HFF 3.21: Beverages

The Challenge: Beverage. Make something to drink.

The Recipe: Negus (for children's parties?!) from Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management

The Date/Year and Region: London, 1861 (many recipes were previously published in the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine and/or copied from earlier sources)

How Did You Make It: Half-scale. I rubbed a lemon of 1/4 lb granulated sugar (and, when that didn't work, scraped off the peel and buried it in the sugar).  Meanwhile, brought water to boil, and grated ~1/4 of a large nutmeg into 1 cup of sherry. Juiced the lemon into the sherry, added the sugar (imbued with some of the lemon's yellow color and odor), and poured 1 pint of boiling water into the mixture. Stirred and served.

Time to Complete: 5-10 minutes (scraping sugar while the electric kettle boiled)

Total Cost: $1 for a lemon, other ingedients on hand

How Successful Was It?: Very successful. Tasty, even though sherry usually doesn't work for me. Mostly the negus tastes like lemon and sugar, though there's something extra going on to distinguish it from lemonade (aside from being warm). The nutmeg and sherry aren't really coming through to me, just giving it some extra depth. That said, I'm probably missing some of the flavor complexity due to rebellious sinuses. I would like to try it with port (the preferential liquor, though sherry or sweet white wines are listed as variations) just to see how that changes the taste.

How Accurate Is It?: I'd like to try it with lump sugar to ensure all the lemon flavor comes through (the sugar was to have absorbed all the lemon' color, which it did not do), but otherwise I'm pretty well satisfied with it. Used an electric kettle to boil the water, but the result is the same as if it was boiled on a stove, hearth, or fire.

Negus: easy to make, and tasty.