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Scotch Athole Brose
I POUND STRAINED HONEY I CUP WATER 3 CUPS SCOTCH WHISKY Dissolve honey in water and add whisky slowly, stirring rapidly with a swizzle stick until it froths. Drink at once or bottle it and let it mellow as long as you can keep away from it.
SWIZZLE STICK A swizzle stick is easy to make by pulling up little bushes, such as hazel, willow, or other sweet tasting wood, until you find one with three or four roots jutting out like prongs, cut the stick about a foot and a half long and the prongs about an inch, peel off the bark clean as a whistle, wipe dry and season over fire. Plunge the prong end in any drink you want to make frothy and twirl the stick rapidly between your palms.
THE HARVEST BUCKET I CUP OATMEAL 2/3 CUP SUGAR JUICE OF I LEMON 1/2 OUNCE GINGER I GALLON BOILING WATER In a roomy kettle mix oatmeal, sugar, lemon and ginger with a little warm water, stir well, pour on the boiling water and continue stirring rapidly while boiling 3 minutes. Strain and cool, then send it to the field with a big chunk of ice bobbing in it.
A honey-and-whisky liqueur that needs no cooking, only patience and vigorous agitation. The proportions are generous and the finished drink is potent.
- Weigh the honey, don't measure itA pound of strained honey is roughly 1 1/3 cups. Warm it slightly if it has crystallised so it dissolves in the water without clouding.
- Yield and strengthYou end up with about a quart and a third. Three cups of whisky in roughly 5 1/3 cups of finished drink puts it near 22 percent alcohol — closer to a liqueur than a punch. Serve in small glasses.
- Add the whisky cold and slowIf you warm the honey to help it dissolve, let the honey water cool to room temperature before adding the spirit; pouring spirit into hot syrup drives off aroma.
- The froth is the pointAthole brose is judged on its head. A cocktail shaker or an immersion blender on low will raise it faster than a stick, though the froth falls back within a few minutes either way, which is why the original says drink at once.
- Choosing swizzle woodHazel and willow are safe; so are birch and maple. Avoid cherry, laurel, yew, oleander and any wood you cannot positively identify — several common ornamentals carry cyanogenic or cardiac compounds in the bark and sap. Scrub and scald the peeled stick before it goes into anything you intend to drink.
- BottlingSealed in a clean bottle and kept in a cool cupboard, the honey and whisky marry over several weeks and the drink genuinely improves. It keeps indefinitely; the alcohol level is well above the range where anything grows.
- On the oatmeal versionMany traditional recipes steep oatmeal in water overnight and use the strained, milky liquid in place of plain water. That version tastes rounder, but the oatmeal solids make it less stable than the plain one, so keep it cool and drink it sooner.
Athole Brose is Highland, and its name is traditionally traced to a 1475 episode in which the Earl of Atholl is said to have captured a rebel chieftain by filling the well he drank from with honey, whisky and oatmeal. Documentation for the story is thin, and the drink is better understood as one variation on brose, the old Scots dish of oatmeal moistened with hot liquid — water, broth, or in celebratory form, whisky and cream. It survives chiefly as a Hogmanay and Burns Night drink. Its appearance in an outdoor cookery book alongside a whittled swizzle stick and a haymakers' oatmeal water reflects a period when camp cooking still borrowed freely from farm and shooting-lodge practice, where a bottle of something sweet and strong was standard kit.