74 / 130
76
THE MIXICOLOGIST.
Eecipe for the Wassail Bowl.
Put into a quart of warm beer one pound of raw
sugar,on which-grate a nutmeg and some ginger; then
add four glasses ofsherry and two quarts more of heer,
with three slices oflemon; add more sugar, if required,
and serve it with three slices of toasted bread floating
in it.
Another genus of beverages, if so it may be termed,
of considerable antiquity, comprise those compositions
having milk for their basis, or,as Dr.Johnson describes
them,"milk curdled with wine and other acids,"known
under the name ofPossets—such as milk-possets,pepper-
posset, cider-posset, or egg-posset. Most of these, now-
a-days,are restricted to the bed-chamber, where they are
taken in cases of catarrh, to act as agreeable sudorifics.
They appear to us to be too much associated with tallow
applied to the nose,to induce us to give recipes for their
composition, although in olden times they seem to have
been drunk on festive occasions, as Shakspeare says—
"We will have-a posset at the end of asea-coal fire;"
and Sir John Suckling, who lived in the early part of
the 17th century, has in one of his poems the line—
"In came the bridesmaids with the posset."