The last time you grabbed a bottle of white vinegar to utilize in your kitchen , you probably weren't thinking about the long and eventful sequence of human history leading to that very moment. The humble product, which is created through the twofold processes of fermentation plus acetification, is not a new invention by any means. Those with good culinary literacy may have heard of old-timey vinegar pie or of our forefathers pickling all the things.
It's vinegar! It's been around forever, right? While vinegar being old is embedded in cultural awareness — there are several references to it in the Bible — most people are likely unaware of just how very (very) old it actually is. The stuff is not just retro; it's positively ancient. Vinegar is actually one of humanity's oldest foods, with its origins dating back somewhere between 4,000 and 7,000 years ago.
Vinegar has been around for thousands of years Like many fermented ingredients, the first vinegar was probably the result of an accident. It has been posited that someone's wine went bad, and people discovered that the end product was still pretty tasty. Michael Harlan Turkell, author of "Acid Trip: Travels in the World of Vinegar," told The New Yorker , "It's not like we can talk to the Babylonians, but there's no way that vinegar was made with intent.
" Those Babylonians lived around 5000 B.C., and they left writings detailing the use of vinegar.
Two thousand years later, the Egyptians also had access to vinegar, as vest.
