Strawberry Liqueur
INGREDIENTS .
Strawberries, which should be ripe and fresh-gathered, sugar-candy, brandy or other spirit.
Half fill a large bottle with picked strawberries, break the candy into small pieces and fill up with it. Pour over as much spirit as the bottle will hold, and let it stand (as much in the sun as possible) for a month; then filter off, and bottle for use. 395 STRAWBERRIES, PRESERVED.
Pick the stalks from the fruit, place it on and slightly stir the strawberries, that they a glass dish, sprinkle over it pounded sugar, may all be equally sweetened; pour the cream over the top, and serve. Devonshire STRAWBERRY DISH. cream, when it can be obtained. is exceedthick indeed, may be diluted with a little ingly delicious for this dish; and, if very thin cream or milk.
SEASONABLE in June and July.
Note. Instead of serving the strawberries in this manner, they may be picked only, and the cream and sugar served separately. Strawberry dishes are generally used for this fruit.
Strawberries, Preserved in Wine. INGREDIENTS. - To every quart bottle allow 1/4 lb. of finely-pounded loaf sugar; sherry or Madeira. AVERAGE COST, in full season, 6d. per lb. and used as soon as picked. Have ready Let the fruit be gathered in fine weather, some perfectly dry glass bottles and some STRAWBERRY. nice soft corks or bungs. Pick the stalks TIME. To stand, 1 month.
SEASONABLE. Make this in dry weather, from the strawberries, drop them into the when strawberries are ripe, Strawberries and Cream.
INGREDIENTS for dish for 5 or 6 persons.- 2 lbs. of picked strawberries, 1/2 pint of cream, 2 lbs. of picked strawberries, pint of cream, lb. of finely-pounded sugar, AVERAGE Cost , 1s. 10d. bottles, sprinkling amongst them pounded sugar in the above proportion, and when fill up with sherry or Madeira. Cork the the fruit reaches to the neck of the bottle , bottles down with new corks, and dip them into melted resin.
SEASONABLE. - Make this in June or July STRAWBERRIES, TO PRESERVE. 396
A steeped fruit cordial rather than a distilled one: the alcohol does all the extraction and all the preserving, so the method is forgiving. The points below cover the vessel, the sugar and the month of waiting.
- Sugar-candyThis is crystallised sugar in lumps, sold now as rock candy or rock sugar. Ordinary granulated sugar dissolves faster and works as well. The recipe gives no weight: it says to fill the bottle up with the broken candy after the fruit, which is a good deal more sugar than a modern cordial would carry.
- "A large bottle"No size is given. A 1-litre or quart jar with a wide mouth is far easier to fill and empty than a bottle, and lets you pack the fruit without crushing it. Half-filling with fruit, as directed, is the proportion that matters.
- Which spiritBrandy is the traditional choice and its grape character suits strawberries. Vodka gives a cleaner, brighter fruit flavour. Use a full-strength spirit of around 40% ABV, so that the mixture remains strong enough to preserve the fruit once it is diluted by the fruit's juice.
- The sunThe recipe directs that the bottle stand in the sun as much as possible, to speed extraction and dissolve the sugar. Light also strips the colour out of strawberries and pushes the flavour towards jam. A month in a cool, dark cupboard, shaken every few days, gives a fresher result.
- Fruit qualityThe instruction that ripe, fresh-gathered fruit be used is the hinge of the recipe. Alcohol extracts whatever is there and improves nothing; underripe or watery supermarket strawberries make a thin, hay-flavoured liqueur.
- FilteringStrain first through a sieve without pressing the fruit, then through a coffee filter or two layers of damp muslin for clarity. Pressing the pulp forces through fine solids that will settle as sediment in the bottle.
- Yield and keepingA jar filled as described yields well under its own volume in finished liqueur, since fruit and candy occupy much of the bottle. Sealed and kept in the dark it holds for years, though the colour fades from red towards amber over time.
Household fruit liqueurs of this kind were standard summer work in nineteenth-century English kitchens, made under the same logic as jam: a glut of perishable fruit turned into something that would keep until winter. The period distinguished compounded cordials, made at home by steeping fruit in bought spirit, from distilled ones, which were the business of licensed rectifiers. Brandy was a common base, and sugar-candy was often preferred to loaf sugar in cordial-making. The instruction to stand the bottle in the sun appears in other recipes of the era for ratafias and steeped spirits.