beverages Archives - Page 2 of 3

Tomato Wine

July 19, 2017August 26, 2019

“If the Tomato be as highly medicinal as it has been represented, it may be anticipated that this wine will find favor with the public.” – Milwaukee Sentinal, June 1840

Interspersed with the shrubs, the cherry bounce, eggnog and Fish House Punch in 19th-century Maryland cookbooks are some of the most intriguing and intimidating recipes: for wines and beers.

Brewing was a part of everyday household management, hardly considered any more frivolous than bread. (And the two processes were often intertwined.)

Beer appeared in the first American cookbook, “American Cookery”, by Amelia Simmons in 1796. Cider was fairly easy to make from fruits like apples and pears. Wine was a little more complicated.

European grapes didn’t always fare so well in America, and the native ones didn’t always make wine that was considered palatable. (Don’t worry – we’ll revisit that topic later this summer…)

In an 1790, the Maryland Gazette reported that a New Jersey man, Joseph Cooper, Esq., could make the elusive “excellent American wine” from honey and cider. Cooper believed that “by using the clean honey instead of the comb… such an improvement might be made as would enable the citizens of the United States to supply themselves with a truly federal and wholesome wine.”

It was the increased availability of sugar in the 1800′s that really fueled a century of creative wine brewing.

According to Waverley Root and Richard De Rochemont in “Eating in America,” “every housewife knew how to make ‘weed wines’ fermented from “any product of field or garden” – dandelion, elderflower, spinach, tomato, mint, “and of course berries.”

“Early American Beverages,” by John Hull Brown reprinted recipes for a staggering variety of wines that could be found in 19th-century America, including apricot, birch, egg, ginger, lemon, sage, turnip and walnut leaf.

Tomatoes were really taking off in popularity around this time. Whether or not colonists or Europeans had previously suspected tomatoes of being poisonous, in the early 1800′s, the opposite was true.

The idea of tomatoes being a panacea is attributed to a Dr. John Cook Bennett, who publicized tomatoes as a cure for dyspepsia, Cholera, and liver problems among other things. Bennett promoted recipes for tomato pickles, sauces, and ketchup. Manufacturers of cure-all pills and tonics capitalized on the craze by peddling tomato extract pills (which may or may not have contained any trace of tomatoes.)

Newspaper advertisements in the 1830s and 1840s offered a variety of brands of tomato pills guaranteed to cure “all diseases of the blood.”

Tomato wine experienced a surge in popularity in tandem with this. The recipe was popularized in the widely circulated “Dr. Chase’s Recipes” publication alongside fruit wines, remedies, animal husbandry and other information. Tomato wine appeared in regional newspapers as well – including the Baltimore Sun in 1856. Some recipes promised to “retain the well-known properties of the fruit.” Others claimed the resulting drink resembled Champagne or Madeira.

In 1865, “The American Agriculturalist” had had enough. In a scathing and humorous editorial, they praised the tomato as food while dismissing the medicinal claims:

“The following precious nonsense is going the rounds of the agricultural and other papers: ’ A good medical authority ascribes to the tomato… important medical qualifications… the tomato is one of the most powerful aperients of the liver and other organs… it is one of the most effective and the least harmful medical agents known… a chemical extract will be obtained from it that will supersede the use of calomel in the cure of diseases”…

This we regard as.. a libel upon our good friend the tomato. No ‘good medical authority’ ever wrote himself down such a stupid as to accuse the tomato-vine of being an apothecary’s shop… Just think of what a condition our livers must be in at the close of tomato season, after being so powerfully ‘aperiented’ to say nothing of the ‘other organs.’ The whole thing savors of the most arrogant quackery.

The tomato extract dodge was tried years ago, and we had “Tomato pills, will cure all ills,” as the quack epidemic for its day. Let no lover of the delicious tomato be deterred from enjoying it for fear of taking anything bearing the slightest resemblance to calomel or any other medicine, but eat as many as he likes without thinking of his liver or the doctor.“ – The American Agriculturist, Volume 24, 1865

In the chapter of “Southern Provisions” about sugar, David Shields discussed the historic variety of American wines. “Since the 1930′s, the superiority of wine made from Vitis Vinifera grapes has been maintained so insistently in culinary circles that the splendors of tomato wine, rhubarb wine, and strawberry wine have been discounted.”

