Take a quart of cream, and mix with it a pint of ale, then beat the yolks of ten eggs and the whites of four; when they are well beaten, put them to {46} your cream and ale. Sweeten to your taste and slice some nutmeg in it; set it over the fire, and keep it stirring all the while, and when ’tis thick, and before it boils, take it off, and pour it into the bason you serve it in to the table. Here is another, even more seductive. _To make the Pope’s Posset._ Blanch and beat three-quarters of a pound of almonds so fine that they will spread between your fingers like butter, put in water as you beat them to keep them from oiling. Then take a pint of sack or sherry, and sweeten it very well in double-refin’d sugar, make it boiling hot, and at the same time put half a pint of water to your almonds, and make them boil; then take both off the fire, and mix them very well together with a spoon. Serve it in a china dish. _Frontiniac Wine_ was simplicity itself. Take six gallons of water and twelve pounds of white sugar, and six pounds of raisins of the sun cut small; boil them together one hour; then take of the flowers of elder, when they are falling and will shake off, the quantity of half a peck; put them in the liquor when ’tis almost cold, and next day put in six spoonfuls of syrup of lemons, and four spoonfuls of ale yeast; and two days after put it into a vessel that is fit for it, and when it has stood two months bottle it off. In the olden times, just before Oliver Cromwell was a going concern, there were two sorts of what was then called {47} _Renish Wine_, that is to say, Elstertune and Barabant. “The Elstertune,” says my informant, “are best, you shall know it by the Fat, for it is double bard and double pinned”—I have not the faintest idea what he means, but those are his words; “the Barabant is nothing so good, and there is not so much good to be done with them as with the other. If the Wines be good and pleasant, a man may rid away a Hogshead or two of White wine, and this is the most vantage a man can have by them; and if it be slender and hard, then take three or four gallons of stone-honey and clarify it cleane; then put into the honey four or five gallons of the same wine, and then let it seeth a great while, and put into it twopence in cloves bruised, let them seeth together, for it will take away the sent of honey; and when it is sodden take it off, and set it by till it be thorow cold; then take foure gallons of milke and order it as before, and then put all into your wine, and all to beate it; and (if you can) role it, for that is the best way; then stop it close and let it lie, and that will make it pleasant.” Possibly, but it seems a deal of trouble to take over a wine. And now let us adjourn to a more familiar subject, for discussion in the next chapter. {48} CHAPTER V GLORIOUS BEER