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Cordials
proof spirit, 1 gall.; sugar, 1½ lbs. Digest for 6 | Hungary-water, honey-water, eau de Cologne, and hours.
Creme d'Orange of Superior Flavor.
Take 3 doz. middling sized oranges; orangeflower water, 2 qts.; loaf sugar, 18 lbs.; spirit of wine, 2 galls.; tincture of saffron, 1½ oz.; water, 4 galls. This will produce 7½ galls.
Cut the oranges in slices, put them into a cask, add the spirit and orange-flower water, let it stand a fortnight, then boil the sugar in the water for 1/2 an hour, pour it out, and let it stand till cold, then add it to the mixture in the cask, and put in the tincture of saffron. Let it remain a fortnight longer; then strain, and proceed as directed in the receipt for Cremes de Barbades, and a very fine cordial will be produced.
Fine Brandy Shrub.
Take 8 oz. of citric acid; 1 gall. of porter; 3 galls. of raisin wine; 2 qts. of orange-flower water; 7 galls. of good brandy; 5 galls. of water. This will produce 16 galls. First, dissolve the citric acid in the water, then add to it the brandy; next, mix the raisin wine, porter, and orange-flower water together; and lastly, mix the whole; and in a week or 10 days it will be ready for drinking, and of a very mellow flavor.
Rum Shrub.
Leave out the brandy and porter, and add 1 gall. more raisin wine; 6 lbs. of honey; and 10 galls. of good flavored rum.
Currant Shrub.
Take white currants, when quite ripe, pick them off the stalks, and bruise them; strain out the juice through a cloth, and to 2 qts. of the juice put 2 lbs. of loaf sugar; when it is dissolved add to it 1 gall. of rum, then strain it through a flannel bag that will keep in the jelly, and it will run off clear; then bottle it for use:
Usquebaugh.
Usquebaugh is a strong compound liquor, chiefly taken by way of dram; it is made in the highest perfection at Drogheda, in Ireland. The following are the ingredients, and the proportions in which they are to be used:
Take of best brandy, 1 gall.; raisins, stoned, 1 lb.; cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamoms, each 1 oz. crushed in a mortar; saffron, 1/2 oz. rind of 1 Seville orange; and brown sugar candy, 1 lb. Shake these well every day, for at least 14 days, and it will at the expiration of that time be ready to be fined for use.
Another Method.
Take of nutmegs, cloves, and cinnamon, each 2 oz.; of the seeds of anise, caraway, and coriander, each 4 oz. liquorice-root, sliced, 1/2 lb. bruise the seeds and spices, and put them together with the liquorice, into the still with 11 galls. of proof spirit, and 2 galls. of water; distill with a pretty brisk fire. As soon as the still begins to work, fasten to the nozzle of the worm 2 oz. of English saffron, tied up in a cloth, that the liquor may run through it, and extract all its tincture. When the operation is finished, sweeten with fine sugar.
This liqueur may be much improved by the following additions: Digest 4 lbs. of stoned raisins; 3 lbs. of dates; and 2 lbs. of sliced liquorice-root, in 2 galls. of water for 12 hours. When the liquor is strained off, and has deposited all sediment, decant it gently into the vessel containing the usquebaugh.
Ratafia a la Violette.
Take Florentine orris root 2 drachms, archel 1 oz., spirit of wine 4 pts. Digest, strain, and add sugar 4 lbs. Liqueurs are also made by adding several other spirits to an equal quantity of simple syrup, or common capillaire.
This is a run of cordial and shrub formulas from the distilling section of Mackenzie's, written for a trade still-room rather than a kitchen. Several of the entries cannot be carried out today, and the scale of all of them is commercial.
- The second usquebaugh is a distilling receiptIt charges a still with 11 gallons of proof spirit and 2 gallons of water and works it over "a pretty brisk fire". Redistilling spirit is a licensed activity in the UK, the US and most other jurisdictions, and an open flame under a vessel of hot ethanol vapour is the classic cause of still-room fires and explosions. This is not a home operation at any scale.
- Archel is a dye, not a flavouringThe archel (orchil) in the Ratafia a la Violette is a purple colourant extracted from lichens with ammonia; it was used on wool and, less respectably, to tint drinks. It is not a permitted food ingredient and its composition varies with the batch. Orris root, the other half of that formula, is also a perfumer's material and a recognised skin and respiratory sensitiser.
- The spliced perfume lineThe opening fragment about Hungary-water, honey-water and eau de Cologne belongs to the perfumery matter that sits alongside these cordials in the distilling section. Those preparations were never meant to be drunk, and nothing in the surviving text tells you which of the two trades the opening "proof spirit, 1 gall.; sugar, 1½ lbs." was destined for.
- Spirit of wine and proof spirit"Spirit of wine" is rectified ethanol of roughly 90 per cent and above; "proof spirit" in nineteenth-century British usage is about 57 per cent alcohol by volume, not the 50 per cent that American proof implies. High-strength rectified spirit is restricted or unavailable in some countries and freely sold in others, and the strengths of the finished cordials here were calculated on those figures.
- Saffron in quantityThe Creme d'Orange calls for an ounce and a half of tincture of saffron and the distilled usquebaugh hangs two ounces of saffron in the worm outlet. Saffron at that rate was doing the work of a colourant as much as a flavouring, and in a period when it was the standard tint for usquebaugh.
- ScaleThese are barrel quantities: the book states 7½ gallons of orange creme and 16 gallons of brandy shrub, and the rum shrub, though no yield is given, runs to a comparable volume on 10 gallons of rum alone. They belong to a cordial house supplying publicans.
- If you want a fruit cordialThe currant shrub is the only entry here that is essentially a modern flavoured liqueur, but for a made-at-home fruit cordial or infused spirit, use a current recipe with tested proportions and food-grade ingredients throughout.
Usquebaugh is the English mangling of the Irish and Scottish Gaelic uisce beatha or uisge beatha, "water of life", the phrase that also gave us the word whisky; by the eighteenth century the English trade used "usquebaugh" specifically for the sweetened, spiced, saffron-yellow Irish cordial rather than for plain spirit, and Drogheda's reputation for it, cited here as fact, seems to have been a familiar note in drink writing. "Shrub" comes by a quite different route, from the Arabic sharab, a drink, and in this period meant a spirit sweetened and soured for punch-making; the brandy shrub leans on eight ounces of citric acid, perhaps standing in for lemons that would not keep. That these formulas sit in a chapter on distillation alongside Hungary-water and eau de Cologne is the real historical point: the compounder of cordials and the compounder of perfumes were often one and the same tradesman, working from the same still and the same shelf of spirits, essential oils and dyestuffs.