The History Of Mead And The Lindisfarne Mead

Recipereminiscing

If you’ve read mythology, you’ve undoubtedly run across mead, this drink of heroes, gods, lovers and kings.

The god Odin gave an eye to drink mead and gain wisdom. The hero Beowulf drank it and bragged about his valiant deeds. It was drunk in Ancient Greece and Medieval Europe, where spiced mead was a favourite of the English kings.

Lindisfarne – The Holy Island

Mead is one of the oldest alcoholic drinks, a drink brewed from honey, water and yeast and quite appropriate for a God, or even your best friend. That’s right, mead is still made today by St Aidan’s Winery. Its name is Lindisfarne Mead and is a great, unique gift for a favourite family member or even newlyweds.

You might be scratching your head right now, wondering why newlyweds would want mead. In pre-Christian Europe, mead was one of the traditional wedding gifts. When a couple was married family and friends would supply them with enough mead for a month to ensure that they would be happy and fertile through their marriage. Hence, we still call the first month after marriage Honeymoon even though few newlyweds nowadays drink mead.

Many people mistakenly believe that mead is a historical myth or that the recipe and skill to make it has been long lost, but the magical elixir is ready for order from this unusual winery on Holy Island in Northumberland.

St Aidan’s Winery offers a wide variety of ales, fruit wines and spirits and – of course – mead, and also serves as an outlet for Celtic jewellery and other local crafts.

You may wonder how an island called Holy Island could possibly be the home to liquor or mead. The answer is simple: in Medieval times mead was usually made by monks as they were the ones to keep bees on a large scale. They also believed that mead was a cure for many illnesses and restored their body while God watched their soul.

Lindisfarne’s monks are long gone, but their recipe for mead has been preserved on the island and is still used to produce the delightful pale-gold beverage in the same fashion as they did in yesteryear. Therefore, you get the same good taste that Friar Tuck might have enjoyed.

Lindisfarne Mead is available directly on the island from the winery shop – where you can taste before you buy – but can also be bought online. Alongside full-size and half bottles, St Aidan’s Winery also offer a Mead Miniature Bottle that holds just 5 centilitres.

This is for those who want to test the mead before committing to buy a large size, or those who just want a conversation piece to set on the shelf. The prices are very reasonable, so you can afford to try the largest available without breaking the bank. Imagine your next get together where, instead of champagne you break out the mead, for medicinal purposes, of course.

Beer Over Wine? New Find Indicates Bronze Age Greeks Imbibed Both Beverages!

Ancient Origins

Wine wasn’t the only drink popular with ancient Greeks, according to a new report. The discovery of two Bronze Age breweries suggests that beer was a popular choice for alcohol too.

 Researcher Tania Valamoti, an associate professor of archaeology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, expressed her surprise to Live Science, stating, “It is an unexpected find for Greece, because until now all evidence pointed to wine.” However, according to Greek Reporter, beer making may have reached Greece through their contact with people living in the eastern Mediterranean – where brewing was already widespread.

Wine boy at a Greek symposium. ( Public Domain )

Archondiko and Agrissa are the two locations were indications of buildings used for ancient beer brewing have been found. Both locations have markings of fire damage, but Valamoti said that this event helped in preservation. Approximately 100 individual sprouted cereal grains were unearthed at Archondiko as well as a two-roomed structure which may have been used to control temperatures in preparing mash and wort during the brewing process. 30 strange cups were also found near the sprouted grains, which may have been used with a straw to sip prepared beer.

About 3,500 sprouted cereal grains were found at Agrissa. These have been dated to the middle Bronze Age, unlike the Archondiko sprouted grains which are from the early Bronze Age. 45 cups, which may have been used to drink the beer, were also found near the sprouted grains at the Agrissa site.

The sprouted grains found at the sites may have been created during the malting process of beer making. The grains would then be roasted, coarsely ground and mixed with water to make wort, and finally fermented. Researchers say that the condition of the grains at Archondiko are also consistent with the effects of malting and charring.

A blend of milled malted barley for beer brewing. ( CC BY SA 3.0 )

 Valamoti feels confident that the archaeological remains suggest beer brewing was taking place at the Bronze Age sites, she said, “I'm 95 percent sure that they were making some form of beer. Not the beer we know today, but some form of beer.”

