Cordially Speaking

Every once in a while, somebody--say, one of the Crane brothers on “Frasier”--calls a cocktail a “cordial” as a dainty way of avoiding the word “drink.” Properly, though, a cordial is an old-fashioned medicine supposed to be good for the heart. Like cocktails, cordials did typically contain alcohol and sugar--both considered to be medicinal, of course.

A given cordial actually might have been good for the heart, but who knew? Before modern pharmaceuticals, medicines were mostly herb and spice mixtures prescribed on the basis of hopeful guesswork. So when cordial makers wanted to take no chances, they tended to throw in every ingredient in the book.

Take a 17th century recipe titled “Lady Hewet’s Cordial.” It called for most of the herbs and spices you’ve ever heard of and a number you might not have, such as celandine, setwell and scabind; 79 ingredients in all. For good measure, they included hartshorn (a source of ammonia used in smelling salts, but it was also used for thickening puddings), musk and ambergris (today only used in perfume) and gold leaf, which certainly couldn’t do you any harm. This sort of cordial is still with us in liqueurs such as Chartreuse, with their complex secret recipes.

In earlier times, not all cordials were herbal--or even vegetarian. For instance, there was cock ale--beer aged with spices and a chopped-up chicken it it. “The British Housewife” by Martha Bradley, published in 1756, also gives a recipe that calls for four gallons of French brandy, 14 herbs and spices, nine quarts of snails and a quart of worms. Strain it and you had “snail water.”

“It is a great cordial,” Bradley states. Tell it to the Crane brothers.