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Sassafras Cordial
Take half a pound of sassafras chips, two ounces of compound extract of sarsaparilla, one ounce of gum arabic dissolved in white wine, one ounce of juniper-berries bruised, two ounces of pistachio-nuts blanched and beaten, one ounce of syrup of lemons, two ounces of rosemary-leaves shredded finely, one ounce of sweet marjoram shredded finely, one ounce each of candied lemon and citron, nine ounces of sugar candy beaten finely, twelve ounces of stoned and cut muscatel raisins, three quarts of sherry wine, and two quarts of proof spirit of wine. Beat the nuts with a little of the wine, and put all the above ingredients into a jar, which cork and seal. Set the jar in a hot-water bath, and let the cordial infuse eight hours every day for a week. Keep it two months; then strain and filter, and use the cordial when wanted. Sassafras cordial is greatly improved by age.
This is a nineteenth-century medicinal cordial, and its bulk ingredient is the one that rules it out. The notes below explain what the terms mean and why the recipe belongs on the page rather than in the glass.
- Sassafras is the problemHalf a pound of sassafras chips steeped into five quarts of spirit and wine delivers a large dose of safrole, the compound that gives sassafras its scent. Safrole caused liver tumours in rodent feeding studies and the US Food and Drug Administration prohibited it as a food additive in 1960; sassafras bark and unmodified sassafras oil are not permitted flavourings today. Safrole-free sassafras extract exists commercially, but it is a different material from what this recipe calls for, and substituting it does not reconstruct the drink.
- No modernised version hereThere is no adjustment of quantity or infusion time that makes a half-pound sassafras extraction sound. If you want a spiced herbal cordial, work from a current recipe.
- "Proof spirit of wine"In British usage proof spirit was roughly 57 per cent alcohol by volume, so the finished cordial would have been very strong indeed — two quarts of it against three quarts of sherry. Modern grape spirit at 40 per cent is not the same thing.
- Compound extract of sarsaparillaA pharmacy preparation, not a grocery item: sarsaparilla root combined in various formulas with sassafras, guaiacum, liquorice and other botanicals depending on the pharmacopoeia followed. It has no current equivalent on a supermarket shelf.
- Sugar candy and gum arabicSugar candy was crystallised loaf sugar, broken and pounded — plain granulated sugar by weight is the nearest thing. Gum arabic, dissolved here in white wine, was a common body-and-mouthfeel agent in cordials before glycerine and modern syrups; it is still sold as powdered acacia gum.
- The hot-water bathEight hours a day for a week in a water bath is a warm maceration, followed by two months of keeping before straining. The technique itself is a recognised way of extracting resins and essential oils from woody material; it is the material that fails.
Sassafras — the root bark of Sassafras albidum, a North American tree — reached European apothecaries in the sixteenth century as a New World drug, promoted for everything from fevers to syphilis, and it kept a place in the pharmacopoeias for three hundred years. Cordials like this one sit exactly on the line between medicine and pleasure: the sarsaparilla extract, the juniper and the aromatic herbs are all traditional blood-purifying and diaphoretic simples, while the muscatel raisins, pistachios, candied citron and three quarts of sherry are unmistakably confectionery. The same tree flavoured the root beer and sarsaparilla drinks of the following century. That commercial afterlife is what eventually brought safrole to the attention of regulators, and the flavour was reformulated out of American soft drinks in the 1960s.