 However, it is worth noting that beer was not seen on the same level as wine in ancient Greece, as Valamoti also wrote in the study, as published in the journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany:

“Textual evidence from historic periods in Greece clearly shows that beer was considered an alcoholic drink of foreign people, and barley wine a drink consumed by the Egyptians, Thracians, Phrygians and Armenians, in most cases drunk with the aid of a straw.”

Egyptian wooden model of beer making in ancient Egypt. ( CC BY 2.5 )

Although the Bronze Age beer brewing practices in Greece are an interesting prospect, they are certainly not the oldest example of beer making in the world. Ancient Origins has reported on several examples of beer drinking from well before the Bronze Age. Many beer recipes from hundreds or thousands of years ago have even been recreated. For example, recovered Sumerian, Chinese, and French recipes have all been tried by modern palates.

The oldest depiction of beer-drinking shows people sipping from a communal vessel through reed straws (Brauerstern)

Archaeological evidence of beer drinking has been found in civilizations throughout the ages and all over the world: an analysis of mummy hair shows ancient Peruvians enjoyed the alcoholic beverage with their seafood, Stone Age people seemed to prefer beer over bread, Medieval monks drank more beer than you can imagine, and corn beer was a popular choice in Mexico. Cheers!

Top Image: A glass of beer. Source: Public Domain

By Alicia McDermott

No One Questions that Vikings Drank; But Did They Make Wine?

Ancient Origins

Further evidence that the Vikings weren’t just beer-swilling, raping, and pillaging savages comes out of Denmark with the discovery of two grape seeds that may indicate the Norsemen didn’t just drink but may have even produced that most sophisticated beverage: wine.

It seems not everyone in Viking society was allowed to drink the more refined beverage, but many of them did enjoy their tippling of whatever kind of alcohol they could get. The lower echelons drank beer, which was easier to produce in the northern climate. The higher strata of society apparently enjoyed wine - when they could get it.

Viking drinking horns. (Mararie/ CC BY SA 2.0)

The question is, was the wine produced locally, or was it imported from France or other parts south? An article on Videnskab.dk explores these questions with interviews of archaeologists involved in the research of the two tiny grape seeds. Botanical archaeologist Peter Steen Henriksen, a curator at Denmark’s National Museum who found the two tiny seeds said:

 "This is the first discovery and evidence of viticulture in Denmark, and all that it entails in terms of status and power. We do not know how they used the grapes. Was it just has to put a great bunch of grapes on a table, for example? But it is reasonable to believe that they made the wine."

Dr. Henriksen found the seeds in soil at a distance from each other of about 600 meters (1968.5 ft.), and they grew between 100 and 200 years apart. He mixed the sand and dirt from the settlement of Tissø with water and found plant material, including the grape seeds. The remnants of the settlement are in Zealand.

An analysis of the strontium content in the two seeds proved one of the seeds was grown in Denmark, according to National Museum Professor Karin Margarita Frei. As Professor Frei says:

"We can safely say that it has a local strontium isotope signature, suggesting that it could be a grape grown in Zealand. This means that the first time we can say that they may have produced wine in Denmark. Before we had only conjecture, now we can see that they actually had grapes, and thus potential to make it themselves. Suddenly it becomes much more real.”

Harvesting grapes for wine. (Public Domain)

 The speculation that elites enjoyed wine may be confirmed by the nature of the settlement of Tissø, which the article calls “one of our richest sites from the Viking Age in Denmark. It is an example of how a royal family—or at least something resembling—has manifested itself in the same place for a very long period. It stretches from the late Iron Age to the end of the Viking Age, from 550 to 1050 AD.”

The settlement of Tissø, which was rich and may have been the seat of a Viking monarch, was near this large lake, which is connected to the sea by a river. (Vastgoten/CC BY SA 3.0)

Sandie Holst, a co-author of the article explaining the results of the research, published in the Danish Journal of Archaeology, says the wine may have set the elites apart from ordinary people in Viking society. It was like saying, “I can drink wine, and you can only drink beer,” she tells Videnskab.dk.

Top image: Drinking from a Viking drinking horn. (CC BY SA 3.0) Oak wine barrels. (Sanjay Acharya/ CC BY SA 3.0)

By Mark Miller

Top 5 Jane Austen recipes

History Extra

Written by Pen Vogler, the editor of Penguin’s Great Food series, the book also features dishes Jane and her family were known to have enjoyed.

