A rule for flip which seems to combine the good points of the American and English methods, uses ale instead of home-brewed. It may be given “in the words of the Publican who made it”:—
“Keep grated Ginger and Nutmeg with a fine dried Lemon Peel rubbed together in a Mortar. To make a quart of Flip: Put the Ale on the Fire to warm, and beat up three or four Eggs with four ounces of moist Sugar, a teaspoonful of grated Nutmeg or Ginger, and a Quartern of good old Rum or Brandy. When the Ale is near to boil, put it into one pitcher, and the Rum and Eggs, etc., into another: turn it from one Pitcher to another till it is as smooth as cream. To heat plunge in the red hot Loggerhead or Poker. This quantity is styled One Yard of Flannel.”
A quartern is a quarter of a gill, which is about the “dash” of rum.
No flip was more widely known and more respected than the famous brew of Abbott’s Tavern at Holden, Massachusetts. This house, built in 1763, and kept by three generations of Abbotts, never wavered in the quality of its flip. It is said to have been famous from the Atlantic to the Pacific—and few stage-coaches or travellers ever passed that door without adding to its praises and thereafter spreading its reputation. It is sad to add that I don’t know exactly how it was made. A bill still existing tells its price in Revolutionary days; other items show its relative valuation:—
| “Mug New England Flip | 9d. | ||
| "West India" | 11d. | ||
| Lodging per night | 3d. | ||
| Pot luck per meal | 8d. | ||
| Boarding commons Men | 4s. | 8d. | |
| ""Weomen | 2s.” |
This is the only tavern bill I have ever seen in which nice distinctions were made in boarding men and women. I am glad to know that the “weomen” traveller in those days had 2s. 8d. of daily advantage over the men.
Other names for the hospital loggerhead were flip-dog and hottle. The loggerhead was as much a part of the chimney furniture of an old-time New England tavern and farm-house as the bellows or andirons. In all taverns and many hospitable homes it was constantly kept warm in the ashes, ready for speedy heating in a bed of hot coals, to burn a mug of fresh flip for every visitor or passer by. Cider could be used instead of beer, if beer could not be had. Some wise old flip tasters preferred cider to beer. Every tavern bill of the eighteenth century was punctuated with entries of flip. John Adams said if you spent the evening in a tavern, you found it full of people drinking drams of flip, carousing, and swearing. The old taprooms were certainly cheerful and inviting gathering-places; where mine host sat behind his cagelike counter surrounded by cans and bottles and glasses, jars of whole spices and whole loaves of sugar; where an inspiring row of barrels of New England rum, hard cider, and beer ranged in rivalry at an end of the room, and
“Where dozed a fire of beechen logs that bred
Strange fancies in its embers golden-red,
And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip,
Timed by wise instinct, creamed the bowl of flip.”
