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Ginger, Essence Of
Take some whole ginger, and grind it to powder just before using it, as the flavour quickly evaporates. Put three ounces of powdered ginger and two ounces of freshly-cut lemon-rind into a quart of brandy, or spirits of wine. Let the mixture infuse a fortnight, shaking it every day. Then strain, and bottle for use. This preparation is warming and invigorating, and, if mixed with a little boiling water and sugar, is an excellent cure for flatulency. Probable cost, about 5d., exclusive of the spirit. Sufficient for one quart of essence.
A tincture, not a syrup: alcohol does all the extracting, and the only real technique is patience and a fine strainer. Two of the ingredient names need translating before you start.
- Spirits of wineThis meant rectified spirit — near-pure drinkable ethanol from the chemist's shelf. Today the products sold under names like methylated or denatured spirit contain methanol and other poisons and must never be swallowed. Use the brandy the recipe offers, or a neutral grain spirit sold for drinking, such as an overproof vodka or Everclear where it is legal.
- QuartAn imperial quart, 40 fl oz, or about 1.14 litres. A US quart is 946 ml, so if you scale to a US bottle reduce the ginger and lemon by roughly a sixth.
- Three ounces of gingerAbout 85 g of freshly ground dried ginger root, which is a generous cup of powder — a very strong infusion by modern taste. Whole dried ginger grinds best in a spice mill; the instruction to grind it immediately before use is sound, since the volatile oils that carry the aroma go off quickly once the root is broken.
- Lemon-rindTwo ounces, about 55 g, is a substantial quantity of pared zest — half a dozen lemons at least, and more if you pare thinly. Take only the coloured outer layer with a peeler; white pith turns the tincture bitter over a fortnight of steeping.
- The fortnightKeep the jar sealed and out of the light, and shake it daily as directed — the powder packs down hard at the bottom and stops giving up flavour. Longer than two weeks does no harm but adds little.
- StrainingGround ginger passes straight through a sieve. Settle the jar for a day, decant the clear liquid, then filter the rest through damp muslin or a coffee filter; expect it to run slowly and to lose a little volume to the sediment.
- Using itTreat it as a flavouring at half a teaspoon at a time: in hot water with sugar as the book suggests, in mulled drinks, over poached fruit, or brushed into a gingerbread. The claim that it cures flatulency is nineteenth-century medicine, not a dosage instruction.
- YieldAbout a quart of finished essence, or a little less once the sediment is left behind, which will keep for years in a stoppered bottle — the alcohol content makes it self-preserving.
In a Victorian household an essence was a piece of standing equipment: a shelf of alcoholic tinctures — lemon, almond, vanilla, ginger — stood in for flavourings that could not be bought reliably bottled. The line between kitchen and medicine chest was thin, and ginger sat squarely on it; warming, carminative virtues had been attributed to the root since the medieval spice trade, and by the 1870s tinctures of ginger appeared in both the pharmacopoeia and the store cupboard. Jamaican ginger was prized above the Indian and West African grades for its pale colour and clean pungency, though Bengal, Cochin and African ginger were imported in quantity too, and it arrived as whole knobbly "races" rather than powder — hence the instruction to grind it at the last moment, which any cook who has smelled a year-old tin of ground ginger will recognise as good advice.