 Here, we've selected our top five Jane Austen recipes.

 Dinner with Mr Darcy by Pen Vogler is published by CICO Books

 Flummery
 Flummery is a white jelly, which was set in elegant molds or as shapes in clear jelly. Its delicate, creamy taste goes particularly well with rhubarb, strawberries, and raspberries. A modern version would be to add the puréed fruit to the ingredients, taking away the same volume of water.

 1⁄2 cup/50g ground almonds
1 tsp natural rosewater (with no added alcohol)
A drop of natural almond extract
 11⁄4 cups/300ml milk
 1 1⁄4 cups heavy (double) cream
 1–2 tbsp superfine (caster) sugar
 5 gelatin leaves

 1) Put the gelatin in a bowl and cover with cold water; leave for 4–5 minutes
 2) Pour the milk, almonds, and sugar into a saucepan and heat slowly until just below boiling.
 3) Squeeze out the excess water from the gelatin leaves and add them to the almond milk. Simmer for a few minutes, keeping it below boiling point. Let it cool a little and strain it through cheesecloth, or a very fine sieve
 4) Whip the cream until thick, and then fold it into the tepid mixture. Wet your molds (essential, to make it turn out), put the flummery in (keeping some back for the hen’s nest recipe below if you’d like) and leave to stand in the fridge overnight
 5) To serve: If you don’t have a jelly mold with a removable lid, dip the mold briefly into boiling water before turning out the flummery

 "To make Flummery Put one ounce of bitter and one of sweet almonds into a basin, pour over them some boiling water to make the skins come off, which is called blanching. Strip off the skins and throw the kernels into cold water. Then take them out and beat them in a marble mortar with a little rosewater to keep them from oiling. When they are beat, put them into a pint of calf’s foot stock, set it over the fire and sweeten it to your taste with loaf sugar. As soon as it boils strain it through a piece of muslin or gauze. When a little cold put it into a pint of thick cream and keep stirring it often till it grows thick and cold. Wet your moulds in cold water and pour in the flummery, let it stand five or six hours at least before you turn them out. If you make the flummery stiff and wet the moulds, it will turn out without putting it into warm water, for water takes off the figures of the mould and makes the flummery look dull." ELIZABETH RAFFALD,THE EXPERIENCED ENGLISH HOUSEKEEPER, 1769

 Pigeon Pie
 It was the custom to put ‘nicely cleaned’ pigeon feet in the crust to label the contents (although sensible Margaret Dods says ‘we confess we see little use and no beauty in the practice’). Georgian recipes for pigeon pie called for whole birds, but I’ve suggested stewing the birds first, so your guests don’t have to pick out the bones.

Serves 6–8 as part of a picnic spread

 4 rashers of streaky bacon, chopped
Slice of lean ham, chopped
 4 pigeons with their livers tucked inside (the livers are hard to come by, but worth hunting out)
 Flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
 9 oz/250 g steak, diced (original cooks would have used rump steak, but you could use something cheaper like topside, diced across the grain of the meat)
Butter
Olive oil
 Finely chopped parsley
 2 white onions, roughly chopped
A bouquet garni of any of the following, tied together: thyme, parsley, marjoram, winter savory, a bay leaf
Beurre manie made with about 2 tsp butter and 2 tsp flour
 1lb/500g rough puff pastry, chilled
Optional additions: 1 onion, peeled and quartered; 2 carrots, roughly chopped; 1 celery stick, roughly chopped

 1) Brown the bacon and then the ham in a frying pan, then add the onions, if using, and cook until they are translucent. Transfer the mixture to a large saucepan
 2) Flour the pigeons well and brown them all over in butter and olive oil in a frying pan, transferring them to the same large saucepan. Flour and brown the steak in the same way
 3) Put the pigeons in a saucepan, and push the steak, bacon, and onions down all around them (choose a saucepan in which they will be quite tightly packed). Although the original recipe doesn’t include them, you may want to add the carrots and celery stick to improve the stock.

 Add approximately 11⁄4 cups/300ml water, or enough to just cover the contents. Cover the pan, and simmer slowly until the meat comes off the pigeon bones — at least an hour.

