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Wine, Spiced, or Bishop
Make several incisions in the rind of a lemon, stick cloves in the incisions, and roast the lemon by a slow fire. Put small but equal quantities of cinnamon, cloves, mace, and allspice into a saucepan, with half a pint of water. Let it boil till it is reduced one-half. Boil a bottle of port wine; burn a portion of the spirit out of it by applying a lighted paper to the saucepan. Put the roasted lemon and spice into the wine, stir it up well, and let it stand near the fire for ten minutes. Rub a few knobs of sugar on the rind of a lemon, put the sugar into a bowl or jug, with the juice of half a lemon (not roasted), pour the wine into it, grate some nutmeg into it, sweeten to taste, and serve with the lemon and spice floating in it. Oranges may be sometimes used instead of lemons, when the flavour of the latter is preferred to that of the former.
A hot spiced port, made in three stages: a clove-studded lemon roasted until fragrant, a spice decoction reduced in water, and the wine itself warmed and lightly flamed. None of it is difficult, but the temperature of the wine is what decides whether it tastes of fruit or of hot alcohol.
- Do not actually boil the portDo not actually boil the port hard -- modern practice is to bring it just to steaming and the first break of bubbles rather than a rolling boil, which drives off both alcohol and the fruit that carries the spice, leaving something flat and stewed. Around 160-170F is the usual modern recommendation, though the original does call for a boil and then for the spirit to be burnt off.
- Burning off the spiritApplying a lighted paper ignites the alcohol vapour on the surface; the flame is nearly invisible in daylight and burns for under a minute. Use a deep, wide pan off the heat, keep your face and sleeves clear, and have a lid to hand to smother it. Skipping this step entirely does no harm to the drink.
- The roasted lemonA slow fire means gentle, indirect heat at the hearth; the book gives no oven setting. A low oven, in the region of 300-325F for 25-30 minutes, is a reasonable modern stand-in -- roast until the skin is browned in patches and the fruit is soft and heavily perfumed. Roasting caramelises the peel oils and takes the raw edge off the cloves; it is the difference between this and ordinary mulled wine.
- Half a pint of waterAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 285 ml, reduced to 5 fl oz. "Small but equal quantities" is unhelpfully vague — a teaspoon each of broken cinnamon, whole cloves, blade mace and allspice berries is a sensible reading. Use whole spices; ground ones turn the finished drink cloudy and gritty.
- Knobs of sugarSugar loaf was broken into irregular lumps; modern cubes are the direct descendant. Rubbing them hard against a lemon until they turn yellow and damp is a way of extracting the peel oil, and it is worth doing properly — four or five cubes, working the whole surface of the fruit.
- A bottle of portA Victorian wine bottle held roughly the same as today's 750 ml. Use a ruby or a basic tawny; vintage port is wasted here, and cheap fortified "port-style" wine is usually too sweet once the sugar goes in.
- The last sentenceAs printed it reads backwards: oranges are the substitute when orange flavour is wanted in place of lemon. Seville oranges, in season in midwinter, are one possibility, though the recipe specifies no variety.
- YieldA bottle of wine plus the spice liquor makes about 900 ml, six modest glasses. Serve in warmed heatproof glasses or a punch bowl, with the lemon and whole spices left floating as directed.
Bishop is one of a small family of English hot wine punches — bishop, cardinal, pope — whose names are generally traced to the colours of ecclesiastical dress, red port for the bishop, and the joke was old by the time this book appeared. It belongs to the tavern and college common room rather than the domestic table: Swift mentions it, and Dickens gave it its most famous outing when Scrooge proposes to discuss Bob Cratchit's affairs "over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop." The German Bischof is the same drink under the same logic. What dates this particular version is the roasted clove-stuck lemon and the separate spice decoction, both signs of a period when whole spices were bought by the ounce and had to be coaxed rather than shaken out of a jar, and when a good deal of port was drunk in England because trade treaties had long made it cheaper than French wine.