It is true that when word got out about my tomato winemaking venture to friends-of-friends in Napa, eyebrows were raised. I think it’s a little unfair to hold this endeavor as a litmus test to whether tomato wine is worthy of revival. My brewing experience before this was limited to ginger ale, after all.

Furthermore, I’m not the biggest fan of white wine – which is tomato wine’s closest comparison point. I drank a glass and enjoyed it as much as any other white wine. Then I promptly introduced the vinegar mother.

In addition to the lost wines, Shields lamented “we have lost not only the beverages, but a world of early pickles that employed vinegar made from fruit and berry wines.” So it’s not all a lost cause.

There is some tomato wine available on the market today. For that matter, there are tomato pills available on the market today. If you have cholera or liver problems, you should probably just stick to water.

Recipe:

I used the above recipe from “Queen of the Kitchen” by M.L. Tyson as a starting point, and referred to the Tomato Wine Tutorial on leaf.tv for reference. I think I also asked some questions of the helpful people at Nepenthe and Maryland Homebrew as well.

Additional thanks goes to One Straw Farm for supplying me the tomatoes!

Fish House Punch

June 22, 2017January 12, 2019

According to cocktail historian David Wondrich in his book “Imbibe!”, Fish House Punch should be “made a mandatory part of every Fourth of July.” If the punch’s provenance is indeed as historic as people claim it is, then it may well deserve priority over cans of beer that say “America” on them. And with a tart dose of citrus plus the requisite gigantic cube of ice, it’s certainly a refreshing Summer concoction.

Fish House Punch is said to have originated with the “State in Schuylkill”, a Philadelphia rod and gun club founded in 1732. Legends have it that it was served in a bowl large enough to baptize a baby in.

I was skeptical of this origin story at first, with the prohibitive cost of citrus. But this was an illustrious club that through the years hosted no less than George Washington, Marquis de Lafayette and Chester Arthur. According to Wondrich’s other book “Punch,” punch containing citrus and rum was a pricy status drink by the late seventeenth century. Fish House Punch began to make even more sense when I thought of the drink as a way to preserve the lemon juice itself – some recipes call for aging the punch a year or more.

Citrus got a boost in affordability and availability in the 1800s, first with the U.S. acquisition of formerly Spanish territories, and then with the building of railways to distribute fruit to cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Recipes for Fish House Punch began to appear in regional papers in the 1860s.
In 1898, the Baltimore Sun praised the selection of beverage recipes found in Mrs. Charles Marshall’s Confederate relief benefit cookbook “Recipes Old and New.” The Sun informed readers that in the book they would find recipes for eggnog, cherry bounce, Confederate punch, Roman Punch, and the “difficult to obtain” formula for Philadelphia Fish House Punch.

Single serving Fish House Punch, Afro-American,1939

That Philadelphia Fish House Punch recipe, contributed by Philadelphian Mrs. George Dallas Dixon, contains some unusual inclusions including green tea and red Curaçao. It is nearly the oldest Fish House Punch recipe published in a Maryland cookbook – but not quite. The 1897 “Up-To-Date Cookbook of Tested Recipes” from Montgomery County contains a more traditional recipe contributed by Mrs. J. Maury Dove. Her husband was a coal company president who had done business in Philadelphia so they too may have acquired the recipe directly.

The recipe I ultimately used, from “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland,” comes from Mrs. Charles H. Tilghman of Gross Coate. (More on Gross Coate in the stewed mushrooms recipe.)

This recipe is nearly identical to the one printed in “Imbibe!”, which originated from a Philadelphia lawyer and “must be considered authentic,” according to Wondrich. It is considered customary to serve this punch with one large ice block. I didn’t have the foresight to freeze a big hunk of ice, but I wasn’t even serving the punch out of a bowl, so I used store-bought ice.

The punch came out very sweet – I would recommend cutting the sugar by half or more – and the lack of real peach brandy prevents us from truly channeling the 18th-century “club man” vibe. Luckily the phony peach flavor of modern peach brandy kind of works here.

This Independence Day I may just have a glass or two of Fish House Punch before moving on to those beers.

Recipe:

2 pints lemon juice
.5 Pint Jamaican rum
.5 Pint brandy
.5 Pint peach brandy
2 Lb sugar
4.5 Pint water, including ice

Recipe adapted from “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland”

Amalgamated Maryland Eggnog

December 23, 2016November 24, 2019

“Christmas comes but once a year, when eggnog takes the place of beer.” – 1918

These days, Christmastime can feel tainted with greed; shopping and spending, forging memories with limited edition Coke cans, thoughtless gifts and waste. There was a time, over a century ago, when things were more simple and pure. Back in those days, before the black friday sales or even department store extravaganzas, the Christmas holidays were more grounded, centered in the true reason for the season… getting #$@%*! up.

