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Powders, Spruce Beer
Prepare in the same way as Ginger Beer Powders, but, instead of powdered ginger, use three to six drops of the essence of spruce.
This is a two-line variation that depends entirely on the entry it points back to, so the first job is to reconstruct what "Ginger Beer Powders" means. In Cassell's day these were sold and made at home as paired paper sachets that fizzed when tipped into water — an effervescent drink powder, not a brewed beer.
- What the base powders areThe standard Victorian formula is two separate papers per glass: one holding bicarbonate of soda with the sugar and flavouring, the other holding tartaric or citric acid. They must be kept apart until they meet in the water, or the reaction happens in the packet.
- No fermentation, no yeastDespite the name, nothing here brews. The effervescence is purely the acid-and-soda reaction, which is why the drink has to be swallowed while it is still working rather than bottled and kept.
- Essence of spruceA 19th-century commercial article: a dark, resinous extract or oil drawn from black spruce, sold by grocers and druggists for flavouring drinks. It is not the same thing as the spruce essential oil sold today for diffusers, which is far more concentrated and not intended to be swallowed. If you want the flavour, use a spruce-tip syrup or an infusion of young spring shoots instead.
- Three to six dropsA genuinely small dose, and deliberately so — spruce is strongly resinous and turns medicinal fast. The range probably allows for the variable strength of shop-bought essences; start at the low end and taste.
- Sugar and quantityCassell's gives no figures here because they sit in the ginger recipe. Reckon on roughly a teaspoon of sugar, a quarter-teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda and a slightly smaller quantity of tartaric acid for one tumbler, adjusted to taste.
- Keep everything dryBoth powders must be bone dry when folded into their papers, and the sugar finely ground. Any damp at all and the papers cake, then leak, then go flat before use.
- Yield and servingOne pair of papers makes one glass, about 8 to 10 fl oz of cold water. Mix, stir once, drink immediately.
Spruce beer belongs to the northern forest edge of the English-speaking world. Genuine brewed spruce beer — molasses, water, yeast and boiled spruce boughs — was drunk across eastern Canada, New England and Newfoundland, and was carried by naval and army victuallers partly for its reputation as an antiscorbutic; the essence of spruce that replaced the boughs was an export commodity from Canada and Maine in the 19th century. By the time Cassell's compiled this dictionary the name had detached from the brew: here the flavour survives as one of a rank of effervescing drink powders, alongside ginger. The powders themselves reflect a household chemistry in which tartaric acid and bicarbonate of soda could be bought by the ounce.