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Cloves, Tincture Of
Put three ounces of bruised cloves into a quart of brandy, and let them soak for a fortnight. Strain, and bottle it for use. Or, dissolve one ounce of fresh oil of cloves in one pint of rectified spirits of wine. The probable cost will depend on the strength and quality of the spirit. Two or three drops will be sufficient to flavour mulled wine, etc
A flavouring extract rather than a drink in its own right — the whole quart is meant to be used two or three drops at a time. Two versions are given: a slow maceration of whole spice, and a quick dilution of essential oil.
- Imperial measuresCassell's is a British book, so the quart is 40 fl oz (about 1.14 litres) and the pint 20 fl oz (about 570 ml). Three ounces of cloves is roughly 85 g, or a generous cup once bruised.
- Which version to makeThe brandy maceration gives a rounder, warmer flavour and is the one worth doing. The oil-in-spirit version is the quicker route and is far more aggressive on the palate.
- Use potable spirit only"Rectified spirits of wine" meant undenatured ethanol of about 90-95 per cent. What is sold today as rectified or methylated spirit in hardware shops and pharmacies is usually denatured with methanol and is poisonous. If you make the second version, use a food-grade neutral spirit.
- Oil of cloves is not a flavouring to improvise withIt is largely eugenol (typically around 70-90 per cent, depending on whether it is bud or leaf oil), and undiluted it burns mucous membrane; case reports describe serious liver injury after young children swallowed it by the spoonful. Buy food-grade oil, measure it, and keep the finished bottle out of reach.
- Bruising the clovesCrack them coarsely in a mortar rather than grinding to powder. Powder clouds the tincture and passes straight through a sieve.
- The fortnightTwo weeks at room temperature, shaken when you think of it, is what the recipe asks for; cloves give up their oil readily. Strain through muslin, not just a sieve.
- Yield and dosageYou end up with roughly a litre of extract and the stated dose is two or three drops — this is a lifetime supply for one household. Consider making a quarter of the quantity in a jam jar.
- StorageAt brandy strength it keeps for years in a stoppered dark bottle away from light. Label it clearly; it looks exactly like a small bottle of liqueur and tastes like a dentist's surgery.
Spirit tinctures sat on the border between the still-room and the medicine chest for centuries, and clove was among the most useful of them: the same bottle flavoured a mulled wine, scented a pudding, and was rubbed on an aching tooth. It belongs to a period when a well-run kitchen kept its own flavourings rather than buying branded essences, a practice that commercial extract houses were beginning to displace. Cloves themselves — the dried unopened flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum, native to the Moluccas — had by then fallen from ruinously expensive to merely ordinary, following the breaking of the Dutch spice monopoly and the spread of cultivation to Zanzibar and Pemba, which is why a recipe can call for three ounces of them without comment. Eugenol, the compound doing all the work here, was isolated and named in the nineteenth century and has genuine local anaesthetic action, which explains the tincture's long double life as both a seasoning and a remedy.