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Strawberry Cordial
One gallon apple brandy, four quarts strawberries. After standing twenty-four hours, press them through a cotton bag, and add four quarts more of berries. After twenty-four hours more, repeat this process. To every quart of the cordial add one pound of sugar, or sweeten it with a syrup made as follows: two pounds sugar, one pint water, white of one egg whipped a little-all boiled together. When cold, add one pint syrup to one quart cordial.--Mrs. C. F. C.
An infusion, not a distillation: the alcohol is bought ready-made and the fruit is steeped in it in three successive batches. The whole thing takes three days of steeping plus bottle time.
- Apple brandyThis is applejack — unaged or lightly aged apple spirit, usually bottled strong. A bottled apple brandy or a good calvados works; the higher the proof, the better it extracts and the longer it keeps. Total volume needed is one gallon.
- Twelve quarts of berriesFour quarts at a time, three times over, is roughly 15-18 lb of strawberries for a gallon of brandy. Halve or quarter the whole recipe unless you have a berry patch.
- The cotton bagA jelly bag or a doubled square of muslin in a colander. Press firmly but do not wring so hard that pulp goes through, or the finished cordial will stay cloudy for months.
- Hull and crushThe original says nothing about hulling or crushing the berries. Crushing them lightly speeds extraction over leaving them whole.
- The egg whiteIt is a clarifier, not a thickener. As the syrup comes to the boil the albumen coagulates and traps sediment; skim the grey scum off the top and discard it. Because the syrup boils, there is no raw-egg concern.
- Sweetening ratiosOne pound of sugar per quart is very sweet by modern taste, and the syrup route lands in much the same place: two pounds of sugar to a pint of water makes about two pints of syrup, so a pint of syrup to a quart of cordial is close to the same sugar load. Start at half and taste, since strawberry acidity varies between varieties.
- Yield and keepingA gallon of brandy plus syrup gives roughly five to six quarts of finished cordial. Bottle it, cork tightly, and keep it dark; the colour fades from ruby to brick within a year even though the spirit itself keeps indefinitely.
- ServingA cordial of this strength is a two-ounce pour, served cold in a small glass after dinner, or splashed over ice with soda.
Fruit cordials were one way a Virginia household turned a glut of soft fruit into something that would last past the week, alongside drying, preserving and jelly-making, and apple brandy was the cheap local spirit that made it possible — orchard applejack was distilled all over the Piedmont and the Valley through the nineteenth century. The successive-steeping method here, discarding spent fruit and adding fresh to the same spirit, is the same logic used for ratafias: each round of berries gives up less, so you keep loading the alcohol until it is saturated with flavour. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives credited largely by initials rather than full names, which is why this one carries only the initials "Mrs. C. F. C." — the book reads as a collective inventory of what households actually did rather than a single author's instruction.