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Sherry Cobbler
Take half a tumblerful of ice rasped into fine shavings. Add two moderate-sized lumps of sugar which have been rubbed upon the yellow part of half a lemon, then crushed to powder, and two glassfuls of sherry. Stir all briskly together, or pass the mixture quickly from one glass to another, and drink the liquor through a straw or glass tube. When time is a consideration, the cobbler can be flavoured by mixing with the ice a quarter of a lemon, or a quarter of an orange cut into small pieces, and adding a spoonful of powdered sugar. By way of variety, a cupful of strawberries or rasp-berries and a table-spoonful of Curacoa, may be substituted for the lemon.
A Victorian iced sherry drink, and one of the earliest cocktails to be drunk through a straw. The measurements are all in glassware rather than ounces, so the first job is translating them.
- What a "glassful" meansIn this period a wine glass measures roughly 2 fl oz, so two glassfuls is about 4 fl oz (120 ml) of sherry. Half a tumblerful of shaved ice is about 4-5 oz by volume in a 10 oz tumbler.
- Lump sugarVictorian sugar lumps were cut from a loaf and are close to a modern rough sugar cube, about a teaspoon each. Two lumps is roughly two teaspoons; adjust to the sherry, since a fino needs more than a cream.
- The hinge: rub the sugar on the lemonRubbing the lumps over the zest before crushing them draws the citrus oil into the sugar. That oil, not juice, is what gives the drink its perfume, and the shortcut version with chopped lemon and powdered sugar will tend to taste flatter.
- Rasped iceIce was shaved from a block with a plane or scraper. A blender pulse or a canvas Lewis bag and mallet gives much the same fine, wet shavings; whole cubes dilute and chill more slowly, which works against the drink.
- Which sherryNineteenth-century "sherry" of this sort was generally a blended, often sweetened export style rather than a bone-dry fino. An amontillado or dry oloroso sits well against the sugar.
- Passing from glass to glassThis is close to what bartenders call throwing, an old technique that aerates and chills without a shaker. Two tumblers and a steady hand do the job; a short shake with the ice is the modern equivalent.
- The berry variationA cupful of strawberries or raspberries is a generous amount for one drink. Muddle them into the sugar and strain if you want a clean glass, or leave them in, which is what the wording suggests.
- YieldOne tall tumbler, holding about 4 fl oz of sherry. It reads as a single serving despite the volume of ice.
The cobbler was among the American drinks that crossed to Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century, and Cassell's includes it at a point when iced drinks were becoming possible in ordinary households thanks to the international ice trade and the domestic icebox. Its fame owes a good deal to Dickens: in Martin Chuzzlewit (serialised 1843-44) Martin drinks his first sherry cobbler in New York and is astonished by it, and the passage is often credited with introducing British readers to both the drink and the drinking straw. The name is generally traced to the broken, cobbled surface of the shaved ice, though the derivation is traditional rather than documented. The oleo-saccharum trick of rubbing sugar on citrus peel, given here almost in passing, is the same method that underpins punch-making from the previous century.