Make no mistake – our agrarian ancestors indeed worked their fingers to the bone day in day out for the most of the year. But when winter rolled around, harvests were put up, hogs killed and cured, one of the primary chores to attend to was… partying. Families would travel or host visitors; when possible, food was shared in all directions; spirits were consumed, often to excess. The large quantities called for in old eggnog recipes hearken to a time when a huge batch was made in late November, to serve to guests throughout the season.

This annual cycle remained in the social DNA even as the nature of work changed, and more and more people flocked to cities and manned machines year round (or sat in offices and collected on the work of others.) In this environment, things could get a little… chaotic.

Especially in the rough-and-tumble environment of late 1800s Baltimore, the winter holidays correlated with a time of increased accidents, petty crimes, and some not so petty crimes. We’ll get the unpleasantness out of the way and start with the latter – eggnog poisonings.

I found several incidents of murder or drugging by eggnog. The ubiquitous holiday beverage with its potent combination of liquors must have been a most tempting vehicle for sinister motives in December.

More innocuously, eggnog was generally associated with the type of rowdiness that drew the finger-wagging of the temperance movement and the cautioning of elders. In 1890, two Baltimore men, aged 19 and 21, successfully used “egg-nogg” as a defense when they went to trial for stealing a horse and buggy on a lark.

Each year, news editorials appeared, admonishing would-be eggnog hellions to stop the insanity. In 1905 a Baptist reverend took to the pages of the Afro-American to decry the debauchery, firecrackers and revealing clothing associated with Christmas revelry. Many young men, he warned, have their “lives blotted out” on this one day, and many young women “start to hell.”

“The enjoyments of the Christmas festival were accompanied, as usual, with the usual number of accidents, some resulting from the careless use of firearms, whilst others may perhaps be attributed to the too free use of “egg-nogg and apple toddy.” – Baltimore Sun, 1868

During the holiday season, temperance advocates gladly took on the title of “Anti Egg-Nog Movement” when holding meetings.

Still, the popularity of eggnog continued right on up to -and through- Prohibition. In 1921, the Sun declared that “1921 eggnog is properly seasoned with real Jamaica rum, bootlegged at $8 a quart.”

I have over 30 eggnog recipes in my database. Curious to compare differences, I normalized some of the recipes to a 12-egg standard and compared liquor ratios. Findings? The 50’s were a boozy time. The party seems to be in Howard county.

Most Maryland recipes call for a combination of brandy and either rum or bourbon. A few use all of the above. According to “Forgotten Maryland Cocktails”, the combination of liquors such as cognac, Jamaican rum, and Madeira are typical of a “port city” eggnog, which makes sense. Peach brandy was a very popular addition as well.

Some recipes use cream, some use milk, while others use both. Egg whites, no whites, top the nog with beaten whites? To nutmeg or not to nutmeg?

I couldn’t decide which recipe to try. Compromise: all of them. I calculated an average amount of liquors, cream and milk. I decided to wing it with the whites and ultimately left them out. I also opted to leave out ‘unusual’ inclusions such as cloves or evaporated milk. The result is what I’ll call Amalgamated Maryland eggnog.

I’ll end this post with commentary from one of eggnog’s rare printed defenses. In 1910 the Annapolis Capital paper quipped: “With eggs at 42 cents per dozen the Mint Julep Association is glad it does not belong to the Eggnog Clan.” The Baltimore Sun indignantly reprinted the comment with the reply: “Clan, sister? It is a hierarchy, a universal brotherhood, a winged seraband that measures its membership by the millions and counts its kingdoms by the stars.”

Recipe:

12 eggs, separated
3 pints cream
2 pints milk
1.25 pints brandy (peach if you can find it, apple is the likely option)
.5 pints Jamaican rum
.5 pints Bourbon
9 oz sugar (or to taste)
nutmeg (optional)
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

Beat eggs until smooth and yellow. Gradually beat in sugar, followed by liquors, vanilla (if using) and finish with milk and cream. Optional: top with beaten egg whites or fold them in last. Top with nutmeg if desired.

