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FLOUR-FRUIT LIQUOR (a pleasant drink for Summer)
Take one pound of raspberries, one pound of black-currants, one pound and a half of straw-berries, and one pound and a half of Morella cherries. Put them into a deep jar, cover closely, and place it in a saucepan, half filled with boiling water, and simmer very gently for half an hour. Take the pan from the fire, and pass its contents through a jelly-bag, being very careful not to squeeze the fruit; which, if a little of the juice is left in it, may indeed be used for common tarts. Measure the juice, and put it into a deep jar, and for every quart add six ounces of loaf sugar which has been dissolved in half a pint of water. Add half the cherry kernels, slightly bruised, cover the jar to keep out the dust, and let it stand for twenty-four hours. Stir into it an equal quantity of brandy, pass the liquid again through the jelly-bag, and bottle for use. When taken, two table-spoon-fuls of this liquor should be added to half a tumblerful of iced water.
This is a Victorian fruit cordial of a familiar type, but one step in it is not acceptable in a modern kitchen: the deliberate steeping of bruised cherry kernels.
- The cherry kernels are the problemThe seeds inside cherry stones contain amygdalin, a cyanogenic glycoside. Crushing or bruising them and leaving them to stand in liquid lets plant enzymes break the amygdalin down, releasing hydrogen cyanide. The kernels are here for the bitter-almond note, which comes from benzaldehyde produced by that same breakdown.
- No measured doseThe recipe calls for "half the cherry kernels" from a pound and a half of fruit — an unknown number of seeds of unknown size, steeped for twenty-four hours, then bottled and kept. There is no way to know how much cyanide is in a finished bottle, and the drink is offered as a summer drink taken two spoonfuls at a time in iced water.
- Brandy does not make it safeAdding an equal quantity of spirit and filtering through a jelly-bag removes the solids but not what has dissolved out of them. Straining a cordial clear tells you nothing about what is in the liquid.
- If you want the drinkA summer fruit shrub or cordial made from raspberries, currants, strawberries and sour cherries is worth making — use a current recipe with a tested sugar and acid balance and no kernels. Bitter-almond flavour, if wanted, comes from commercial extract.
- Terms in the original, for readingMorella (Morello) cherries are the sour cooking cherry, Prunus cerasus. Loaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone, equivalent to ordinary white sugar. A jelly-bag is a close-woven flannel or muslin straining bag, and the instruction not to squeeze it is about clarity rather than safety.
- The odd title"FLOUR-FRUIT" is not an ingredient; the entry itself is simply Fruit Liquor. The compound heading most likely reflects a page heading or alphabetical running label captured along with the entry.
Fruit liquors of this kind sat between the still-room and the medicine chest in nineteenth-century English households: a strong sweetened fruit juice fortified with brandy, bottled in high summer, and served a spoonful at a time in iced water as a cooling drink. The gentle simmering of the fruit in a covered jar set in a pan of boiling water is the old water-bath method, used to draw juice without scorching it or clouding it, and the refusal to squeeze the jelly-bag reflects a period obsession with a brilliantly clear cordial. The bruised cherry kernels belong to the same tradition as ratafia and noyau, French-derived cordials flavoured with stone-fruit kernels, whose bitter-almond note was long prized; kernel flavouring persisted in domestic English cookery books well into the twentieth century.