Citizen-humanist (& one of our fabulous volunteers) @Greensleeves made a delicious sounding cherry brandy earlier this year using a recipe from Shakespeare’s World. It involved steeping cherries in brandy for months, with sugar, cinnamon & cloves. If you fancy trying out some of our ‘drinks’ recipes too, here are a selection taken from the project thus far. The main ingredients are also noted below. Most list water as an ingredient, though it is referred to differently as cold water, fair water, spring water or raw water. Another theme they have in common is time (you will need the patience of 6 or 7 days, 3 weeks…etc!). A huge thank you to all of our citizen-humanists who tagged &/or transcribed these recipes.

Grape Wine

To make Wine of graps:-
Ingredients: clusters of grapes, including the rotten ones!

V.a.619

Ale

Cocke Ale
Ingredients: 1 cockerel, 2 quarts of the best sack, 8 gallons strong ale, 4lb raisins, 1/4lb dates, a large nutmeg, cloves, mace & sugar.

V.a.8

Lemon Wine

Lemmon Wine
Ingredients: 8 lemons, 2lb sugar & spring water.

V.a.215

Gooseberry Wine

To make Goosberry Wine
Ingredients: 12lb green gooseberries, gallon raw water & sugar.

V.a.430

Bitters

To make a pleasant Bitter
Ingredients: 1 quart brandy, the peel of a dozen oranges, 1 ounce gentian, a little saffron & cochineal.

V.a.430

Mead

to make mead. Sister Alsop
Ingredients: 1 gallon honey, 6 gallons cold water & a crust of brown bread.

V.a.8

A Summer Water

To make a Water to Drink in Sommer
Ingredients: strawberries, cinnamon, fair water & cloves.

V.a.364

Elderberry Ale & Rhubarb Ale

And finally here are the two most popular ales over on @shaxworld…

Enjoy!

By Sarah Powell
Sarah Powell is the EMMO Paleographer at the Folger Shakespeare Library: on Shakespeare’s World Talk as @S_Powell