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SANGAREE (West Indian)
Crush four ounces of loaf sugar to powder, and pour upon it a large wine-glassful of lime-juice. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then add a bottle of Madeira, half a pint of pure French brandy of Jamaica rum, and two pints of cold spring water. Grate the fourth part of a small nutmeg over the sangaree, put a large lump of ice into it, and serve. Spongecake or Savoy biscuit is generally served with the sangaree.
A punch-bowl drink rather than a single glass: as written it makes roughly two and a half quarts and will serve a dozen. The measurements are British imperial, which matters here because the water and spirit quantities are large.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a hard cone and broken off as needed; crushing it to powder was simply how you got dissolvable sugar. Use 4 oz (about half a cup) of caster or superfine sugar, or make a simple syrup with the lime juice.
- A large wine-glassfulA wine-glass is conventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz, and a "large" one perhaps 2 1/2 to 3 fl oz. That is roughly the juice of three limes; start at the lower end and taste, since the sugar-to-acid balance is the whole structure of the drink.
- Imperial pintsHalf an imperial pint is 10 fl oz and two imperial pints is 40 fl oz, so the water alone is about six US cups. Reading these as US pints will give you a noticeably stronger and sharper bowl.
- "Brandy of Jamaica rum"A printer's slip for "or": choose one, not both. Rum makes the more characteristically West Indian version; a dark or gold Jamaican rum suits the Madeira better than a light one.
- The MadeiraA bottle here means 26 fl oz or so by period reckoning; a modern 750 ml bottle is close enough. A medium-dry Verdelho or a Bual works; a cheap cooking Madeira will taste stewed once the sugar is in.
- NutmegA quarter of a small nutmeg grated over the surface is the finishing gesture and not optional to the style. Grate it at the last moment, over the filled bowl rather than into the liquid, so the aroma is met at the first sip.
- The single large lump of iceOne big lump was used deliberately: it chills without diluting quickly, which matters in a bowl already carrying six cups of water. A large block or a few oversized cubes will hold up far better than a scoop of small ice.
- RestingMix the sugar and lime first and confirm the sugar has fully dissolved before the wine goes in; sugar dissolves poorly in cold fortified wine and will settle out at the bottom of the bowl.
Sangaree is the English form of the Spanish sangría, "bleeding," a name generally traced to the colour of the red wine used in the original Iberian drink; the word entered English through the Caribbean in the eighteenth century and by the Victorian period covered almost any wine sweetened, watered, iced and dusted with nutmeg. The West Indian version here shows its origins in its ingredients rather than its name: Madeira was the fortified wine that survived the Atlantic crossing best and became the standard wine of the colonies and of the American South, and Jamaica rum and lime were the local products at hand.