Put one pint of milk into a saucepan, and when it boils pour in a gill of sherry; boil it till the curd becomes hard, then strain it through a fine sieve. Rub a few lumps of sugar on the rind of a lemon and put them into the whey; grate a small quantity of nutmeg into it, and sweeten to taste.
Pepper Posset.
The better to promote perspiration, whole peppercorns are sometime boiled in the whey. A Pepper Posset was known to the learned and ingenious John Dryden, as will appear from the following lines written by him:—
A sparing diet did her health assure;
Or sick, a pepper posset was her cure.
Cider Posset.
Pound the peel of a lemon in a mortar, and pour on it one quart of fresh-drawn cider; sweeten with lump-sugar, add one gill of brandy and one quart of new milk. Stir the mixture well, strain it through a hair sieve, grate a little nutmeg over it, and it is fit for use.
In a former chapter a recipe for {173}
Sack Posset
has been given. And here is what Sir Fleetwood Fletcher wrote on the same subject:—