In order to make this, the Compleat Housewyfe instructs us to take ten gallons of ale, and a large {42} cock, the older the better. Parboil the cock, flea (flay?) him, and stamp him in a stone mortar till his bones are broken (you must craw and gut him when you flea him), then put the cock into two quarts of sack, and put to it three pounds of raisins of the sun stoned, some blades of mace, and a few cloves; put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has done working, put the ale and bag together into a vessel; in a week or nine days bottle it up, fill the bottles but just above the neck, and give it the same time to ripen as other ale.
I have frequently read of the giving of “body” to ale and stout, by means of the introduction of horseflesh; and an old song used to tell us that upon one of the paupers in a certain workhouse happening, inadvertently, to fall head-foremost into the copper,
dreadful to tell, he was boiled in the soup,
which, on that account, in all probability so strengthened the constitutions of the other paupers as to render them impatient of workhouse discipline. The man who disappeared mysteriously—this is Mr. Samuel Weller’s story—and who unwittingly furnished “body” for the sausages supplied to the neighbourhood, was, after all, benefiting his fellow-men. But to put the rooster into the ale-cask smacks somewhat of barbarism; and thank goodness we do not work off our surplus poultry in that fashion nowadays. But these barbarians were not ashamed; for lo! facing me is “another way” for the manufacture of rooster-beer.
Take an old red, or other cock, and boyle him {43} indifferent well; then flea his skin clean off, and beat him flesh and bones in a stone mortar all to mash, then slice into him half a pound of dates, two nutmegs quartered, two or three blaids of mace, four cloves; and put to all this two quarts of sack that is very good; stop all this up very close that no air may get to it for the space of sixteen hours; then tun eight gallons of strong ale into your barrel so timely as it may have done working at the sixteen hours’ end; and then put thereinto your infusion and stop it close for five days, then bottle it in stone bottles; be sure your corks are very good, and tye them with pack-thread; and about a fortnight or three weeks after you may begin to drink of it; you must also put into your infusion two pound of raisins of the sun stoned.
Holy Moses ! What a drink !
“It is necessary,” wrote a chronicler of the day, “that our English Housewife be skilfull in the election, preservation, and curing of all sorts of wines, because they be usuall charges under her hands, and by the least neglect must turne the Husband to much losse.”
This was written, I may interpolate, before the bicycle craze had set in, and before the era of ladies’ clubs. Fancy asking the New Woman to elect, preserve, and cure all sorts of wines!
“Therefore,” continues the same writer, “to speak first of the election of sweete Wines she must be careful that her Malmseys be full Wines, pleasant, well hewed, and fine; that Bastard be fat, and if it be tawny it skils not, for the tawny Bastards be always the sweetest. Muskadine must be great, pleasant, and strong, with a swete {44} sent, and Amber colour. Sacke, if it be Seres (Xerez?), which it should be, you shall know it by the marke of a corke burned on one side of the bung, and they be ever full gadge, and so are no other Sackes; and the longer they lye the better they be.”