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Some Kitchen Kinks: Water
Grape Water.- cupful of boiling water; 4 tablespoonfuls of grape jelly; cupful of cold water; 1 teaspoonful of lemon juice; 1 tablespoonful of sugar. Pour boiling water over the jelly and stir until dissolved. Then add the cold water, sugar, and lemon juice, and a piece of ice sufficient to chill it thoroughly. Another delicious drink may be made in the same way from red-currant jelly. Blackberry, barberry, and black-currant jelly are also excellent for this refreshing drink.
Cinnamon Punch. -1 stick of cinnamon; 1 cupful of rich milk; 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar; 1 teaspoonful of brandy.
Put the cinnamon with the milk in a double boiler and steep till the flavor is all soaked out. Add the sugar and brandy. It may be used hot or ice cold, as desired.
Barley Water. - 2 tablespoonfuls of barley; 4 cupfuls of cold water; teaspoonful of salt.
Wash the barley thoroughly and let it soak over night in cold water.
In the morning set on the back of the stove where it will merely simmer, and cook for three hours. It ought to be reduced one half and be as thick as cream. Season with salt, and, if the patient likes it, a little sugar. Pour through a fine strainer, and drink hot.
Three sickroom beverages, printed together as a group. All are quick, but the transcription has lost some fractions and the barley water needs planning a day ahead.
- Missing fractionsNumbers have dropped out of the transcription: the grape water asks for "cupful of boiling water" and "cupful of cold water" with no quantity, and the barley water for "teaspoonful of salt" with none. A half-cup each of boiling and cold water, and a small pinch-to-quarter-teaspoon of salt, are plausible readings, but they are reconstructions. Treat the printed numbers as unreliable and taste as you go.
- Grape jelly, then and nowThe jelly intended here was most likely a home-set preserve, firmer and tarter than a modern soft sweet spread. If using commercial jelly, cut the added tablespoon of sugar or leave it out entirely, and keep the lemon juice — it is what stops the drink tasting like syrup.
- Dissolving the jellyPour the boiling water over the jelly in a heatproof glass or jug and stir until no lumps remain before the cold water goes in. Once chilled, undissolved jelly will not break up.
- Cinnamon punch is a steeped milk"Punch" here means only a flavoured drink; there is no fruit and almost no liquor. Steep the stick — cassia or true cinnamon — in a double boiler over barely simmering water until the milk tastes as strongly as you want, as the recipe directs. Do not boil the milk directly or it will catch and skin.
- The brandyOne teaspoon in a cup of milk is a flavouring, in the period style of dosing invalids with spirits. It can be left out with no other change.
- "Back of the stove"On a wood or coal range this was the coolest zone, used for long unattended cooking. On a modern hob it means the lowest setting with the lid ajar; three hours at a true simmer will reduce the 4 cupfuls to about 2, as the recipe says.
- Which barleyPearl barley is the likeliest reading and gives the creamy, faintly sweet liquid described; hulled or pot barley will take longer to soften. The overnight soak is part of the recipe and worth keeping.
- YieldThe grape water and the cinnamon punch each make a cup or so, a single serving meant to be made fresh. The barley water yields about two cups after reducing by half; it will thicken further on standing, and can be loosened with hot water and re-seasoned.
These belong to invalid cookery, a standard department of turn-of-the-century household manuals and the reason a book of "kitchen kinks" bothers with beverages at all. Before analgesics and rehydration salts were household items, nursing a fever or an upset stomach largely meant supplying warm, bland, lightly nourishing liquids at intervals, and the fruit-jelly waters here are essentially a home-made cordial: sweet, acidic, and easy to swallow. Barley water is the oldest of the three by far, a tisane with a documented medical pedigree stretching back to Greek and Roman physicians and still sold commercially in Britain as a soft drink. The teaspoon of brandy in the cinnamon milk reflects the period's routine use of spirits as a stimulant in the sickroom, a practice already being argued over by temperance-minded writers when this book appeared.