On Wassail

Wassail is a hot mulled punch usually made with cider, though a version made with ale, known as lambswool, is also popular. Recipes vary from county to county and orchard to orchard and have been part of the Christmas lore of the British Isles for centuries. The 1835 edition of Oxford Night Caps, a collection of drink recipes by Richard Cook, includes a recipe for lambswool that begins with these lines from seventeenth-century lyric poet Robert Herrick’s Twelfth Night, or King and Queen:

Next crowne the bowle full

With gentle Lambs wooll,

Adde sugar, nutmeg, and ginger,

With store of ale too,

And thus ye must doe

To make the Wassaile a swinger.