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Caraway Brandy
Dissolve half a pound of finely-sifted ginger in one quart of brandy, and sprinkle on the top one ounce of whole caraway-seeds. Let them remain for ten days in the jar, then strain the liquid and bottle it for use. This makes an excellent stomachic. Probable cost, 3d. per pint, exclusive of the brandy.
An infusion rather than a cooked preparation: the only real work is measuring, waiting and straining. The proportions, however, are heroic by modern taste.
- "Dissolve" is loose talkGround ginger does not dissolve in spirit; it suspends, then settles as sludge. Stir it into the brandy, cover the jar, and expect a thick sediment that must be left behind at straining.
- The ginger quantityHalf a pound of sifted ginger to a quart is roughly 225 g of powder in about 1.14 litres of spirit — fiercely hot and very thick. Anyone wanting a drinkable result rather than a period reproduction may prefer to use a fraction of that, or sliced fresh root instead.
- Imperial measuresA Cassell's quart is 40 fl oz (1.14 L), not the US 32 fl oz. An ounce of caraway seed is about 4 tablespoons whole.
- Sprinkled on topThe recipe says to sprinkle the seeds on the surface rather than stir them through the ginger; whole seed will largely float. Ten days is the stated steeping time.
- Where to keep itA cool, dark cupboard at ordinary room temperature. Light bleaches the colour and daily agitation is not needed — a gentle swirl every few days is enough.
- StrainingPour off the clear liquid first, then filter the rest through muslin, and if you want it bright, again through a paper coffee filter. Ginger powder will clog cloth quickly and needs several changes.
- No sugarNothing sweetens this, so the result is a bitter aromatic tincture in the manner of a digestive bitters, not a liqueur. A syrup added at bottling makes it far more palatable, at the cost of authenticity.
- Yield and useAbout a quart, slightly reduced by what the solids absorb. The recipe calls it a stomachic rather than a cordial, which implies a small dose rather than a tumblerful, though no quantity is given.
- "Probable cost, 3d. per pint"That is threepence for the flavourings only — Cassell's excludes the brandy, which was by far the expensive part and the reason the figure looks absurd.
A "stomachic" was any preparation held to settle the digestion, and the Victorian household kept a shelf of them somewhere between the store cupboard and the medicine chest. Caraway and ginger were standard carminatives of the period, both long credited with relieving wind and griping; caraway comfits and ginger cordials appear in English domestic manuals well before Cassell's. Steeping such aromatics in brandy was the simplest way to extract and preserve their oils in a kitchen without laboratory equipment, and the same technique produced the family's ratafias, bitters and cough remedies. The costing note, which prices the flavourings alone at threepence a pint, is a reminder that the brandy was an assumed household stock rather than an ingredient to be budgeted.