Elder Wine
INGREDIENTS. - To every 3 gallons of water allow ¼ peck of elderberries; to every gallon of juice allow 3 lbs. of sugar, 1/2 oz. of ground ginger, 6 cloves, 1 lb. of good Turkey raisins ; 1 pint of brandy to every gallon of wine. To every 9 gallons of wine, 3 or 4 tablespoonfuls of fresh brewer's yeast.
Pour the water, quite boiling, on the elderberries, which should be picked from the stalks, and let these stand covered for 24 hours; then strain the whole through a sieve or bag, breaking the fruit to express all the juice from it. Measure the liquor, and to every gallon allow the above proportion of sugar. Boil the juice and sugar with the ginger, cloves and raisins for 1 hour, skimming the liquor the whole time; let it stand stand until milk-warm, then ELDERBERRIES. put it into a clean dry cask, with 3 or 4 tablespoonfuls of good fresh yeast to every 9 gallons of wine. Let it ferment for about a fortnight; then add the brandy, bung up the cask, and let it stand some months before it is bottled, when it will be found excellent. A bunch of hops suspended to a string from the bung, some persons say, will preserve the wine good for several years. Elder wine is usually mulled, and served with sippets of toasted bread and a little grated nutmeg.
TIME. To stand covered for 24 hours; to be boiled 1 hour.
SEASONABLE. - Make this in September.
Empress Pudding. INGREDIENTS for large pudding. Ib. of rice, 2 oz. of butter, 3 eggs, jam, sufficient milk to soften the rice. AVERAGE COST, 1s.
ENDIVE.
Boil the rice in the milk until very soft; then add the butter, boil it for a few minutes after the latter ingredient is put in, and set it by to cool. Well beat the eggs, stir these in, and line a dish with puff-paste; put over this a layer of rice, then a thin layer of any kind of jam, then another layer of rice, and proceed in this manner until the dish is full; and bake in a moderate oven for 3/4 hour. This pudding may be eaten hot or cold; if the latter, it will be much improved by having a boiled custard poured over it.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Endive. This vegetable, so beautiful in appearance, makes an excellent addition to winter salad, when lettuces and other salads are not obtainable. It is usually placed cut up in the centre of the dish, and looks remarkably pretty with slices of beetroot, hard-boiled eggs, and curled celery placed round it so that the colours contrast nicely. In preparing it, carefully wash and cleanse it free from insects, which are generally found near the heart; remove any decayed or dead leaves, and dry it thoroughly by shaking in a cloth. This vegetable may also be served hot, stewed in cream, brown gravy, or butter; but when dressed thus the sauce it is stewed in should not be very highly seasoned, as that would destroy and overpower the flavour of the vegetable. SEASONABLE from November to March.
Endive à la Française. - INGREDIENTS for dish for 5 or 6 persons.heads of endive, 1 pint of broth, 3 oz. of fresh butter salt, pepper and grated nutmeg to taste. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 2d. Wash and boil the endive as in the preceding recipe; chop it rather fine, and put into a stewpan with the broth; boil over a brisk fire until the sauce is all reduced; then put in the butter, pepper, salt and grated nutmeg (the latter must be very sparingly used); mix all well together, bring it to the boiling-point, and serve very hot.
TIME.-10 minutes to boil, 5 minutes to simmer in the broth.
SEASONABLE from November to March.
This is a full cask-scale country wine from the era when households brewed in nine-gallon lots; the quantities need scaling down before anything else. The page as printed also runs on into Empress Pudding and two endive entries — the notes below concern the elder wine only.
- The measures, in plain termsA peck is 8 dry quarts, roughly 10-14 lb of destemmed elderberries. Beeton's gallons are imperial (4.55 litres), so 3 gallons of water is about 13.6 litres. A workable one-gallon batch is about 3.5 lb of berries to 4.5 litres of water, then 3 lb sugar per gallon of strained juice.
- Stalks and leaves are not optional detailWhatever Beeton's reason for saying the berries should be picked from the stalks, it is worth doing thoroughly. Elder stems, leaves and unripe berries carry cyanogenic compounds and a purgative resin; strip the fruit properly and discard green berries. The hour-long boil deals with the raw fruit itself.
- Do not bung a fermenting cask tight"Bung up the cask" assumed a wooden vessel that could weep and a fortnight's vigorous fermentation already spent. In glass or plastic, fit an airlock and leave it there until fermentation has genuinely stopped, or the vessel can burst.
- YeastFresh brewer's yeast came from the nearest brewhouse and gave unpredictable results. A sachet of dried wine yeast, pitched once the must is at blood heat or below, does the same job with far less risk of off-flavours. "Milk-warm" is around blood heat, roughly 35C; pitching much hotter than that will stress and eventually kill the yeast.
- The raisins are structure, not sweetnessA pound of raisins per gallon adds body and fermentable sugar. Chop or break them so the sugar is available.
- The brandy is a fortificationA pint of brandy to the gallon is a heavy addition by modern standards and pushes the finished wine well past table strength. Half that, or none, still keeps well in a sealed, filled vessel.
- Skim, and keep skimmingThe hour of skimming during the boil removes protein scum and fine pulp. Neglect it and the wine is likelier to stay hazy.
- ServingMulled means warmed with the spices, never simmered — alcohol and aroma both go off above about 70C. Sippets are small triangles or fingers of toast, floated on the cup.
Elder wine was one of the great English cottage wines: the tree grew in every hedgerow, the fruit cost nothing but an afternoon in September, and the result was a dark, tannic, faintly medicinal red that filled the gap between beer and imported claret in households that could not afford the latter. Beeton's note that it is "usually mulled, and served with sippets of toasted bread and a little grated nutmeg" places it firmly as a winter warmer rather than a dinner wine — the same role hot elder took at coaching inns and, traditionally, as a household remedy for chills and coughs, a reputation elderberry syrups still trade on. The "good Turkey raisins" are a reminder of how much of a Victorian storecupboard came through the eastern Mediterranean trade, and the hint about suspending a bunch of hops from the bung is offered exactly as such folk knowledge usually was: on the authority of "some persons say".