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Red Cordial Water
Take three or four thick slices of purple beetroot boiled, one ounce each of caraway-and coriander-seed bruised, one ounce of cloves and cinnamon, three-quarters of an ounce each of Jamaica pepper and nutmeg bruised, half an ounce of thin rind of lemon, twelve ounces of sugar-candy beaten and rolled, two quarts of proof spirit of wine, and three pints of water. Put these ingredients into a stone jar, and fasten the cork securely; tie bladder over it, and set the jar in hot water for six hours. Shake it well daily, and keep it for a month in a warm room. Then strain and filter the cordial perfectly bright; fill small bottles, cork and seal them.
A cold-compounded cordial: nothing is distilled, the spirit simply extracts flavour and the beetroot supplies colour. Two details govern the result — how you handle the sealed jar during the warm steeping, and how patiently you filter at the end.
- Do not seal it tight and heat itA corked stone jar with a bladder tied over the top, held in hot water for six hours, builds pressure from expanding alcohol vapour. Use a jar with the lid resting on loosely or only lightly screwed down, and keep the water bath below a simmer — around 120-140F is ample to start the extraction.
- Proof spirit of wineBritish proof spirit was about 57 per cent alcohol by volume, and "spirit of wine" meant rectified spirit, i.e. plain alcohol, rather than anything flavourful, whatever it happened to be distilled from. A neutral grain spirit or high-proof vodka at 50 per cent or more is the modern stand-in; with the three pints of water added, the finished cordial lands somewhere near 30 per cent.
- Imperial measuresThe quarts and pints here are imperial: two quarts is about 2.4 US quarts, three pints about 3.6 US pints. Total liquid is roughly 4 litres before straining loss, enough to fill several small bottles as the recipe intends.
- Jamaica pepperAllspice, and it is not optional background alongside the cloves and cinnamon. The three-quarters of an ounce called for is about 21 g of whole berries, cracked rather than ground.
- Sugar-candyCrystallised rock sugar, sold in lumps and beaten and rolled by the cook to a coarse grit. Ordinary granulated sugar at the same weight, 12 oz or 340 g, behaves the same once dissolved.
- The beetroot is a dyeBoiled beet supplies the red and a faint earthiness, nothing more, and it fades. Betanin is heat- and light-sensitive, so keep the finished bottles out of sunlight if the colour matters to you.
- Lemon rind, thinly paredHalf an ounce of zest with no white pith. A month of contact with strong spirit will draw bitterness out of any albedo left behind.
- Filtering brightStrain off the solids first, then pass the liquid through a coffee filter or fine paper, changing it when it clogs. Clove and cinnamon oils will haze the cordial as it cools; a second filtering after a few days of settling does more good than forcing the first one.
Cordial waters like this one are a direct inheritance from the apothecary's shop, where spiced spirits were dispensed as heart-strengtheners — cordial comes from the Latin cor, heart — and only gradually drifted onto the sideboard as an after-dinner drink. The spice list here, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, coriander and caraway, reads as a medicinal formula still standing in a Victorian cookery dictionary, though the pretence of physic had largely worn away by the time it was printed. Colouring is the giveaway of the domestic version: the household cook was told to boil a beetroot. Recipes of this kind sat comfortably in a general household book because a month in a warm room and a stone jar were within any well-run kitchen's reach.