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POSSET, TREACLE (another way)
Take half a pint of new milk, one wine-glassful of sherry or marsala, and one or two table-spoonfuls of treacle. Heat these ingredients together in a clean saucepan till the milk coagulates. This preparation-sometimes called treacle posset and sometimes molasses posset-is highly esteemed in some parts of the country as a domestic remedy for colds. It is taken before going to bed. Lemon-juice, strong old ale, or even vinegar, is sometimes substituted for wine, and powdered ginger or nutmeg added to taste.
A curdled milk drink rather than a dessert posset — the acid and alcohol are there to set the milk, and the treacle to make it palatable. It scales to a single bedtime cupful.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, so about 1¼ US cups. That plus the wine gives one generous mugful.
- A wine-glassfulIn Victorian and Edwardian cookery books this is a standard measure of roughly 2 fl oz (¼ cup), not the volume of a modern wine glass.
- New milkFresh whole milk straight from the cow, unskimmed and unhomogenised. Whole pasteurised milk is the closest thing available; it may curdle a little more finely.
- TreacleBritish black treacle, the dark bitter refinery syrup. Blackstrap molasses is the nearest US equivalent; ordinary light molasses or golden syrup will be sweeter and much milder.
- The hinge: heat, do not boilBring the milk just to a bare simmer so the acid and alcohol break it into soft curds and whey. Hard boiling will drive off some of the alcohol and risks scorching the treacle against the pan.
- MarsalaStill widely sold, in both dry and sweet styles; sweet sherry, madeira or port will behave much the same way here. Of the substitutes the recipe lists, vinegar curdles the milk most sharply and tastes accordingly.
- On the medicineThis is a folk remedy for a cold, not a treatment. It is a warm sweet drink with about a shot of fortified wine in it, and should be judged on those terms.
- YieldOne serving, taken warm at bedtime. Strain it if the curds bother you, or drink it as it comes.
Posset began as a serious drink rather than a remedy: from at least the fifteenth century the word meant hot milk curdled with ale or wine, spiced and sweetened. By the seventeenth century it was drunk from two-handled posset pots with a spout for sipping the liquor from beneath the curd. The chilled cream-and-lemon dessert that now carries the name is a much later, separate development. By the time Cassell's was compiled the drink had largely become a sickroom and nursery matter, which fits an entry that notes it is "highly esteemed in some parts of the country" — wording that marks it as regional and old-fashioned. Treacle, a cheap dark refinery syrup, was a common sweetener in nineteenth-century home remedies, and was popularly held to be good for the chest.