"Take new cider straight from the press and equal parts of blackberry juice. Strain both together and mix with as much honey as will float an egg. Boil gently 15 minutes in an earthenware pot. When cool, barrel it, but do not fill the barrel. In March bottle it; it will be fit for use six weeks after bottling."
NOTES:
I sent this to Katie and Matthew and they made some interesting observations. Here's our e-mail exchange so far. Research continues (eventually, probably, maybe).
On Sat., Jul 18, 2020 at 8:41 PM Roland Maurice <rolandmaurice@yahoo.ca> wrote:
I found this curiosity in Dorothy Hartley's 1954 Food in England:
"Take new cider straight from the press and equal parts of blackberry juice. Strain both together and mix with as much honey as will float an egg. Boil gently 15 minutes in an earthenware pot. When cool, barrel it, but do not fill the barrel. In March bottle it; it will be fit for use six weeks after bottling."
On Mon., July 20, 2020 4:06 PM Katie Selbee <katieselbee@gmail.com> wrote:
Wow! I love this. I guess it's like a simple syrup? I love the "float an egg" instruction :D
On Mon., Jul. 20 at 5:07 p.m. Roland Maurice <rolandmaurice@yahoo.ca> wrote:
I think it’s meant to ferment, since it’s barreled and left until March. I assumed, considering the source since Ms Hartley collected olde timey recipes in the UK, that this is done when apples are being pressed for cider and there are still fresh blackberries on the bushes. So that would be, what? August? September? And then barreled for 6, 7 months?
On Mon., Jul. 20 at 10:58 p.m. Katie Selbee <katieselbee@gmail.com> wrote:
That’s what I thought at first but then I re-read about the 15 minutes of boiling...that would pasteurize it and kill all the yeast! And the pressure of fermenting that huge amount of sugar would likely blow a sealed barrel even if only partially filled...I think some context or instruction for this recipe has been lost! It’s very fascinating!
On Tue., Jul. 21 at 10:27 a.m. Roland Maurice <rolandmaurice@yahoo.ca> wrote:
Interesting. I get it, and it didn't occur to me. I wonder what the boiling is for. Without boiling there's be yeast from the apples, I suppose from the blackberries, and also from the honey (oh, Barry's honey! Imagine!). It didn't get boiled, does the partially filled barrel make sense? And that brings up a question - with bread making, you use a wooden bowl or trough to knead and do the first rise and you rinse, you don't wash it. That's because it captures the bread yeast and it continues to inoculate any bread you make in it (which is why old bread troughs are so valuable). Is it the same with wood barrels you brew stuff in? Could it be that the original recipe boiled everything but it still brewed because it was made in a barrel that was already inoculated with the right yeasts? If there are links to medieval recipes, I know that people thought that fresh fruit and veg were unsafe to eat because they were riddled with disease, so everything was cooked; maybe this is a holdover from that? Anyway, I think I'll slowly keep exploring these interesting questions.
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