“The Vertues of the Liquor or Blood of the Birch-tree,” says the historian, “have not long been discovered, we being beholding to the Learned Van Helmont for it; who in his _Treatise of the Disease of the Stone_ hath very much applauded its Vertues against the effects of the Disease, calling the natural Liquor that flows from the wounded Branches of the Tree, the meer Balsom of the Disease. Ale brewed therewith, as well as the Wine that is made of it, wonderfully operates on the Disease. It is also reputed to be a powerful Curer of the Ptisick.”
All the same you will hardly get the _alumni_ of Eton and Harrow to love their birch.
is a question which has often been asked. It was a common name for a drink in the time of Shakespeare, and Falstaff had a terrible reputation as a sackster. The exact nature of the wine is uncertain, but the name is supposed to be derived { 32} from the Spanish _seco_, and the French _sec_, “dry.” Canary (a sort of white Madeira) was often the wine meant; and in old churchwarden’s accounts the word sack frequently occurs, as used as a communion wine, _i.e._ Madeira and port mixed. That sack was imported from Spain is certain, and it was first of all sold, in England, in apothecaries’ shops, as a cordial medicine. The Excise authorities of the time, if there were any, were in all probability not quite as busy as at the present day.
The name Canary was formerly applied to dry, white wines, which were frequently seasoned with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, roasted apples, and eggs.
Boil together half a pint of sherry and half a pint of ale, and add gradually a quart of boiling cream or milk. Sweeten the mixture well, and flavour with grated nutmeg. Put into a heated dish, cover, and stand by the fire for two or three hours.
And if you can see the double ox-fences in Northamptonshire next morning, there is not much the matter with your liver.
which must be a poor, ill-favoured sort of drink. It was also known as Saragossa wine.
To every quart of water put a sprig of rue, and to every gallon a handful of fennel-roots, boil these { 33} half an hour, then strain it out, and to every gallon of this liquor—ugh—put three pounds of honey; boil it two hours, and scum it well, and when ’tis cold pour it off and tun it into a vessel, or such cask as is fit for it; keep it a year in the vessel, and then bottle it. ’Tis a very good sack.