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Hops and Sherry Cordial
Fill a wide-mouthed bottle with hops. They may be shaken together, but must not be pressed down. Cover them with sherry, and let them infuse for a month. Strain the liquid, and mix with it a syrup made by boiling half a pint of water with six ounces of sugar. Strain, and keep the cordial in closely-corked bottles for use. A wine-glassful taken in half a tumblerful of water will be found both agreeable and strengthening. Sufficient for a little more than a pint of the cordial.
A domestic bitter tonic rather than a dessert cordial: hops steeped in fortified wine and sweetened just enough to make it drinkable. The whole character depends on how much hop you pack in and how long you leave it.
- How many hopsThe original measures by volume in an unspecified bottle, which is genuinely ambiguous. Whole dried hop cones are extremely bulky; loosely filling a 750 ml wide-mouthed jar takes only about 15-20 g. Do not substitute pellets, which are compressed and will give a far harsher, grassier result at the same weight.
- A month is a long infusionHop bitterness and the resinous alpha acids extract quickly into alcohol. Taste at one week; most palates find two to three weeks plenty, and a full month gives a very hard, resinous bitterness that the syrup will struggle to balance.
- The sherryHousehold sherry of the period generally meant a plain, fairly dry fortified wine, around 17-18% alcohol, rather than a cream or PX. Use a dry amontillado or fino-style sherry; sweet sherry plus the added syrup will be cloying.
- The syrupHalf a pint of British measure is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 cups; six ounces of sugar is roughly 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons. Boil only until the sugar has dissolved and the volume has not reduced much, then cool before combining, or the alcohol will flash off.
- Wine-glassfulA Victorian wine-glass is about 2 fl oz, so the suggested dose is roughly a quarter cup in half a tumbler of water. That makes the finished pint (20 fl oz) about ten servings.
- Keeping itKeep in full, tightly corked bottles, dark and cool; it will darken and the hop aroma will fade after the first few weeks. Strain twice through a fine cloth; stray hop debris makes it turn muddy.
- Not a medicineThe book's "strengthening" claim is period language for a bitter appetite tonic. Hops are traditionally held to be sedative, and the base is fortified wine, so treat it as an aperitif and not as a remedy.
Hops (Humulus lupulus) earned their place in nineteenth-century household books twice over: once as the bittering agent in beer, and again as a bitter tonic in their own right. The lupulin resins that preserve ale were long credited with stimulating appetite and calming the nerves, which is why hop pillows, hop tea and hop bitters all appear in Victorian domestic manuals alongside the cookery. Cordials of this kind sat in the same cupboard as the invalid cookery and the barley waters, medicine and refreshment being barely distinguished categories in a household without a pharmacy. Steeping a bitter herb in fortified wine is one of the oldest preparations in European practice, the same logic that produced vermouth and the amaro family, and sherry was a natural base in a Britain that imported it by the pipe. Whether hops are actually sedative is traditionally asserted more often than it is demonstrated.