 Do not allow the pan to come to a boil or the beef will toughen. Remove from the heat.

 4) When it is cool enough to handle, remove the steak and pigeons with a slotted spoon, and carefully pull the pigeon meat off the bones, keeping it as chunky as possible, and put it, with the livers from the cavity, with the steak. You should have a good thick sauce; if it is too thin, stir in the beurre manie a little at a time.

 Wait for it to cook the flour, and thicken before adding any more, until you have the right consistency.

 5) Preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C/Gas Mark 5. Roll out two-thirds of the pastry and line a pie dish about 3 inches/8cm deep, keeping a good 1⁄4 inch/5mm of pastry above the lip of the dish to allow for shrinkage

 6) Prick the bottom of the pastry and bake blind for 12 minutes. Add the meat mixture and pour in enough gravy to come to within an inch of the top.

 Roll out the remaining pastry to cover the top, crimping the edges together. Make a vent in the center, and use the trimmings to decorate.

 You may like to use the point of the knife to make small slash marks in the shape of pigeon footprints — a nod to the “nicely cleaned feet” of the original recipe. Bake for 25– 30 minutes until the pastry is lightly golden, and cooked through

 7) To serve, this is a juicier pie than we are used to for picnics, so you will need plates, and knives and forks, in the Georgian manner

 Clean and season the pigeons well in the inside with pepper and salt. Put into each bird a little chopped parsley mixed with the livers parboiled and minced, and some bits of butter. Cover the bottom of the dish with a beef-steak, a few cutlets of veal, or slices of bacon, which is more suitable. Lay in the birds; put the seasoned gizzards, and, if approved, a few hard-boiled yolks of egg into the dish. A thin slice of lean ham laid on the breast of each bird is an improvement to the flavour. Cover the pie with puff paste. A half-hour will bake it.

Observation — It is common to stick two or three feet of pigeons or moorfowl into the centre of the cover of pies as a label to the contents, though we confess we see little use and no beauty in the practice. Forcemeat-balls may be added to enrich the pie. Some cooks lay the steaks above the birds, which is sensible, if not seemly. MARGARET DODS, THE COOK AND HOUSEWIFE’S MANUAL, 1826

 Bath Olivers
 These savory crackers (biscuits) were devised by William Oliver, an 18th-century physician in Bath after he realised the Bath Buns he had also invented were making his fashionable patients even fatter. They are perfect served with the English cheeses that the Georgian “higher sort” were beginning to enjoy. Makes 30–40 crackers

 Pinch of salt
3 3⁄4 cups/500g all-purpose (plain) flour
2 tablespoons/30g butter
1⁄4 oz/7g sachet active dried yeast
2⁄3 cup/150ml milk

 1) Preheat the oven to 325°F/160°C/Gas Mark 3
 2) Sift the flour into a bowl and add the dried yeast and salt.Warm the butter and milk together, make a well in the flour and slowly add the liquid, stirring the flour into the center until you have a dough. Add some warm water if necessary
 3) Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth; put it back in the bowl, cover and let it rise in a warm place for 30 minutes
 4) Roll out well on a floured surface several times, folding the dough on itself, until it is very thin
 5) Cut out with a circular biscuit cutter and prick the surface with a fork
 6) Bake for 20–30 minutes until they are hard and bone-colored; if they are turning color, turn the oven down to 300°F/150°C/Gas Mark 2
 7) To serve: With a rich local dairy industry, Jane’s circle and characters were likely to have often served local cheeses, including the famous Somerset Cheddar.

 Mr Elton gives a clue to what a cheese course might consist of when he unromantically describes his whole dinner of the previous night to Harriet, when Emma overtakes them “and that she was herself come in for the Stilton cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beet-root and all the dessert”.

 Mrs Norris happily gets both a receipt for and a sample of “a famous cream cheese” from the housekeeper at Sotherton. Mrs Austen describes “good Warwickshire cheese” made in the “delightful dairy” at Stoneleigh Abbey.

 To Make Ollivers Biscuits Take 3llb of flour, 1⁄2 a pint of small beer barm. Take some milk and warm it a little put it to your barm and lay a spunge, let it lay for one hour. Then take a quarter of a pound of butter and warm up with some milk and mix your spunge and lay it to rise before the fire. Roll it out in thin cakes, bake it in a slow oven. (You must put a little salt in your flour, but not much, use them before the fire before you put them in the oven).

