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Raisin Cordial
Stone and cut up a pound of raisins, add an ounce of bruised ginger, the thin rinds of two lemons and an orange, and a quart of old whiskey or gin. Bottle and cork up, leave for a few weeks, then strain, and add a pound of lump sugar which has previously been boiled in half a pint of water to dissolve it. Bottle and cork again, and strain in another week; filter before finally bottling.
A steeped cordial rather than anything cooked: the work is in the waiting and the straining. Nothing here needs rescuing, but several of the measures and ingredients are Victorian.
- The quart is imperialA quart in this book is 40 fl oz, about 1.2 US quarts or a litre and a bit. A standard 750 ml bottle of spirit is a little short; use a litre bottle for the proportions to hold.
- Half a pint of waterAlso imperial, so 10 fl oz rather than 8. Boil the sugar in it only until clear, then cool it completely before it goes near the spirit, or the aromatics will flatten.
- Lump sugarLoaf or lump sugar was refined white sugar broken from a cone or pressed block. Ordinary granulated sugar is the same thing; a pound is about 2 1/4 cups.
- Bruised gingerDried root ginger, cracked with the flat of a knife or a pestle to open the fibres. Fresh ginger can be used instead but gives a brighter, less resinous heat, and being much less concentrated by weight than dried root it will need considerably more than the ounce called for.
- Stoning raisinsThe raisins called for here were the seeded kind, so stoning was unavoidable labour. Modern seedless raisins need only chopping, which matters because it exposes more surface to the spirit.
- The rinds are the hingeTake the zest in thin strips with no white pith, and lift them out after two to three weeks even if the maceration runs longer. Pith and long contact turn citrus oil bitter, and bitterness cannot be filtered out.
- "Old whiskey or gin"'Old' most likely signalled a matured, mellow spirit rather than a raw new one. An unpeated blended whisky or a plain London dry gin both suit; heavily peated whisky and modern botanical gins will fight the ginger.
- Straining and filteringStrain first through a fine sieve or muslin, then filter the last time through a paper coffee filter to catch the haze thrown by the raisin solids. Expect it to drip slowly and do not press it.
- Yield and keepingSomething over 1 1/2 litres of finished cordial, so two 750 ml bottles and a little left over, depending on how much the raisins absorb. Corked and kept dark it holds for years, though the citrus brightness fades after the first.
Household cordials of this kind sat somewhere between the medicine cupboard and the sideboard: ginger, citrus peel and sugar in spirit was broadly what an apothecary might have called a tincture, and ginger cordials in particular were often said to be taken for indigestion and chills as much as for pleasure. Recipes like this one are generally associated with a period when a middle-class kitchen might still expect to lay down its own ratafias, sloe gins and orange brandies rather than buy proprietary liqueurs, and the instruction to use "old" whiskey is a reminder that the quality of the base spirit was the cook's own responsibility. The double bottling and final filtering are there for appearance: a cordial offered to guests was expected to be clear in the glass, and the sugar syrup is added only after the fruit is strained out, the fruit by then being finished with.