WOODEN CUAGH OR QUAIGH. (Brit. Mus.)
RUM.
Derivation of Name—Whence Procured—Its Manufacture—Its Price—Trade Rum.
The etymon of the name of this spirit is somewhat dubious. Some have it that it was formerly spelt (as it now is in French) Rhum, and that it is derived from rheum, or ῥεῦμα, a flowing, on account of its manufacture from the juice of the sugar cane. Others say that, as rum has the strongest odour of any distilled spirit, it is a corruption of the word aroma.
Rum is made from the refuse of sugar, and can, of course, be produced wherever sugar is grown. This is notably the case in the West Indies, and the best rum comes thence. The finest, and that commanding the highest price in the market, is from Jamaica; Martinique and Guadaloupe perhaps come next; and Santa Cruz has a very good name. British Guiana, the Brazils, Natal, Queensland, and New South Wales all produce it.
It is made from molasses and the skimmings of the boiling sugar. Molasses is the syrup remaining after the separation of all the saccharine matter which will crystallize, and is a dense, viscous liquid, varying from light yellow to nearly black, according to the source from which it is obtained; but its distillation will not produce rum. Sugar or molasses, if distilled, will produce alcohol, but it will have no character of rum. This peculiar odour is imparted to it by the addition, in distillation, of “skimmings,” which are the matters separated from the sugar in clarifying and evaporation; that is to say, the scum of the precipitators, clarifiers and evaporators is mixed with the rinsing of the boiling pans, and is thus called. They contain all the necessaries of fermentation, and when mixed with molasses and “dunder,” which is the fermented wash left from distillation, are distilled into rum.
The odour of rum is very volatile; so much so, that it should be casked immediately after distillation. The raw spirit is extremely injurious; but it improves so much by age that, at a sale in Carlisle in 1865, rum, known to be 140 years old, sold at three guineas a bottle. Like all alcohol, rum, when distilled, is white, the colour being given to it, as it used to be in brown brandy, by caramel (burnt sugar). Much of the rum sold in England is made from “silent” spirit, flavoured with butyric ether; and it is this stuff which is sold as “trade rum” for export to Africa. Some years since an action was brought by an African merchant against the vendor of “trade rum” for damages caused by it to his trade. All went merrily till the negroes drank the rum, when it suddenly ceased, owing to its colouring their excreta red, probably owing to the colouring matter.
In the old days of punch drinking, rum was the great ingredient in that beverage, but its use has gradually died out, except among sailors, it still being served out in the navy, on account of its supposed warming qualities. Rum and milk, taken before breakfast, is also a beverage used very extensively.