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Claret, Mulled
Put half a tea-spoonful each of cinnamon, ground ginger, and cloves into a saucepan with a breakfast-cupful of cold water, six ounces of loaf sugar, and the thin rind of an orange. Boil all to a syrup, being careful that the scum is removed as it rises; then add two bottles of claret. Take the wine from the fire just before it boils, and serve it at once. Time, about half an hour. Probable cost, 4d., exclusive of the claret, price of which would be according to quality.
A syrup base spiced and sweetened separately, then let down with two bottles of red wine — a sensible method that keeps the spice from tasting raw. Almost everything here translates directly; the units and the wine need a word.
- Do not let it boilThe instruction to take the pan off just before boiling is the hinge of the recipe. Above a simmer the alcohol drives off fast and the wine turns thin and stewed; hold it at about 160-170F until the surface just trembles.
- Breakfast-cupfulA Victorian breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, roughly half a pint — call it 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups. Precision matters little here since it is only the syrup vehicle.
- Loaf sugarRefined cane sugar, sold in hard cones and broken up with nippers. Six ounces of ordinary granulated sugar (a scant cup) does the same job. That is fairly sweet against two bottles; taste the syrup and hold some back if your claret is soft.
- ClaretIn an English book of this date, claret means red Bordeaux. Any dry, medium-bodied red with decent acidity does the job. Use something drinkable but not distinguished — the spice and sugar will bury any subtlety.
- The orange rind"Thin rind" means pared with a peeler or sharp knife, no white pith, which turns bitter over a half-hour boil.
- SkimmingThe scum is impurities from the sugar and spice dust rising with the foam. Modern sugar throws far less of it; skim once or twice and move on.
- TimingThe half-hour presumably covers making the syrup, though the recipe does not say so. Once the wine goes in, the recipe wants it off the heat before it boils and served immediately.
- YieldTwo bottles plus the syrup gives about 60 fl oz — twelve small glasses, or eight generous ones.
Mulled wine is far older than this book: heating wine with honey, spices and sweeteners is documented in Roman cookery, and spiced wines under names like hippocras and piment ran through the medieval and early modern English drink repertoire. Claret — the English trade name for red Bordeaux, in use since the Middle Ages — was a common choice for mulling in nineteenth-century English books, and French wine had become cheaper in Britain after the wine duty reductions of the early 1860s. The costing line is characteristic of the book: a "probable cost" is given for a great many entries so a housekeeper could budget, and the frank admission that the wine's price depends on quality acknowledges that its readers spanned a wide range of purses.