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BLACKBERRY CORDIAL
Put a half bushel of blackberries in a preserving-kettle and cook until scalded through well; strain and press out all the juice; put juice in kettle with the following spices well broken up and put into a bag; one-quarter pound allspice, two ounces cinnamon-bark, two ounces cloves, and two nutmegs; add loaf-sugar, about one pound to every quart of juice or more if preferred, and cook slowly ten or fifteen minutes, remove from the fire, let cool a little, and add good pure brandy in the proportion of one pint to every three pints of juice. A smaller quantity may be made, using the same proportions. This is an excellent remedy for diarrhœa and other diseases of the bowels.
A sweetened, spiced blackberry syrup fortified with brandy — closer to a shrub or ratafia than to a modern cocktail cordial. The proportions scale cleanly, which matters, because the original quantity is enormous.
- Half a bushel is a lotA half bushel of blackberries is 16 dry quarts, roughly 18-24 lb, and will yield several quarts of strained juice. Scaled to proportion, 4 lb of berries gives about 1 quart of juice, 1 lb of sugar and about 1 1/3 cups of brandy (the recipe's one pint to every three pints of juice) — a manageable batch.
- Scale the spices down tooThe spice charge given (4 oz allspice, 2 oz cinnamon bark, 2 oz cloves, 2 nutmegs) is sized to that half bushel. Reduce it in the same proportion as the juice, and crack the spices and tie them in cheesecloth as the recipe directs.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined cane sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up with nippers; it was the cleanest-tasting sugar available. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct substitute, weight for weight.
- Preserving-kettleUse a wide nonreactive pan — stainless or enamelled. Blackberry juice is acidic enough to pick up metallic flavours from bare aluminium or unlined copper.
- "Scalded through" onlyThe berries go in whole and are heated just until they collapse and run, not boiled to a jam. Hard boiling extracts more pectin and clouds the juice, making it harder to strain clear; press through a jelly bag or several layers of cheesecloth.
- Let it cool before the brandyAdding spirit to very hot syrup will drive off some of the alcohol and dull the fruit. Let the syrup drop to hand-warm or below, then stir the brandy in.
- Strength and keepingOne pint of brandy to three pints of syrup lands the finished cordial around 8-10% alcohol — low enough that the sugar is doing most of the preserving. Bottle it full, cap tightly, and keep it cool and dark; refrigerate once opened.
- The medical claimBlackberry cordial was a standard nineteenth-century bowel remedy, which is why the recipe ends with a therapeutic claim. Treat it as a pleasant sipping cordial and nothing more.
Blackberry cordial belongs to the household medicine tradition because both of its main ingredients had settled reputations as astringents: blackberry root and fruit were listed in nineteenth-century American domestic medicine as remedies for "summer complaint" and other bowel troubles, and brandy was the household stimulant of first resort. Recipes of this kind u2014 fruit juice, sugar, whole spice, spirit u2014 descend from the older European ratafias and cordial waters, and the same formula turns up under names like blackberry syrup, blackberry brandy and blackberry wine depending on how much alcohol went in and whether fermentation was involved. Buckeye Cookery (1877) grew out of the Centennial Buckeye Cook Book (Marysville, Ohio, 1876), a church-fundraising compilation, which makes the confident call for "good pure brandy" worth noticing: medicinal use was the accepted exception in households that otherwise kept no liquor.