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SAFFRON CORDIAL WATER (Robinson's recipe)
Best picked saffron . . . .1/2 oz. Sifted loaf sugar . . . . .4 oz. Cinnamon and nutmeg, sliced, each . . . . 1/2 oz. Cloves and pimento, bruised. . . . . 1 oz. Sweet almonds, beaten . . . . .1 oz. Bitter almonds, beaten . . . . 1/4 oz. Caraways . . . . .1 oz. Pure water . . . . .1 pint Proof spirit of wine . . . . .1 pint Put the above ingredients into a stone jar, the almonds beaten with a little of the spirit of wine. Secure the cork, and let the ingredients infuse in the usual manner. Then strain and filter clear; bottle, cork, and seal. This should be kept a while to let the strong flavour of the saffron go off.
This is a nineteenth-century compounder's formula for a sweetened spirit infusion, and it is printed here as a historical document rather than as something to put in a jar. One ingredient rules it out entirely.
- Bitter almondsA quarter ounce of beaten bitter almonds is the reason this cannot be made. Bitter almonds contain amygdalin, which the crushing and steeping converts to hydrogen cyanide; the whole point of beating them is to release that flavour, and the toxin travels into the spirit with it. They are not sold for food in the United States and are restricted elsewhere. Nothing about the quantity here is measured against a safe dose.
- Saffron at this rateHalf an ounce of saffron to two pints of liquid is a very large charge by modern standards, and the recipe itself tells the maker to keep the bottle until the strong flavour subsides. Saffron in quantity is not benign, and the recipe gives no guidance at all on how much of the finished cordial constitutes a dose.
- What "proof spirit of wine" wasSpirit of wine is rectified grape or grain alcohol; British proof spirit was roughly 57 per cent alcohol by volume, so the finished cordial sat near 28 per cent before any sugar was allowed for. Modern "proof" numbers on American labels are a different scale and will mislead anyone reading this straight across.
- PimentoNot the sweet red pepper. Here pimento is allspice, the dried berry of Pimenta dioica, and the recipe calls for it bruised rather than ground.
- Loaf sugarSifted loaf sugar is sugar broken and sieved from a hard cone; ordinary granulated is its descendant. Four ounces is by weight, not volume.
- "Infuse in the usual manner"Trade shorthand for leaving the corked jar to steep for a period before straining and filtering through paper. The book supplies no time, temperature or method, assuming a reader who already knew the practice.
- If you want a saffron cordialUse a current recipe from a modern source. There is no adjustment to this formula that we would offer here.
Cordial waters sat on the border between the kitchen and the apothecary's counter, and such books often inherited their formulae from distillers' and confectioners' manuals rather than from cooks. Saffron was a standing item in that pharmacopoeia, credited into the nineteenth century with cheering the spirits and easing the stomach, which is why a compounder would justify buying half an ounce of the most expensive spice in the shop for two pints of liquid. The recipe's attribution to Robinson is typical of the genre: named formulae circulated between trade handbooks and were reprinted for decades with little change. The bitter almonds are equally of their time, valued for the benzaldehyde note that made a drink taste of marzipan and cherry stones.