How vinegar plays versatile roles in people's life

Rahul Gandhi’s bizarre claim that the founder of Coca-Cola sold shikanji has at least brought well-deserved attention to the refreshing lime juice drink. When mixed with water, sugar and other ingredients, like ginger, jeera or salt, shikanji is an excellent antidote to dusty summer or muggy monsoon days.

But behind it is another drink, or range of drinks, which are also worth discovering. Shikanji would seem to derive from shikanjbeen, or an Iranian syrup originally made of vinegar and honey, which is what the name means, usually with mint added. Using vinegar gives the drink a very different feel and, possibly, ancient roots.

This isn’t the very chemical tasting vinegar commonly sold in India. There are some interesting vinegars made here, like Navsari’s sugarcane vinegar, Goa’s toddy vinegar, Himachal’s apple cider vinegar, jamun vinegar and the turmeric vinegar I recently found, but these all are too strong tasting.


Shikanjbeen uses lighter vinegar from wine and perhaps only a coconut water vinegar I once tasted might work. Such vinegar spares you an immediate attack of sourness, so you taste the honey and mint. But then you feel the prickle of vinegar in your throat, a sensation that kicks your senses awake.

Iranians dilute the syrup to make the drink, but also use it as a salad dressing, dipping cucumbers or lettuce leaves in it. Vinegar’s bacteria killing acidity preserves pickles, but that sourness is a condiment in itself. The British sprinkle it on fish and chips, but references to simple meals of bread dipped in vinegar are found in the Bible and the hadith, the traditions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammed.

The Prophet’s approval helped Muslims deal with the problem that to make vinegar you first had to ferment wine, which was banned by Islam. “Vinegar has been present in history since the invention of wine,” writes Michael Harlan Turkell in his book Acid Trip: Travels in the World of Vinegar.

Dates and pomegranates in Mesopotamia probably provided the first juices that were fermented to become wine, and then vinegar. One argument is that Islam’s issues are with wine made from grapes, not these earlier versions (or apple cider). Another pragmatic argument is that whatever vinegar was in the past, it isn’t alcoholic now — it could even be said to redeem the sin of wine.

Vinegar is used in another drink that also derives from another Middle Eastern word that has morphed in many ways. Sharab, a general word for a drink, has given us syrup, sherbet, sorbet and also shrub, a term used for fruit juices preserved with vinegar. (It was also used for a British drink of spirits, citrus and spices, but this is rare now).

Shrubs have the refreshing acidity of shikanji/ shikanjbeen, but with the fruit juices, particularly from berries, adding their own sweet-sour notes. Shrubs are seeing a revival in the US, where they are used as cocktail ingredients or mixed with soda for a non-alcoholic drink that isn’t too sweet. Ideal alternatives, perhaps, to Coca-Cola.