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Mulberry Water
Put a pound of mulberries into a basin, and cover them with lump sugar, coarsely powdered; crush them together, then pour over them a pint of water, and filter through a fine sieve. Mulberry water is most refreshing as a drink in cases of fever.
A cold-macerated fruit drink from the invalid-cookery tradition, needing no heat at all. The whole character of it depends on crushing the fruit with the sugar before any water goes in.
- Sugar first, then waterCrushing the mulberries under sugar draws out juice by osmosis and gives a concentrated, deeply coloured extract. If you add the water first you get pink water with pulp in it.
- Lump sugar, coarsely powderedLoaf sugar broken up and crushed — ordinary granulated sugar does the same job. The recipe gives no quantity; 3 to 4 oz (about 1/2 cup) to a pound of fruit suits ripe mulberries, more if they are sharp.
- A pintCassell's is a British book, so a pint here is 20 fl oz, about 2 1/2 US cups. That yields roughly a pint of finished drink, or two generous glasses.
- Fruit weightA pound of mulberries is about 3 cups. Ripe black mulberries (Morus nigra) are the intended fruit; loganberries or blackberries stand in reasonably, though blackberries want more sugar.
- Standing timeNone is given. Twenty to thirty minutes at room temperature, with an occasional press of the spoon, is enough for the sugar to dissolve and the juice to run.
- FilteringA fine sieve will pass fine sediment; line it with damp muslin or a coffee filter if you want the clear "water" the name implies. Do not force the pulp through, or the drink turns cloudy and slightly gluey.
- KeepingNothing is cooked and nothing preserves it. Chill and drink within a day; mulberry juice ferments and dulls quickly.
- StainingMulberry juice stains hands, wood and cloth persistently. Work in a glass or china basin, not a wooden bowl.
- The medical claimTreat "refreshing in cases of fever" as period language for a pleasant drink for someone unwell, not as a remedy.
Fruit "waters" belong to the nineteenth-century sickroom, where barley water, lemonade, toast water and rice water were prescribed almost as strictly as medicine, and a household manual was expected to cover them alongside soups and roasts. This one works by cold extraction: sugar drawing juice from soft fruit without a fire, which was both economical and suited to a nurse working in a bedroom. The black mulberry has grown in English gardens for centuries — the trees are often linked to James I's attempt to establish a silk industry, though most surviving specimens are simply old fruit trees — and its juice had a long apothecary life as syrup of mulberries, used to colour and flavour gargles and cough preparations. Because mulberries bruise and ferment quickly after picking, they were rarely sold in shops; a recipe like this presumes a tree in the garden and fruit to use up while it is fresh.