As a child, one of the first nursery rhymes I learned by heart was Jack and Jill. I think I liked saying the line ‘and Jill came tumbling after’ best, and I quickly became fascinated by the idea that Jack ‘went to bed to mend his head with vinegar and brown paper.’ In our house, vinegar went on top of my mother’s excellent chips – she was a whizz with that chip pan – but no one was using it to soothe an injury.

I learned much later that vinegar did have medicinal uses in years gone by, when it was often called upon for treating minor ailments, but people eventually realised that its qualities were best suited to the kitchen. And while some may think of vinegar as something used to season food at the last minute – particularly fish and chips – home cooks and chefs have come to realise that uses for good vinegar extend far beyond this light touch application.

Vinegar comes in many varieties with wine vinegar, cider vinegar and rice vinegar all popular in various parts of the world. However, one of the UK’s vinegar staples is malt vinegar, made from the malted barley that also goes into beer making. The longest running and largest malt vinegar company in the UK started life in 1794 in Craven Street, London, thanks to Thomas Sarson. Today, Sarson’s makes over ten million litres of malt vinegar using the same technique as handed down by its founder. 

Malted barley is milled, then put in a mash tun along with hot water (in exactly the same way as beer) in order to extract the sugars. The liquid is then cooled down and placed in a fermenter with yeast; after six days the yeast is removed and the liquid is moved to an acetifier in order to turn the alcohol into acetic acid. At Sarson’s this is done in giant wooden vats, each over 100 years old, with the trees all coming from the Leighton Estate in Wales. What sets Sarson’s apart from other malt vinegars is that Sarson’s leave the liquid in the vats for seven days while most other vinegar makers on the market do this for a mere 24 hours. This results in a fuller, deep bodied and more complex flavour.

With the increasing popularity of sour flavours in the UK it’s no surprise that many of us have turned to vinegars in our cooking and Sarson’s malt vinegar is an excellent kitchen staple to have on hand. Something as simple as adding a splash to a roast beef or roast chicken gravy in order to bring sharpness and cut through the fat of the meat is revelatory. If, like me, you are a fan of salad throughout the year, then a vinaigrette with six parts olive oil to one part Sarson’s and a teaspoonful of Dijon mustard will lift somewhat lacklustre unseasonal tomatoes. You can also use one part Sarson’s to half water with some sugar and salt to pickle sliced red onions in about half an hour. These will perk up your salad, enhance any sandwich and make some of the best Mexican-style scrambled eggs if you add chilli, chopped tomatoes and coriander.

One of the glories of vinegar cooking is Spanish escabeche, a dish which was the origin of vinegar on fish and chips in a very roundabout manner. Its roots lie in the medieval Persian dish, sikbaj – vinegar stew – that was brought by the Moors to the Iberian Peninsula. Escabeche in its Spanish variation (there are different versions in the Philippines and across Latin America) is made by cooking fish, fowl or vegetables and then pickling them for preservation in vinegar and some spices – most frequently black pepper, bay leaves, paprika and garlic. In the coastal areas escabeche is normally made with oily fish such as sardines or mackerel, an easy dish to replicate with British seasonal ingredients and a healthy addition of Sarson’s.

Another simple – and seasonal – way to have fun with Sarson’s is to make your own fruit vinegars such as raspberry or blackberry. One method involves mixing equal parts of lightly crushed fruit and Sarson’s then leaving it to marinate in a bowl for a few days before straining the liquid through a muslin or cheesecloth (you can also use a new j-cloth). You then bring the strained liquid to the boil and simmer for around ten minutes while skimming the surface before leaving to cool in sterilised bottles or jars. This is delicious in salad dressings, over seafood or in hearty autumnal sauces for game birds or venison.

Similarly, old-style fruit shrubs are easy to make at home and it’s a traditional use of vinegar which has seen a recent resurgence. Leave sliced fruit in sugar for a couple of days, then add Sarson’s to marinate for a couple more before straining and drinking with sparkling water – or, as I have done very recently, as a riff on a martini with gin and homemade plum shrub.

And don’t forget to add a healthy splash to your chutneys, which traditionally compose much of our autumnal household cooking, as perfect on a cheeseboard as they are in a sandwich or dolloped onto a ploughmans. The malted depth and sharpness of Sarson’s adds so much to the flavour profile of these sweet, fruit-based condiments.  

Considering the plethora of uses for malt vinegar, it really is quaint to leave it merely for the chips and not use it to improve your food and enhance the flavours you already use in the kitchen. While I wouldn’t recommend a bottle in your medicine cabinet any time soon, the addition of Sarson’s to your cooking beyond your condiment collection really is worth going up the hill for.