What is Sack Posset?

What Is Sack Posset?
By Jason Earls, author of Cocoon of Terror & Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711


In Bill Bryson’s book, Made In America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States, he writes that Puritans were in the habit of imbibing an alcoholic concoction known as ‘sack posset.’ Bryson wrote that the drink was consumed in large quantities at social gatherings such as weddings, christenings, and funerals; and that the ingredients were an unappetizing mixture of curdled milk plus whatever type of intoxicant was at hand (mainly beer or wine), thus proving that Colonial Americans were quite adventuresome drinkers in the category of potent potables. Bryson went on to claim that almost no one drinks sack posset today.

However, through the magickal and fearsome powers of the internet, I googled ‘sack posset’ after reading about it in Bryson’s engaging book and found many traditional recipes for the “drink” popping up left and right. One typical recipe ran thus:

Two pints of cream; one pint of gooseberry wine; some “sack” which is a dry fortified wine with brandy such as Port or Sherry; eight egg yolks with only four whites; a few blades of mace; biscuit crumbs; and sugar. It goes on to list how the cream and mace are boiled together, then the wine heated as the eggs are beaten and whisked in, next cream is added and stirred until a thick
custard is produced, finally sugar is used to sweeten the entire mixture. (The source of this recipe is listed as the book, English Housewifry, published in 1764.)

Hence, the recipe above makes sack posset out to be more of a custard than an unappealing drink made from curdled milk and leftover booze. Shortly after finding this recipe on the internet, I then found a definition of sack posset that further confirmed the custard theory:

Sack posset: a custard made from wine and cream.
-Rare Receipts for Cookery (1654)

A little more searching and a different (more modern) variation of the sack posset recipe made it seem highly similar to a typical egg nog drink with brandy and sherry added.

Concerning Bill Bryson’s version of sack posset, when I consulted the online version of Webster’s 1828 English Dictionary, its definition for ‘posset’ was this:

POS’SET, noun, Latin: posca,
Milk curdled with wine or other liquor.

And in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary of 1913, one of the definitions for ‘sack’ lists it as a dry wine and goes on to say the word comes from the Latin, ‘siccus’ meaning dry or harsh.

So it appears Bryson did not investigate sack posset beyond merely looking up definitions for the two main words – that seemed to be plenty enough research for him.

But it seems he got it wrong since he’s so outnumbered by the numerous recipes for the custard version. Concerning custardlike recipes, a rhyming poem written by Sir Fleetwood Fletcher for making sack posset was printed in the New York Gazette in 1744, some lines of which are:


SACK-POSSET

“... O’er flaming coals together let them heat
Till the all-conquering sack dissolves the sweet.
O’er such another fire set eggs, twice ten,
New born from crowing cock and speckled hen;
[... many lines omitted here ...]
Then covered close, together let them dwell
Till Miss twice sings: You must not kiss and tell.
Each lad and lass snatch up their murdering spoon,
And fall on fiercely like a starved dragoon.”


Now there’s a poem. Murdering spoon. Crowing cocks. Starved dragoon. Wicked. What is a dragoon anyway. A foot-soldier who uses a horse for transportation. Cool. You can’t beat that. I bet those dragoons did get pretty hungry out there. Even hungry enough to eat a sack-posset custard. You betcha. I wonder what else they would eat in times of war. Who knows. Probably anything. Anything they could find. I’m rambling again. I better shut up.

When mentioning Bryson’s original “curdled milk + alcohol” definition of sack posset to a wise elderly gentleman who has resided in my hometown for nearly his entire life, he related to me the curious habit of certain men in our region of the south who would sit around on slow evenings consuming large quantities of cottage cheese while drinking copious amounts of strong beer. He thought this was quite similar to Bryson’s primitive recipe for sack posset and I must say I was compelled to agree with him. Actually, that combination sounds quite appetizing and I think I’ll have some of the ‘beer/cottage-cheese’ type of sack posset soon but also make the custard variety to see how they compare and I’ll write another article summarizing my results. Good idea. Wish me luck.

-end-


(Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, or know of any magazines that would like to publish this story, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.)


http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/


Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Zombies of the Red Descent, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Red Zen, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.