Blackberry Cordial (1871)

This delicious alcoholic remedy is worth getting sick for! Made with sweetened fresh blackberry juice, spices, and brandy, it’s worth making just as a special treat.

Dear friends ~

Do you remember the passage in Anne of Green Gables, where the girls are allowed to enjoy some raspberry cordial for a special treat, but Anne accidentally serves Diana currant wine instead, with regrettable results?

Gosh I love that book. Well, ever since reading it as a child, I’ve wanted to try raspberry cordial. It sounds so delicious!

This year I was going to give it a go, but the birds beat me to the end of the raspberry harvest during a long rainy spell. SO, with the blackberry harvest coming along beautifully, I decided to look through my cookbooks for a blackberry cordial recipe instead.

Marion Harland’s Common Sense in the Household (copyright 1871), has a lovely one, so that’s what I’m sharing here today.

Making this definitely gave me a whole new perspective on that passage, I’ll tell you! I cannot imagine the state I’d be in, if I attempted to down three tumblerfuls of this stuff. It’s sweet, goes down SO easy, and is generously alcoholic. In moderation, it’s delectable.

Hope you enjoy!

Here’s a photo of the recipe as it appears in the cookbook:

A FEW COOKING NOTES: 

This recipe is really easy and straightforward, so not many cooking notes for this one!

Getting that blackberry juice

I spent longer than I want to admit, looking through every 1800’s cookbook in my collection, hunting for a clear how-to on extracting juice from blackberries. When I’m making these recipes, I like to adhere as closely as possible to the methods employed at the time, as well as ingredients. (See that time I made mayonnaise by hand!)

My takeaway from this search was to conclude that getting juice from berries was such a no-brainer at the time, that it required no special instruction. What I ended up doing was following the instructions in the Ball Blue Book canning guide, for making blackberry juice to can.

I lightly simmered the berries until they were well broken up and juicy, then squeezed them through a muslin bag to extract the juice. This worked well, and it’s definitely how I’d go about this again.

Those muslin bags

I happened to have some unbleached muslin on hand, and was easily able to tie up the spices in it. If you don’t happen to have unbleached muslin on hand, I really believe a double layer of finely woven cheesecloth would work just fine.

“Best” brandy

Ok, in this regard I may have skimped a bit. At my local shop, bottles of brandy ranged from embarrassingly cheap artificially flavored stuff that would have mortified any 1800’s housekeeper, all the way up to make-you-blush expensive.

I’m on a tight budget, so opted for something respectably in the middle. To my untrained tastebuds, the result was indulgently delicious, and worked well.

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As always, feel free to send me an email anytime, with recipe requests! ‘Til next time, ~ Anna

This post was originally published in the 1800’s Housewife newsletter. Not on the mailing list? You can join here to receive full recipes with cooking notes straight to your inbox!

📖 Recipe