Drinking with Dickens

Mondays on the BottleBlog will feature a cocktail recipe that is sure to be just the thing to get you through the rest of the work week. Though we don't expect you'll bring in all the fixins into your place of employment, we hope you'll try our recipes responsibly at home! Today we examine the alcohol content of Charles Dickens' books.

A couple weeks ago, we explored some favorites of author Ernest Hemingway. Keeping with the theme, General Manager Mike Brenner graciously lent me a copy of a book called Drinking with Dickens, by Cedric Dickens, great-grandson of Mr. Charles himself. The book is all about the various drinkers and drink recipes in Charles Dickens' body of work. There are surprisingly many!

David Copperfield has references to beer, in one passage a very young David entered a bar and ordered a glass of their finest ale. (There were no age limits in bars in those days.) "They served me with ale, though I suspect it was not the Genuine Stunning: and the landlord's wife, opening the little half-door of the bar, and bending down, gave me my money back, and gave me a kiss that was half admiring, and half compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am sure."

One character in David Copperfield, Mr. Micawber, once had his water shut off. "To divert his thoughts from this melancholy subject, I informed Mr. Micawber that I relied upon him for a bowl of punch, and led him to the lemons. His recent despondency, not to say despair, was gone in a moment. I never saw a man so thoroughly enjoy himself amid the fragrance of lemon-peel and sugar, the odour of burning spirit, and the steam of boiling water, as Mr. Micawber did that afternoon."

Gin Punch

-Juice 1/2 lemon
-pinch ground cinnamon
-1 clove
-1 teaspoon brown sugar
-1 teaspoon honey
-1 large measure sweet dark madeira
-1 large measure dry gin
-grated nutmeg

Into a warm tumbler put the juice of half a lemon, the cinnamon and clove, and the sugar and honey. Threequarters fill the glass with boiling water, add the madeira and gin and stir with a stick of cinnamon. Grate nutmeg thereon and drink quickly.

The Pickwick Papers has an enormous amount of references to alcohol, including this delicious sounding cocktail. "But come, this is dry work. Let's rinse our mouths with a drop of burnt sherry."

Sherry Cobbler

-1 measure fresh orange juice
-a little sugar
-1 measure medium sherry
-1 tablespoon port
-ice
-slice of orange

Put sugar into a tumbler with crushed ice. Add the orange juice and sherry and stir. Place on top the slice of orange with two straws through the middle. Pour the port on top of the orange.

Also from the Pickwick Papers is reference to a homemade pine-apple infused rum.

Pine Apple Rum

-1 pineapple
-1 bottle dark rum
-sugar

Slice a pineapple very thinly, sprinkle with a little sugar and leave for a day. Set aside two slices and press the juice out of the rest adding to it an equal amount of sweetened rum (two oz sugar to half a pint of rum). Put into a jar with the spare slices of pineapple. Leave, well stoppered, for three weeks. Strain and bottle.

"Mr. Stiggins took down a tumbler, and with great deliberation put four lumps of sugar in it. Then with the tumbler half-full of pineapple rum, advanced to the kettle which was singing gaily on the hob, mixed his grog, stirred it, sipped it, sat down, and taking a long and hearty pull at the rum and water, stopped for breath."

Drinking with Dickens concludes with a quote from Nicholas Nickelby. The Baron asked the Genius of Despair and Suicide:
"Do you drink?"
"Nine times out of ten," came the reply, "and then very hard."
"Don't you ever drink in moderation?"
"No," replied the dread spirit with a shudder, "that breeds cheerfulness."