Balsamic vinegar

Vinaigre balsamique

What it is

In Modena’s attics, cooked grape must sleeps through decades in a diminishing row of barrels — oak, chestnut, cherry — each lending its wood to the dream. Families started a battery of barrels at a daughter’s birth: her dowry, aged twenty-five years.

In the kitchen

The real thing is syrup-thick and needs no reduction; supermarket balsamic improves simmered down by half. A few drops on strawberries or parmesan — never a flood.

Goes with

Strawberry Tomato Parmesan Fig Onion Beetroot

Also used with

Sodium alginate Asiago d'allevo Black garlic Brussels sprout Castelfranco chicory Cipollini onion

Something wrong here, or missing? Tell us