It was once used in many contexts where modern cooks would use either wine or some variety of vinegar, but has become much less widely used as wines and variously flavoured vinegars became more accessible. Nonetheless, it is still used in a number of French dishes as well as recipes from other European and Middle Eastern cuisines, and can be purchased at some gourmet grocery stores. The South Australian cook Maggie Beer has popularised the use of verjuice in her cooking, and it is being used increasingly in South Australian restaurants.

Modern cooks most often use verjuice in salad dressings as the acidic ingredient, when wine is going to be served with the salad. This is because verjuice provides a comparable sour taste component, yet without "competing with" (altering the taste of) the wine the way vinegar or lemon juice would.

Verjus, called husroum (حصروم) in Arabic, is used extensively in Syrian cuisine. In Syria, much of the production of husroum is still done over the course of several days by female members of land-owning clans -- even if many of them live in cities. The husroum produced during this time will be distributed to various households within the extended family and used throughout the year. The same is true for the production of olive oil and tomato paste.

Verjus, called ab-ghooreh in Persian, is used extensively in Northern Iranian and Azerbaijani cuisine.

Other uses of the word verjus

In the regional French of Ardèche, a cider fermented from crab apple juice is called verjus. In medieval and early modern English cookery texts "verjuice" sometimes means apple juice or crab-apple juice.

References

External links

Category:French cuisine Category:Medieval cuisine Category:Condiments

Maggie Beer is a South Australian cook, food author, restaurateur and food manufacturer.

Career

Later, she became a partner in the Charlick's Feed Store restaurant in Ebenezer Place, Adelaide.

Currently, Maggie operates a business in the Barossa which produces a range of specialty gourmet foods, including Pheasant Farm Pate, quince paste, verjuice and a range of ice creams. She also co-hosted the ABC television cooking program The Cook and the Chef with Simon Bryant, who is the Head Chef for the Hilton, Adelaide, South Australia.

Maggie also has written several books about food and food preparation, as well as co-authoring a book with noted chef Stephanie Alexander.

In 2008, Maggie Beer won the Australian Publishers Association's llustrated Book of the Year for Maggie's Harvest.

She was awarded the "Senior Australian of the Year" 2010.

Works

See also

References