MARTHA LLOYD’S HOUSEHOLD BOOK
 Negus

This mulled wine, created by Colonel Francis Negus (d.1732), was served at the balls in Mansfield Park and The Watsons, and was often offered to guests before their chilly journey home. By Victorian times it was thought to be the thing for children’s birthday parties! This version is safer served to adults.

 Serves 16-20

 1 x 25 fl oz/75cl bottle of port
25 fl oz/750 ml water
1–2 tbsp brown sugar
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
About 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg  Optional extra spices: 1 cinnamon stick and/or 8 whole cloves
Segments of orange and lemon, to serve
 1) Put the water in a saucepan and add the lemon zest, a tablespoon of sugar and the spices. Bring it to a boil and let it simmer very gently for 10–15 minutes. Add the lemon juice
 2) Strain, return to the saucepan and reheat. Add the port; taste it, and add a little more sugar if you like. Pour in the port and heat very gently to serving temperature. Put slices of lemon and/or orange into glasses before pouring in the Negus — or serve it from a pitcher (jug) 

Miss Debary's Marmalade
 Miss Debary was one of the “endless Debarys”; four sisters unloved by Jane who said they were “odious’” (letter to Cassandra 8 September 1816), and had bad breath! (letter to Cassandra, 20 November 1800). Marmalade was made from all kinds of fruit and eaten for dessert until the Scots made it from bitter Seville oranges and started serving it for breakfast at the end of the 18th century. 

Makes 6 x 1 lb (450g) jars

 1.5kg (3 1⁄4 lb) Seville oranges
 2 sweet oranges
1 scant gallon/3.5 litres water
Juice of 2 lemons
About 6 lb/2.75 kg preserving sugar

 1) Weigh the fruit and to each 18 oz/500g of fruit weigh out 26 oz/750g sugar. Quarter the fruit and cut off the rind, taking off a little of the pith if you want a sweeter marmalade
 2) Boil the rind in water for 11⁄2 –2 hours; there should be a third of the water left. When it is cool, cut the rind into thin slices about 3⁄8 –3⁄4 inch/1–2cm long; Georgian cooks called these “chips”.

 Chop the pulp and pick out the seeds (pips) and pith, or push it through a sieve. Put the chips, pulp and lemon juice into the water used to boil the rinds, and bring to a boil.

 Add the sugar and boil vigorously for twenty minutes, stirring to make sure it doesn’t catch on the bottom. When you have put the marmalade on to boil, leave a saucer in the fridge and put your jars on baking sheets into the oven at 350°F/180°C/Gas Mark 4 and leave them to sterilize for 20 minutes

 3) After 20 minutes, put a little of the marmalade onto the cold plate. If it sets, it is ready; if not, test every five minutes until you get a set
 4) Let the marmalade cool a little before decanting it into the hot jars. When it is cold, put wax paper on the surface, before adding the lids

Sam’s historical recipe corner: Sloe gin

History Extra

In every issue of BBC History Magazine, picture editor Sam Nott brings you a recipe from the past. In this article, Sam recreates sloe gin – a fruit-flavoured drink made with the bounty of wild blackthorns.

 With the enclosure of the countryside in the 16th and 17th centuries came a huge increase in blackthorn bushes, used to divide up fields, and therefore lots of sloes. The popularity of gin at the time meant that there was an ideal way of making otherwise quite unpalatable sloes a bit more exciting.

 Sloe gin is a great drink to prepare in time for Christmas and the long winter months that follow. I love the whole process, from picking the sloes to hiding the bottles in a dark corner to mature.

 I’ve never made sloe gin the same way twice – it’s always a bit haphazard – but for me the two most important things are not to use too much sugar, and to wait three months before you drink it (always hard!).

 Quantities depend on how many sloes you pick, and are very rough – but, broadly speaking, use enough sloes to half-fill your bottle, and about 50g of sugar per litre.

 Ingredients
 500g ripe sloes
 50g sugar
 1 litre gin

 Method
Wash the sloes and pick off any stems, then pat them dry with a tea towel or paper towel. Prick the sloes, or freeze them overnight so that their skins split. Add the sloes to a sterilised bottle or jar till it’s just under half full.

