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CHERRY BRANDY (another way) (Put six pounds of black)
Put six pounds of black cherries, six pounds of Morellas, and two pounds of strawberries in a cask. Bruise them slightly with a stick, then add three pounds of sugar, twelve cloves, half an ounce of powered cinnamon, and two nutmegs grated, with a quarter of the kernels of the cherry-stones, and a handful of mint and balm. Pour over these six quarts of brandy or gin. Let the cask remain open for ten days, then close it, and in two months it will be fit for use. Probable cost, Morella cherries, 10d. to 1s. per pound. Sufficient for one gallon and a half of cherry brandy.
This is an infusion rather than a distillation, but the quantity of cherry kernels called for puts it outside what can responsibly be made now. The notes below explain the problem and decode the rest of the entry.
- The kernels are the problemCherry stones enclose a kernel containing amygdalin, a cyanogenic glycoside that releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed and wetted. The recipe directs the kernels from a quarter of twelve pounds of cherries — several hundred kernels — to steep in the liquor for two months, with nothing to drive the compound off. Cyanide is water- and alcohol-soluble and will remain in the finished drink.
- Why the old books did it anywayThe kernels supply the bitter-almond note that Victorian palates expected in cherry brandy; the same flavour underlies noyau, ratafia and maraschino. Commercial producers of those liqueurs work to controlled hydrocyanic-acid limits set by law. A domestic cask has no such control, and the dose here is not measurable at home.
- ScaleSix quarts of spirit over fourteen pounds of fruit yields the stated gallon and a half — roughly 6.8 litres in imperial measure. This is not a small batch to discover a fault in.
- Morella cherriesMorello: the dark, sour cooking cherry, distinct from the sweet black cherries also listed. Sweet and sour fruit together would supply both sweetness and acidity, though the recipe does not say why both are called for.
- BalmLemon balm, Melissa officinalis, a common kitchen-garden herb of the period and quite unrelated to balsam or any resin.
- If you want cherry brandyUse a current recipe that omits the stones and kernels entirely, or one that uses commercially produced almond flavouring for the bitter note.
Cherry brandy in English households was less a cocktail ingredient than a domestic cordial, kept in the still-room and offered against chills, fatigue and stomach complaints — the descendant of a long tradition of medicinal fruit ratafias. Cassell's gives several versions, and the appearance of gin as an alternative to brandy is a mark of price rather than taste: brandy carried duty as an import, gin was distilled in Britain rather than imported and cost considerably less. The cherry-stone kernel appears in many recipes of the period, since it gives cheaply the almond aroma that professional confectioners bought as ratafia essence; the danger was understood in the abstract by nineteenth-century chemists, who had isolated hydrocyanic acid from bitter almonds decades earlier, but that knowledge travelled slowly into the household books. The costing in pence per pound is a reminder of the book's readership: a mistress ordering fruit by the pound from a greengrocer, and expected to know whether she had been overcharged.