wine vinegar, by the way, at about the same price, is the long-sought (by me at least) magic bullet for the true DIY seaside taste for cockles, mussels and whelks. An hour's steeping is necessary.

I thought it was a tree?

Toscana trattoria of my treasured acquaintance set out balsamico on the tables with pride. As well as ice-cold aqua frizzante, olives and oil antipasto and crispy Genoese focaccia.

No need to ask for them.

A single strand of pasta; more than one of them is described collectively in the plural as spaghetti. Like ox/oxen, die/dice, etc except that in this case the words follow the Italian rules for forming plurals.

Well of course, they know you are a rosbif and they give you what you ask. You'd rarely see an Italian ordering balsamico at a restaurant table in Italy. It's too sweet. It's for Anglos who love to bathe in sugar.

OK, that's logical.

I suppose it's the yeast in the pasta which causes the extra fermentation in the wine?

I'll stick to Morrison's red or white wine vinegar at £1.40 for 35cl!