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Sack Posset
½ pint (I cup) ale 1/2 pint (I cup) sherry wine I quart (4 cups) boiling milk or cream I grated nutmeg 1/2 lb. (I cup) sugar 2 yolks of eggs Mix the ale and sherry wine and heat, then add the milk or cream, nutmeg and sugar. Draw the saucepan to the back of the fire, and let the contents simmer for an hour. Just before serving beat in the yolks of the eggs, and serve very hot.
This is a recipe which is credited to no less a person than Sir Walter Raleigh. "Devils on Horseback" are probably so called because they go so fast after being tasted "Tom Thumbs" are savory titbits for breakfast or luncheon, made with eggs, cheese, bread crumbs, milk, parsley and sweetenings. Bake and serve hot "Hopping John" combines bacon, dried peas and rice in a cheap and nourishing dish Eggs
A posset is a curdled drink, not a smooth one: the acid in the ale and wine sets the milk into a soft curd that floats above the spiced liquor beneath. Knowing that is the difference between thinking the recipe has failed and knowing it has worked.
- Heat, and the one thing to avoidKeep the pan below a boil once the milk goes in. "Draw the saucepan to the back of the fire" means the coolest spot on a coal range, i.e. a bare simmer at most. A true boil turns the curd tough and grainy instead of soft and spoonable.
- SackSack was a strong white wine imported from Spain and the Canaries, and may or may not have been fortified in the modern sense. Sherry is the standard modern stand-in, as this recipe already assumes; a dry oloroso or amontillado suits the spice better than a cream sherry, given how much sugar is in the pot.
- The aleUse a soft English-style ale, not a hopped IPA. An hour of heat concentrates bitterness, and modern hopping rates for styles like IPA are well above those of the mild ales a cook of this book's period would have used.
- SugarHalf a pound of sugar to six cups of liquid is very sweet by current taste. Half that amount still balances the ale, and can be corrected at the end.
- NutmegOne whole grated nutmeg is about 2 to 3 teaspoons, which is a great deal. Half a nutmeg is plenty unless you want the drink to taste chiefly of spice.
- The yolksTemper them: beat the yolks in a bowl, whisk in a ladleful of the hot posset, then return the mixture to the pan off the heat. Adding cold yolks straight to the pot scrambles them into threads.
- Milk or creamWhole milk gives a lighter drink with a distinct curd; cream gives a thicker, richer one that curdles less visibly. Skimmed milk produces a thin, watery result and is best avoided.
- Yield and serviceAbout six cups, which is eight to ten small servings. Posset was drunk hot from a cup or eaten with a spoon, and it does not keep or reheat well once the yolks are in.
- AlcoholAn hour of gentle simmering drives off some but by no means all of the alcohol from two cups of ale and sherry. This is a strong drink.
Posset is one of the oldest drinks in English cookery, a hot mixture of milk curdled with wine or ale that appears in manuscripts from the medieval period onward and turns up in Shakespeare, where Lady Macbeth drugs the grooms' possets. "Sack" is often derived from the Spanish vino de saca, wine drawn from the cask for export, though the OED favours a derivation from French vin sec; by the sixteenth century the word meant the strong whites shipped from Jerez and the Canaries; sherry is its direct descendant, which is why the substitution here is so natural. Fine households kept dedicated posset pots with spouts at the base, so the clear spiced liquor could be drunk from underneath while the curd was eaten from the top with a spoon. The drink was medicinal as much as convivial, taken against colds and at bedtime, and it featured at weddings and christenings. The attribution to Sir Walter Raleigh is traditional rather than documented, one of a cluster of Elizabethan recipes that later cookbook compilers liked to hang on a famous name.