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SACK POSSET (Sir Walter Raleigh's recipe)
Boil together half a pint of sherry and half a pint of ale, and add gradually a quart of boiling cream or milk. Sweeten the mixture well, and flavour with grated nutmeg. Put it into a heated dish, cover it over, and let it stand by the fire two or three hours. (LADY MALLET'S RECIPE.) Break eighteen new laid eggs into a bowl, and carefully remove the specks. Beat the eggs till they are lightly frothed. Boil a quart of milk and a pint of previously boiled sack (or sherry) with three-quarters of a pound of sugar and a little grated nutmeg. Skim the liquor carefully; when it has boiled for a little, stir it off the fire for a few minutes, then add it gradually to the beaten eggs. Stir the preparation over a gentle fire till it begins to thicken, pour it quickly from one vessel to another till quite smooth, and then serve. (MASTER RUDSTONE'S RECIPE.) Take a quart of sherry or brandy, and boil it with a quarter of a pint of ale and three-quarters of a pound of sugar. Skim it well, then mix it gradually with the well-beaten yolks of two and the whites of sixteen eggs. Let the mixture cool till the eggs thicken, then stir in a quart of milk or cream which has been boiled down from three pints. Pour it quickly from one vessel to another till it is quite smooth, and then serve.
Three separate possets are run together here in one paragraph. The first is eggless and thickens by standing; the second and third are alcoholic custards, and the hinge in both is heat control — sherry and eggs curdle fast, and once curdled no amount of pouring will save it.
- Read it as three recipesThe break comes at each attributed name. Lady Mallet's version has no eggs at all; Master Rudstone's is a stirred custard; the third, which carries no name of its own in the text and is presumably the one the heading gives to Raleigh, relies on hot liquor to set mostly egg white. Pick one and ignore the others.
- Imperial measuresCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, so a quart is 40 fl oz (about 1.1 litres) and half a pint is 10 fl oz, or about 1.2 US cups.
- SackSack was a fortified white wine imported from Spain and the Canaries — the ancestor of sherry. The recipe already offers sherry as the substitute; a dry to medium amontillado is closer than a cream sherry, which will fight the ¾ lb of sugar.
- Eighteen eggsPeriod eggs tended to run smaller than today's. For Master Rudstone's posset, twelve to fourteen large eggs give roughly the same volume. "Remove the specks" most likely means picking out blood spots and the white cords of chalazae, which show up as threads in the finished drink.
- Temperature is everythingHold the custard versions between about 170 and 180F (77–82C) and take them off the moment they coat a spoon. Alcohol and acid lower the temperature at which egg protein sets, so a sherry custard curdles sooner than a plain one — a bowl set over barely simmering water is safer than direct heat, despite the instruction.
- Pouring from vessel to vesselThis is not decoration. Repeated pouring between two warm jugs cools the mixture quickly, breaks up incipient curds and works air in, so the posset arrives frothed on top rather than grainy. Warm the receiving vessel first.
- The unheated third versionThere the eggs are combined with hot liquor and then allowed to cool, never held at a set temperature. If you make that one, use pasteurised eggs or shell eggs pasteurised in the shell; the alcohol alone is not a reliable safeguard against Salmonella.
- Lady Mallet's two or three hoursStanding warm by the fire lets the mixture separate into a thick curd on top and a spiced, spirituous drink beneath — that is the intended result, not a fault. A very low oven at 150–170F (66–77C), covered, reproduces the hearthside heat.
- YieldEach of the egg versions makes well over four pints once the eggs are counted, so it will serve a dozen or more in small cups. This is a rich cordial, not a dessert portion.
A posset was originally milk curdled with wine or ale, spiced and sweetened, drunk warm as a nightcap and prescribed for colds and sleeplessness from the late medieval period onward; the special two-handled, spouted posset pot let a drinker take the liquor from beneath the curd. Sack — the fortified white wine of Spain and the Canary Islands that Shakespeare's Falstaff drinks by the gallon — made the sack posset the grandest version, a wedding-night and Christmas drink in seventeenth-century England. The attribution to Sir Walter Raleigh is traditional rather than documented; Raleigh's name was attached to all manner of receipts, cordials and remedies long after his death in 1618, and the accompanying "Lady Mallet's" and "Master Rudstone's" versions have the look of items copied from a household manuscript book of the same era.