 Top up the bottle or jar with gin and add the sugar. Seal the jar or bottle and leave for three months or longer, shaking the jar periodically to ensure that the sugar dissolves.

 Before drinking, strain the gin from the sloes through a sieve or muslin and re-bottle.

 Note: this recipe uses a bit less sugar than most. More sugar can always be added to taste before drinking.

 Verdict: Country Christmas in a glass!

 Difficulty: 2/10

 Time: 20 minutes preparation, 3 months maturation

Sam’s historical recipe corner: Buttered beere

History Extra

Buttered beere: a sweet drink enjoyed in the Tudor period. (Credit: Sam Nott)

 In every issue of BBC History Magazine, picture editor Sam Nott brings you a recipe from the past. In this article, Sam recreates buttered beere - a sweet, slightly alcoholic drink that warmed the cockles in Tudor times.

 This is an authentic Tudor recipe from 1588, taken from The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin. It’s similar to a caudle, a drink of warm wine or ale with sugar, eggs and spices, renowned for its medicinal properties and popular at the same period.

 I love mulled wines and ciders, so the idea of this drink really appealed to me. The smells wafting through my kitchen while I was making it were delicious, though the drink itself was a bit, well, ‘robust’ – great when you’ve just come inside on a cold winter’s day, but for ordinary drinking a bit too heavy for me. My partner loved it, though – he drank the lot!

 Ingredients
1,500ml (3 bottles) of good-quality ale
¼ tsp ground ginger
 ½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp ground nutmeg
200g demerara or other natural brown sugar
 5 egg yolks
 100g unsalted butter, chopped into small lumps

 Method
Pour the ale gently into a large saucepan and stir in the ginger, cloves and nutmeg. Bring slowly to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for a few minutes until the ale clears.

 While the ale is simmering, whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl until the mixture is light and creamy. Remove the spiced ale from the hob, add the egg yolk and sugar mixture, and stir until all ingredients are well blended.

 Return to a low heat until the liquid starts to thicken, taking care not to overheat.

 Simmer for five minutes, add the chopped butter and heat until it has melted. Hand-whisk the liquid until it becomes frothy.

 Continue to heat for 10 minutes, then allow to cool to a drinkable temperature. Give the mixture another whisk, serve into a jug or small glasses (or tankards!) and drink while still warm.

 Difficulty: 2/10
 Time: 25 mins

 Recipe from recipewise.co.uk This article was first published in the May 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine.

Sam’s historical recipe corner: Wassail punch

History Extra

Add some history to your festivities with a glass of wassail punch. © Sam Nott

In every issue of BBC History Magazine, picture editor Sam Nott brings you a recipe from the past. In this article, Sam recreates wassail punch – a deliciously warming drink that dates back to the Middle Ages.

 The smell of roasting apples and cinnamon that fills the house during preparation is reason enough to make this drink, but it’s also a wonderfully warming tipple, perfect for the festive period. Wassail punch is a medieval drink and, in the south-west and south-east of England at least, was drunk as part of a ceremony or ritual that took place to ensure a good cider-apple harvest the following year. I’ll drink to that!

 Ingredients
• 6 small apples, washed and cored
 • 1 litre cider (I used dry)
 • 2 cinnamon sticks, crushed
 • 2 pinches ground cloves
 • Freshly grated nutmeg, to taste
 • 1 lemon, sliced
 • Sugar, to taste

 Method
Preheat oven to 190˚C/gas mark 5. Score the apples and place in an ovenproof tray and roast for 45–50 minutes, or until skin is soft and starting to split.

 Heat the cider in a saucepan over a low heat and add cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg.

 Stir well and heat through until the liquid starts to foam.

 Add the lemon slices and roasted apples, and give the liquid a good stir – if there is any apple juice left in your ovenproof dish, add this, too. If you want to add sugar (I added about 4 tablespoons), now is a good time to do so – add it gradually and taste as you go along. Serve hot.

 BBC history Magazine team verdict:
 “A lovely punch that was very easy to make.”
 “Tastes a bit like apple crumble in a glass.”
 “I’d drink this to knock out a cold!”

 Difficulty:
 2/10 Time (including roasting apples): 1hr

 Recipe courtesy of the BBC's 'Make Your Own Victorian Christmas' This article was first published in the December 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine.