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Allspice, Tincture Of
Put two ounces of powdered allspice into a bottle with one pint of brandy. Let it soak for a fortnight, shaking it up every three days. Pour it into another bottle, leaving the sediment, and cork it closely. Half a tea-spoonful will flavour a pint. Probable cost, exclusive of the brandy, 4d.
A homemade allspice extract, made by macerating ground spice in brandy. The method is sound and still the best way to get a clean allspice flavour into custards, puddings and mulled drinks.
- MeasuresTwo ounces of powdered allspice is about 60 g, roughly two-thirds of a cup of ground spice. The pint is an imperial one, 20 fl oz or 570 ml, so the ratio is a little over 100 g of spice per litre of spirit.
- Choose the brandy for flavour, not priceThe spirit is the finished product, not a solvent to be cooked off. A plain inexpensive brandy at 40% ABV works; anything with heavy caramel or oak will show through in the custard.
- Grind fresh if you canPowdered allspice loses its volatile oil quickly on the shelf. Whole berries cracked in a mortar just before steeping give a much stronger tincture, though they need a week or two longer and a proper strain.
- Shaking mattersGround spice packs into a dense sludge at the bottom of the bottle and the liquid above it stops extracting. Shake every couple of days rather than every three, and keep the bottle out of direct light.
- Decanting versus filteringPouring off the clear liquid, as directed, leaves fine powder in suspension and the tincture will stay cloudy. Straining through a coffee filter or several layers of muslin gives a clear extract that keeps its appearance in a pale cream or icing.
- Strength in useHalf a teaspoon to a pint of liquid is the stated dose and it is not timid. Add it at the end of cooking, since the aroma is carried in alcohol and will drive off with prolonged heat.
- Yield and keepingYou get a little under a pint of finished tincture, which at half a teaspoon a pint will flavour a great many pints of custard or sauce. At around 40% alcohol it keeps well in a tightly corked bottle, though the aroma fades after a year or two.
- The cost note"4d" is fourpence in pre-decimal currency, the price of the spice alone; the book excludes the brandy from the costing.
Allspice is the dried unripe berry of Pimenta dioica, a Caribbean tree, and the English name records the seventeenth-century impression that one berry combined clove, cinnamon and nutmeg; it is also called pimento, from the Spanish pimienta, after early explorers mistook the berries for peppercorns. Alcoholic tinctures of this kind appear in Victorian cookery books alongside essences of lemon peel, vanilla and bitter almond; a household that made its own flavourings knew their strength, whereas bought bottles varied and were sometimes adulterated. A tincture is a pharmacist's term for a spirit extraction, and the two-week maceration with periodic agitation follows the dispensing practice of the period. Cassell's prices the spice and leaves out the brandy.