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ORANGE LIQUEUR (another way)
Take the thin rind of two Seville oranges, and put it into an earthen jar with a pinch of saffron and a pint and a half of best gin. Leave the vessel in a warm place for a week, then add half a pound of sugar, boiled to a syrup, with a quarter of a pint of water, and let it remain four weeks longer. Filter the liqueur through blotting-paper, and bottle for use. Probable cost, exclusive of the spirit, 5d. Sufficient for a quart of liqueur.
An infusion rather than a distillation: bitter orange peel and saffron steeped in gin, then sweetened and left to mellow. Nothing here is difficult, but a few of the materials need translating.
- The hinge: peel thinly"Thin rind" means the coloured zest only, taken off with a peeler or a sharp knife. Any white pith carried over turns the finished liqueur harshly bitter over five weeks of contact, and no amount of sugar will pull it back.
- Seville orangesThe bitter marmalade orange, in season roughly January to February and rarely stocked otherwise. Two Sevilles' worth of zest can be approximated with the zest of two ordinary oranges plus that of half a lemon or a lime, though the result is rounder and less resinous than intended.
- A pinch of saffronHere it is a colouring as much as a flavour, giving the liqueur its amber-gold cast. Ten to fifteen threads is ample for this volume; saffron is assertive and a heavy hand makes the drink taste medicinal and hay-like.
- The gin"Best gin" in Victorian recipe books generally indicated a good rectified spirit rather than the cheaper sweetened gin-shop stuff, though the terminology was used loosely. Use a dry gin at 40% or above; anything lower extracts less and keeps less well.
- MeasuresAn imperial pint and a half is 30 fl oz, about 850 ml; the quarter-pint of water is 5 fl oz, about 140 ml. Half a pound of sugar is 225 g. Boiled together the sugar and water make a heavy syrup, so add it warm but not hot to avoid driving off the spirit.
- "A warm place"A kitchen shelf or airing cupboard at around 20-25C, not a windowsill in direct sun, which fades the saffron colour quickly. Keep the jar covered and give it a shake daily during the first week.
- FilteringBlotting paper is unsized, and was the household expedient for straining small quantities. A paper coffee filter or a double layer of muslin does the same job; expect it to run slowly, and do not force it.
- Yield and keepingAbout a quart, roughly 1.1 litres. Bottled and corked it keeps for years at this alcohol strength, though the colour dulls after a year or two.
Homemade cordials of this kind were standard household work in Victorian Britain, and Cassell's devotes a run of entries to them: the still-room tradition of steeping fruit, peel and spices in spirit had long outlasted the still-rooms themselves. Seville oranges arrived in bulk each winter for marmalade, and it is tempting to connect that with the number of nineteenth-century orange liqueurs, ratafias and shrubs keyed to the bitter orange rather than the sweet, though this recipe calls for fresh thin rind rather than preserving scraps. The saffron is the older touch, and is often said to be a survival from a time when a liqueur was expected to look like something as well as taste of it, gilded, golden drinks having carried associations with the cordial-as-restorative. Note too the costing, five pence "exclusive of the spirit" -- the point of the entry is that the flavouring is nearly free, and that a bottle of ordinary gin can be turned into something fit to offer a caller.