Deleted member 14854
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What is vinegar?
As with all philosophical exposition, let me begin with an uncontroversial fact: vinegar is god's great ingredient to humankind
it occupies an almost metaphysical position within the world of food. for one, it is the final stage of evolution along the trajectory from, generally, juice to wine to vinegar (yeast/sugar to alcohol to acetic acid) -- if a liquid will ferment, it will become a vinegar (though time scales, of course, vary -- a notable example: sherry vinegar takes almost 20 years to develop from its infant stages, and probably none of us has enjoyed a true sherry vinegar). this allows for a virtually infinite array of flavor and other possibilities within which to create and experience vinegar
it is also one of the most general forms of seasoning. consider seasoning (even if that is ultimately not the right word) as distinct from spices or flavorings, where the role of seasoning is to enhance the latent flavor of the food to which it is applied, rather than simply to add to it. because of bio-organic realities with which we're all sufficiently familiar, salt manages to be another of the most general forms of seasoning (it absorbs water and thus concentrates the flavor of what's left) -- but the flavor profiles of salts do not vary especially widely (not a knock against salt, just a fact about its chemical nature!) -- whereas vinegar (which dissolves molecular structures within most foods, releasing water and thus concentrating the flavor of what's left), thanks to its livingness and ability to be created from almost anything, enjoys the flavor and other possibilities mentioned earlier
(side note: thinking about seasonings as i conceptualized it, they are the primary vehicles of food preservation -- just consider the generality of curing and pickling)
"but gray, all you've done is said a bunch of cool and unique shit about vinegar, not explained why it is a thing" -- but if i have managed to bring you to a point where you think what i've said was in fact cool and unique shit about vinegar, i have indeed explained why it is a thing. my guess is that by "pickles" you meant cucumber pickles, and probably dill pickles at that, which, along with some mostly mediocre condiments, are fairly boring. distilled and pasteurized vinegars, while they have their place in the scheme of things, are unexciting, but are unfortunately what most people's conscious experience of vinegar consist in. (also, malt vinegar as most people know it is watered down, artificially colored ugliness -- true malt vinegar will taste like a vinegary, not simply sour, beer -- angelic!) take a walk on the wild side, my friend, and welcome the world of vinegar, pickling, and the acidic dimension of taste into your own
