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BITTERS (Appetiser)
Take one ounce of Seville orange peel, half an ounce of gentian root, and a quarter of an ounce of cardamoms husked. Crush the cardamoms with the gentian root. Put them in a wide-mouthed bottle, and cover with brandy or whisky. Let the mixture remain twelve days, then strain, add one ounce of lavender drops, and bottle off for use.
A straightforward maceration, but the original leaves out the one quantity you most need — how much spirit — and one ingredient that has left the shelf. Read the notes on gentian and on "lavender drops" before you start.
- Weights are avoirdupoisThe ounces of peel, root and cardamom are weight: 28 g, 14 g and 7 g respectively. The final ounce of lavender drops is presumably a fluid ounce, though the recipe does not say.
- How much spirit"Cover with brandy or whisky" is all you get. In a wide-mouthed pint or 500 ml jar the botanicals above will be submerged by roughly 400-500 ml of spirit. Use something at 40% ABV or higher; the alcohol is doing the extracting and the preserving.
- Gentian is the strong oneDried yellow gentian root (Gentiana lutea) is the source of the bitterness and it is ferociously potent — a half ounce in a pint of spirit makes something you dose in dashes, not glassfuls. Sold by herb suppliers and brewing shops. Buy it cut and dried rather than powdered, or straining becomes a chore.
- Seville orange peelSeville oranges are in the shops for a few weeks in midwinter. Use the peel dried, with as little white pith as you can manage, since pith contributes a dull bitterness rather than aromatic oil. Dried bitter orange peel is sold year-round as an ingredient in its own right.
- Husked cardamomsDiscard the papery pods and use only the black seeds inside; a quarter ounce of husked seed works out at something in the region of forty pods, depending on their size. Crushing them with the gentian, as directed, simply saves a second pounding in the mortar.
- "Lavender drops"This is compound tincture of lavender, an old apothecary preparation built on lavender and rosemary oils in spirit, with other aromatics, and coloured red in the official formulas. It is not culinary lavender essence and not the modern essential oil, which should not be added by the ounce to anything you intend to drink. Either leave it out or substitute a few grams of dried lavender flowers macerated with the rest of the botanicals.
- Straining and keepingTwelve days at room temperature, out of direct light, with a daily shake. Strain through muslin, then again through a paper filter if you want it clear. Bottled tightly, it keeps for years; the flavour settles and softens over the first month or two.
- Yield and useAbout 400-450 ml of finished bitters, which is a great deal. Two or three dashes in a glass of soda or vermouth before a meal is the intended use, in the same way a modern bar uses aromatic bitters.
Bitters sit exactly on the line between the kitchen and the dispensary. Gentian root, bitter orange peel and cardamom were all standard materia medica of the nineteenth-century chemist's shop, of a piece with the proprietary aromatic bitters that appeared commercially from the 1820s onward, whose formulas were and are secret. The stated purpose is appetitive: bitter compounds taken shortly before eating were generally held, then as now, to stimulate the flow of gastric juices, and the vogue for a bitter glass before dinner runs unbroken from these tinctures through to the modern Italian aperitivo. The presence of "lavender drops" is the clearest period marker in the list. Compound tincture of lavender was a pharmacy staple used as a stimulant and carminative.