Cordials, Historical

Rummage through an American’s liquor cabinet from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries and you likely would find an assortment of homemade cordials. Made from a mixture of distilled liquor, usually brandy but occasionally whiskey or rum, heavily sweetened, and distinctly flavored fruit juices or aromatics, the cordial was left to infuse, often for weeks or months, before being filtered for the most elegant translucence. The alcohol kick varied. Lettice Bryan’s recipes in The Kentucky Housewife (1839) dilute the brandy with two or three parts fruit juice or herbal syrup, depending on the flavor. Mary Randolph’s recipes in The Virginia House-Wife (1824) recommend diluting the brandy “to the strength of wine” or, in the case of her stronger lemon cordial, diluting the brandy by half. Most robust is Mrs. Harriott Pinckney Horry’s 1770 recipe for Golden Cordial, which infuses lemon rind and flavorings into undiluted brandy.