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Cherry Cordial
To six pounds of cherries add three pounds of sugar and one gallon of whiskey. Shake the jar often for the first three weeks, then bottle.
A four-line infusion with no vessel size, no steeping time beyond the shaking period, and no mention of whether to pit the fruit. The gaps are worth filling before you commit a gallon of whiskey.
- Scale and vesselSix pounds of cherries plus a gallon of whiskey needs at least a two-gallon jar with room to shake. A wide-mouth glass jar with a tight lid is right; avoid metal lids in direct contact with the spirit, and never use a stoneware crock of unknown glaze.
- The whiskeyIn an American household book of this period whiskey usually meant rye or corn whiskey, and bottling strength varied widely; much of it was stronger than the 40 percent standard today. A 40 percent bourbon or rye works, though a higher proof draws more flavour from the fruit.
- Sugar goes in dissolvedThree pounds of granulated sugar dumped on top of whole fruit will sit on the bottom for weeks. Either add it a pound at a time as the jar is shaken, or dissolve it in the least water that will take it and stir that in.
- Which cherriesThe recipe does not say which cherries. Sour cherries such as Morello or Montmorency give a sharp, almond-edged cordial; sweet cherries make something flatter, and if you use them you may want to cut the sugar to about two pounds.
- PitsThe original does not say to pit the fruit, and whole cherries, pits and all, are the traditional treatment and give the faint bitter-almond note. Leave them whole. Do not crush or grind the pits, which releases amygdalin and yields hydrogen cyanide.
- TimeThe recipe bottles after the three weeks of shaking. A longer steep -- two to three months in a cool dark place -- gives a rounder result; the fruit can be strained out at that point and the liquid left to settle before racking off the sediment.
- YieldExpect somewhat more than a gallon of finished cordial once the sugar and the cherry juice are counted in, so have at least six 750 ml bottles ready. Sealed and out of the light it will keep well.
Fruit steeped in spirit and sweetened is one of the oldest ways of keeping a harvest, and cherry versions turn up across Europe long before they reach American cookbooks: the French guignolet, the Danish Cherry Heering, the English brandied morellos of eighteenth-century still-room books. What marks this version as American is the whiskey. Brandy was the classic base, but in the domestic-manual boom of the 1870s and 1880s, when The Home Cook Book was assembled from contributions by ladies of Chicago and other cities, corn and rye whiskey were cheap and everywhere. Cordials of this kind sat in an awkward place in the temperance-minded household: they were often kept as medicine as much as pleasure, and a large batch of sweetened liquor could be defended as a stocked medicine chest rather than a bar.