Noyau Cordial

October 12, 2016January 13, 2019

“Many a southern gentlewoman, delicately reared, but with whom fortune has dealt harshly, has been compelled to appeal to [the Daughters of the Confederacy], and often for the necessities of life. Inability to provide for all of these needs has compelled the societies to adopt some plan of replenishing their treasuries. A bazaar held in 1885 having been very successful, it was decided to repeat the effort.” – Confederate Veteran: Published Monthly in the Interest of Confederate Veterans and Kindred Topics, Volume 6

“If there had been any attempt made, or any desire evinced, to secure the participation of the Union people of the city or State in this Fair, it would have been promptly responded to by them… On the contrary, there has been a persistent effort to make [the fair] a grand disloyal demonstration.” – Baltimore American

A few months ago I capped off a birthday dinner at B&O Brasserie, with a “Pink Squirrel”. Although I’d never heard of it (big surprise – I’m a rube) the cocktail is infamously associated with Creme de Noyaux, a liqueur once made from apricot and cherry pits and colored red with cochineal. Nowadays, like so many flavored brandies, Noyaux has been reduced to a pale memory propped up by an artificially flavored and colored approximation. I was fortunate enough to enjoy the resurrected version recreated by Tempus Fugit Spirits, and I found it pretty intriguing.

1887, Baltimore Sun

Sadly, this painstaking reproduction Noyaux is hard to come by on the retail market and this would be my last taste of it for awhile. When I encountered a recipe for “Noyau” in the cookbook “Recipes Old and New, Collected by Mrs. Charles Marshall for the benefit of the Confederate relief bazaar,” I figured ‘why not?’

Well, there is one reason why not – peach kernels are said to be poisonous. But hey- I’ve consumed some kind of questionable stuff in the name of history so why not add cyanide to the list?

Originally known as the “Southern Relief Fair”, and presided over by none other than Mrs. B.C. Howard, the Confederate Relief Bazaars aimed to raise money to assist with the economic fallout following the Civil War.

According to “Grieving and reconciliation in Baltimore after the American Civil War” by Jennifer Prior, the Relief Bazaars centered around a huge sale of donated items such as oil paintings – and more than a few war relics including Confederate uniforms and other items owned by Confederate heroes. In addition to raising money, Prior argued, the Bazaars “created an environment that promoted the memory of the war.”

To aid in the money-raising efforts, “Recipes Old and New” was compiled by Mrs. Charles Marshall (née Sarah Rebecca Snowden), wife of Robert E. Lee’s military secretary. Charles Marshall had drafted Lee’s terms of acceptance of surrender at Appomattox.

Col. Charles Marshall, findagrave.com

In addition to the usual charity cookbook assortment of contributed
recipes and recipes sourced from other cookbooks, the book has a section
entitled “Confederate Recipes by Way of Contrast.” Tea made from
raspberry leaves, coffee made from roasted sweet potatoes, and ink made
from tree sap serve as a reminder of wartime scarcity and Union
blockade.

The recipe for Noyau is credited to “Josiah Lee,” a Baltimore banker and a financier of the B&O railroad. Josiah apparently appreciated fine spirits. Upon his death, his cellar of Madeira was auctioned off and “many Washington cellars were replenished” by this bounty. It is said that some of his wines were over 125 years old at the time. “Recipes Old and New,”also features his formula for Mint Julep, Apple Toddy, and Brandy Peaches.

It is likely that these recipes made it to Mrs. Marshall through Josiah Lee’s daughter Mary Catherine Lee, who was married to a relative of Mrs. Marshall’s on the Snowden side of her family. Maryland history buffs will recognize the Snowden name from several Maryland estates and landmarks, and another hero to the Confederates, Richard Snowden Andrews.

Josiah Lee & Co. Certificate of Deposit

To make a small amount of Noyau, I cracked open the kernels from the Brandied Peaches. They have a wonderful fragrance. I don’t have access to isinglass – a fish-derived gelatin, but I found instructions online for clarifying beer with regular gelatin. Sadly, it didn’t seem to accomplish anything. Nor could I get my hands on any cochineal on short notice. The resulting drink is lacking in visual appeal.

For the cocktail I mixed in a little of the liquid from the brandied peaches. I did not die from the cyanide. The jury is still out on whether I’ll survive drinking cream-based beverages.

