And it is also mentioned in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Wildgoose Chase: “What a cold I have over my stomack; would I’d some hum.” In Shirley’s Wedding is a reference to hum glasses, the small size being indicative of the potency of the liquor:—
They say that Canary sack must dance again To the apothecarys, and be sold For physic in hum glasses and thimbles.
Flip, once a popular drink, and not altogether without its patrons in the present day, is made in a variety of ways. The following receipt is a good one. Place in a saucepan one quart of strong ale together with lumps of sugar which have been well rubbed over the rind of a lemon, and a small piece of cinnamon. Take the mixture off the fire when boiling and add one glass of cold ale. Have ready in a jug the yolks of six or eight eggs well beaten up with powdered sugar and grated nutmeg. Pour the hot ale from the saucepan on to the eggs, stirring them while so doing. Have another jug at hand and pour the mixture as swiftly as possible from one vessel to the other until a white froth appears, when the flip is ready. One or two wine glasses of gin or rum are often added. This beverage made without spirits is sometimes called Egg-hot, and Sailor’s Flip contains no ale. A quart of Flip is styled in the Cook’s Oracle a “Yard of Flannel.”
There is a tale told of a Frenchman, who, stopping at an inn, asked for Jacob.
“There’s no such person here,” said the landlord.
“’Tis not a person I want, sare, but de beer warmed with de poker.”
“Well,” said mine host, “that is flip.” {389}
“Ah! yes,” exclaimed the Frenchman, “you have right; I mean Philip.”
Purl, Flip, and Dog’s Nose have been immortalised by Dickens in his description of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters. The tap and parlour of this hostel were provided with “comfortable fireside tin utensils, like models of sugar-loaf hats, made in that shape that they might, with their pointed ends, seek out for themselves glowing nooks in the depths of the red coals when they mulled your ale, or heated for you those delectable drinks, Purl, Flip, and Dog’s Nose. The first of these humming compounds was a speciality of the Porters, which, through an inscription on its door-posts, gently appealed to your feelings as ‘The Early Purl House.’ For it would seem that Purl must always be taken early; though whether for any more distinctly stomachic reason than that, as the early bird catches the worm, so the early purl catches the customer, cannot here be resolved.”
Of other receipts for beer cups there are many—too many, indeed, to be given here; most of them differ from one another more in name than anything else. Brown Betty, an Oxford cup, deriving its name from its inventor, a bedmaker, is similar to the Oxford Wassail Bowl. The famous Brasenose Ale, which is by no means a modern institution and is introduced at Brasenose College on Shrove Tuesday, immediately after dinner, consists merely of ale sweetened with pounded sugar, and served with roasted apples floating on it.