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Cranberry Cordial
Boil a large tablespoonful of cornmeal or oatmeal with a small piece of lemon peel in two quarts of water. Mash a cupful of cranberries and mix with a cupful of water. Add to the oatmeal with enough sugar to sweeten and boil gently for fifteen minutes. Strain and serve cold.
A grain-thickened barley-water relative, sweetened with cranberry. The method is straightforward; the points worth attention are proportions, straining and keeping.
- YieldTwo quarts of water plus a cup, less whatever boils away and the solids removed in straining, should give somewhere in the region of seven cups. Enough for four to six servings.
- Cornmeal or oatmealEither works, but use the coarser cuts rather than instant. Steel-cut oats or stone-ground cornmeal release starch slowly and strain out cleanly; quick oats disintegrate into sludge that clogs the sieve.
- A tablespoonful of meal to two quartsThis is deliberately thin — the grain is there for body and a faint sweetness, not to make gruel. Resist increasing it.
- CranberriesA cupful of fresh or frozen whole berries. Mash them before cooking, as directed: crushing releases the juice, and the fruit needs contact with the water to give the drink its colour and tartness.
- Sugar to sweetenStart at 1/3 cup and taste after straining. Cranberries are aggressively sour, and the recipe leaves the quantity entirely to the cook; sweeten at the end rather than guessing at the start.
- StrainingA fine sieve lined with a double layer of cheesecloth gives a clear drink. Do not press the solids through or you reintroduce the starch and skins the straining was meant to remove.
- Lemon peelTake only the coloured zest in a wide strip and remove it with the strainings. Modern citrus is often waxed and sprayed, so scrub it first, and leave the white pith behind — it turns bitter over fifteen minutes of boiling.
- KeepingA sweetened, starch-bearing liquid with no alcohol in it spoils quickly. Refrigerate at once and use within two days.
"Cordial" here has nothing to do with liqueur. The word derives from the Latin cor, heart, and for centuries was used of any restorative drink given to the sick; only later did it narrow to the sweetened spirits sold in bottles. The recipe belongs to a long tradition of sickroom cookery, where barley water, gruel, toast water and fruit waters were standard offerings to anyone with a fever or a weak stomach. The grain-and-water base is essentially thin barley water, a preparation described in English household manuals well before this book was printed; the cranberry supplies acid and colour, both valued for making a tepid sickroom drink palatable. Cranberries kept well for weeks in a cold pantry without processing, and appear frequently in nineteenth-century American recipes for jellies, sauces and drinks intended for winter use.