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Blackberry Cordial
Blackberry cordial is a pleasant drink and a healthful Indeed, blackberry cordial is one of the things that should be made every year, and always kept on hand, It is invaluable in the case of sickness and is a very good strength giver after severe illness.
Use to every quart of blackberry juice one pound of white sugar, fine granulated, one-quarter of an ounce of grated nutmeg, one-quarter of an ounce of cinnamon, onequarter of an ounce of cloves, and one pint of the best brandy. Mash the fruit and strain it without heating. Tie the spices in a thin muslin bag; boil together the juice of the fruit, the sugar and the spices; let the mixture cook a quarter of an hour after it begins boiling, skimming it well in the meantime; take from the fire, add the brandy and set it aside in a closely covered vessel to cool. When it is perfectly cold, strain out the spices and bottle, sealing the corks.
A straightforward spiced fruit syrup fortified with brandy. The one instruction worth honoring is "strain it without heating" — the raw juice keeps the bright berry flavor that a cooked mash loses, and the boiling that follows is brief and only with the sugar and spices.
- Fruit to juiceExpect roughly 4 to 5 pounds of blackberries to yield a quart of juice when mashed and pressed cold through a jelly bag or several layers of cheesecloth. Squeezing hard gives more juice but cloudier cordial; let it drip if you want it clear.
- A quarter ounce of spiceA quarter ounce -- About a tablespoon (three teaspoons) each of ground nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves by volume. Whole spices -- a bruised cinnamon stick, a couple of teaspoons of cloves, a whole grated nutmeg -- are easier to strain out of the muslin bag and give a cleaner result.
- The fifteen-minute boilA quarter hour of boiling drives off some water and concentrates the sugar a little. Skim the pink foam as it rises, or it will muddy the finished bottle.
- Add the brandy off the heatAs written, and for good reason — alcohol added to boiling syrup flashes off. Let the pan stop steaming before the pint goes in, then cover at once.
- "The best brandy"Any 80-proof brandy will do. In a quart of juice cooked down with a pound of sugar, a pint of brandy lands the finished cordial somewhere near 12 to 15 percent alcohol, which is enough to preserve it in a sealed bottle.
- YieldAbout three pints, or six half-pint bottles. It is drunk in small glasses, an ounce or two at a time, not by the tumbler.
- Sealing and keeping"Sealing the corks" meant dipping them in melted wax or paraffin. Screw-top bottles are fine; store cool and dark, and it will hold a year or more, deepening in flavor for the first few months.
- On the medical claimsTreat the "invaluable in case of sickness" framing as period language. This is a sweet spiced liqueur and nothing more.
"Cordial" comes from the Latin cor, heart -- a drink meant to hearten and restore -- and by the nineteenth century the word covered any sweetened, spiced, spirit-based preparation kept as much in the medicine cupboard as the sideboard. Blackberry was among the most trusted of them in American households: blackberry root bark, syrup and brandy were all standard folk remedies for summer diarrhea and dysentery, ailments that killed a great many children before clean water supplies. That reputation is why the recipe can recommend making it "every year, and always kept on hand" as a strength-giver after illness, without any sense of contradiction -- the same bottle served as a dessert liqueur and as the household's first response to a disordered stomach. The heavy hand with nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves belongs to the same tradition, warming spices being understood to settle the digestion.