The English table in history and literature / by Charles Cooper.

  • Cooper, Charles, 1844-
Date:
[1929]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The English table in history and literature / by Charles Cooper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    brandy, and other rectifiers’ drinks are prepared; and it is used for blending with other flavoured pot-still spirits, to produce a certain character of potable spirit sold by wholesale dealers and known by special names. It is only the finer qualities of matured malt and grain whisky that can be used as single or unblended spirit. The popularity of whisky as a beverage is a matter of comparatively recent growth, and the whisky industry which has assumed a position of such importance in recent years started not so long ago from quite small and obscure beginnings. In the earlier half of the past century whisky was no common beverage. Mr. Pickwick and his friends consumed a great deal of brandy and water and punch on occasions, but I doubt whether the word whisky occurs once in the whole of his veracious history. The few consumers of whisky in those days were probably indebted for their supplies to the illicit stills. The word itself is derived from a corruption of the Irish usquebaugh, which appears to have been em¬ ployed as a general name for all compound spirits. Smith in his work entitled, The Compleat Body of Distilling, published in 1729,* gives various recipes for its composition, but, in common with many others, he always refers to it as a compound by rectification of proof spirits. Distillation before the year 1825 was in the hands of a few capitalists, and English spirits, although made from the finest materials, could not, from the gross¬ ness of the wash, be rendered palatable without under¬ going rectification. According to Morewood, a number of traders, called rectifiers, stepped in between the distiller and the consumer. These rectifiers re¬ distilled the spirits with the addition of certain drugs and flavourings, such as spirits of turpentine, juniper * Spirit Drinking in the 18th Century. See Appendix.