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Elderberry Punch
Put two bottles of elderberry wine into a bowl, with a quarter of a pound of icing sugar and three pints of boiling water. Mix well, then add a lemon cut into slices, and grate some nutmeg on top. Probable cost, 2s. 6d.
A hot wine punch of the sort ladled out at winter gatherings, and one of the simplest things in the book — the only real decisions are the strength and the temperature at which you serve it.
- Quantities in modern termsTwo bottles of wine plus three imperial pints of water is roughly 1.5 litres of wine to 1.7 litres of water, giving about 3.2 litres in total, enough for somewhere between a dozen and twenty cups depending on their size. A quarter pound of sugar is 115 g, roughly a cup of icing sugar.
- Icing sugarBritish icing sugar is American confectioners' or powdered sugar. Modern versions carry an anti-caking starch that can cloud a hot drink; caster or plain granulated sugar dissolves just as readily in boiling water and looks better in the bowl.
- Elderberry wineA homemade country wine in Cassell's day, now sold by small English and Continental producers, or found as elderberry fruit wine in specialist shops. A dry, full-bodied red such as a rustic Merlot or Zinfandel stands in reasonably; if you substitute, taste before adding all the sugar.
- StrengthDiluted better than one to one with water, this is a mild drink — perhaps 5 to 6 per cent alcohol, and less as it steams. Cutting the water to two pints gives something closer to a modern mulled wine.
- Do not boil after mixingThe boiling water does the heating; once the wine is in, keep the bowl below a simmer. Sustained boiling drives off both the alcohol and the fruit aroma and leaves a flat, cooked-jam taste.
- The lemonSlice it thin and add it at the end as directed, then fish the slices out after ten or fifteen minutes. Left in a hot bowl for the length of an evening, the pith turns the punch bitter.
- ServingServe hot in small heatproof cups or heavy tumblers, grating the nutmeg fresh over each portion rather than all at once — the volatile oils fade within minutes.
- Probable costTwo shillings and sixpence was the cost of the whole bowl, not a serving. Cassell's gave these figures so a cook could price a party against the household budget.
Elder grew in hedgerows and cottage gardens across Britain, and its berries were among the few fruits that cost a rural household nothing but the labour of picking, which is why elderberry wine was the standard homemade red of the English countryside well into the twentieth century. Because it was dark, tannic and often rough, it was frequently drunk hot and sweetened rather than cold — Victorian and Edwardian sources describe it warmed with sugar and spice as a cold-weather comfort, and it was widely credited with easing chills and coughs, a reputation that persists in elderberry syrups today. The recipe's shape is the standard one for the punch-and-cup genre, the class of drinks built for a bowl and a ladle rather than a glass: a base spirit or wine, sugar, hot or cold water, citrus, and a grating of spice on top. Raw elderberries and the plant's leaves, bark and stems contain cyanogenic compounds that make them unsafe to eat uncooked, so the fruit was always cooked or fermented before use, as it is in the wine here.