Steep a pint of blanched peach kernels ten days in a gallon of old apple brandy. Pour the brandy from the kernels, and add four pounds pulverized loaf sugar; clarify it by dissolving, (twelve cents worth of isinglass) gelatine in a little warm water, and stir it into the cordial. Let it stand all night to settle, then steam until perfectly clear and bottle. Age improves it greatly.

Recipe from “Recipes Old and New, Collected by Mrs. Charles Marshall for the benefit of the Confederate relief bazaar”

New Country Lemon Soda

March 9, 2016January 13, 2019

In typical Maryland fashion, the bone-chilling cold ended one day and the very next day we were greeted with scorching sunshine.

The “scorching sunshine” half of the year tends to leave me yearning for a crisp beverage at the end of my walk home. Ginger ale is a favorite and I’ve been flirting with the idea of home-brewing it for some time. I never expected that this urge would intersect with this blog at any point but here we are.

I found this nice little cookbook “Ellicott City Recipes” at Kelmscott Bookshop not too long ago. The book was put together by a “Pearl J. Rogers” in 1975 to celebrate the bicentennial and raise money for historic preservation.

Founded in 1772 as a mill town, Ellicott City is rich in history, as a walk down its main street – Main Street – attests. The town has survived many dramatic floods of the river its mills relied on, the Patapsco. The Patapsco Valley was once dotted with these mills and the homes and churches of the people who worked in them. Rivers tend to swallow up history, and all that remains of much of the industry is bricks and foundations along the trails in Patapsco Valley State Park.
According to Pearl S. Rogers, “pioneer settlers brought with them many food traditions which reflect their various national origins: German, English, Scotch and others. Their foods mirrored the people themselves – honest, stable, imaginative and delightful. Necessity spawned the unique cuisine, which is still very much a part of the rich way of life in Howard County.”

I’m not entirely sure of the origins of the recipes in “Ellicott City Recipes,” but the author has renamed many of them for streets and towns in Howard County as she meticulously hand-transcribed the recipes into the cookbook.
The book includes many recipes for wine, one shrub, and the most alcoholic eggnog in my Maryland collection thus far.

The carbonation in this lemon soda comes from yeast, giving it a different character from the large bubbles we’ve come to expect in commercial sodas.

Apparently this method for soda-making figures into a centuries-long quest for carbonated beverages – who knew? In 1767, chemist Joseph Priestley discovered that water could be carbonated by placing it over a fermenting mash. This became the basis of his work culminating in the book “Impregnating Water With Fixed Air” in 1772 – the year Ellicott City was founded, coincidentally.

Carbonated beverages have played many roles from questionable “health tonic” to a convenient excuse to drink alcohol on Sunday, but for the most part today we just consider them refreshing. I would certainly like to believe in the healing powers of ginger ale…

For authenticity’s sake I gathered spring water from a spring in the Patapsco Valley near Henryton.

Happily this recipe called for boiling this water, which has been known to contain bacteria. Nonetheless I did heed the raw egg white involved in the recipe. I suspect this is for a purifying effect although it could also be for the sake of sugars. Since “New Country Lemon Soda” is sweetened after fermenting, the only other sugar for the yeast is in the lemons.

I like my ginger ale a little more ginger-y, but this is “lemon soda” not ginger ale so I can’t complain. It would be perfect in a shandy if you are into that kind of thing. This recipe may just become the basis for my summer of ginger ale.

The kind people at Nepenthe advised me on yeast and steered me towards a champagne or cuvée yeast. Since the original recipe specified a liquid volume of yeast I had to estimate how much to use. Maybe next time I’d try it with one package.

I added some simple syrup after straining out the solids. In theory this creates a feast for yeast (that rhymes). With or without this step it is wise not to bottle this beverage in any container that could shatter.

I made sure to sterilize everything first, but there’s no accounting for that raw egg. I drank some of the soda a good while before letting anyone else taste it, just in case. I survived without incident.

Recipe:

1 gallon spring water
1 peeled, sliced lemon
.5 oz ginger
.5 oz cream of tartar
pinch grated nutmeg
1 beaten egg whites
2 envelopes yeast
sugar to taste
mint leaves, chopped and mashed (optional)

Boil together spring water, lemon, ginger, cream of tartar, nutmeg. Cool and add egg white and yeast which has been dissolved into a small amount of warm water. Let this ferment 12 Hrs. Strain and bottle. Sweeten to taste and let sit for a day or two. Serve over chopped and mashed mint leaves and stalks if desired.

Recipe adapted from “Ellicott City Recipes”