Modern Berry Cordials

 

Welcome to Modern Berry Cordials- a method for making delicious berry drinks that have been forgotten.  If you came here to purchase, here is the link.  If you came here to learn, well here we go............

When I was a tween girl, PBS was promoting their series of Anne of Green Gables films, and I was obsessed. Like all good writing, it made those of us who couldn’t sit still, were a little bit weird, might have imaginary friends, and were often misunderstood feel very seen. I can’t underestimate the impact it had on me- helping me see that my wildness, my pattern recognition, my heightened sensory awareness, my love for the natural world, my romanticized emotions, could all be part of a well-lived life.

And it’s been a wonderful life- with Anne leading the way.  I did plays as a child, I was musical, I danced, I sang, I wrote my way through my young adult years, I met my Gilbert Blythe- a blind date where I was very sure we would only ever be ‘good friends’- and went on to the bliss of domestic living. I was cottagecore before it had that name.

I was blessed with children who were all just as highly creative and imaginative if not more so than I was- and watching them create their own little worlds, playing with rocks and sticks, treehouses and forts, drawing- so many drawings, and stories that they wrote- was such a joy.

I’ve always loved and been drawn to the home arts. Growing food and herbs in the garden. Canning jams and applesauce. Baking bread. Knitting in a cozy chair. At some point my exploits in the kitchen became very academic, reading, researching, testing, trying out new things. I was always learning, always going down a new rabbit hole.

A year or so ago on Instagram I came across the viral cranberry drink and had to try it, of course. If you haven’t seen those reels, the drink involves water-bath canning cranberries and letting them infuse. I had leftover cranberries that I had intended to make into a sauce, and didn’t (you know, good intentions in the kitchen) so I made the drink instead. I let it infuse for several weeks. I cracked open that jar, very excited, and then well, it didn’t taste great. To be fair, I’m not sure it was the method; I’m possibly just not a fan of the acrid flavor of cranberry juice to begin with.

But, what I did need to use up, was a glut of blueberries, (I know what a problem, right?) and that changed everything. I followed the same recipe, subbing in the blues, and got a totally different experience.

We have a mini-blueberry farm here at the Treehouse. 16 mature bushes that yield quite a lot. It’s a dream come true that’s also a lot to keep up with, and by the end of the season we are usually happy to share. I freeze them as we pick them and then spend the rest of the year figuring out how to use them. Syrups, scones, muffins, pie filling. I felt like I had tried it all. But really, I hadn’t.

The ‘blueberry drink’ that I made was a deep dark delicious something I had never experienced before. Fragrant, complex, with flavors that reminded me of my early marriage years when we steam-juiced concord grapes from my in-laws orchard. This though, was even better. Indescribably so.

I didn’t know what to call it, but I made a lot more of it. I treasured each quart jar, and found myself reaching for it when I felt a little off: a little tired, a little worn out, a little like maybe I was fighting off a bug, or not quite nourished enough.

I did some research- what was this glorious concoction? As it turns out, it’s a Cordial. Historically, there are two types of cordials, or preserved berry drinks. The Victorians used wine to preserve theirs, but before that, even in older medieval times, Cordials were made with gentle heat and sealed up to long-infuse in storage, and that seems to be the key to the depth and full flavors.

As it turns out, Cordials were a big deal for hundreds of years of history. We don’t talk about them much today because the Victorians were biased against anything remotely older than last week. The Victorians would use a newly built steam engine to boil a cup of water even if lighting a fire was simpler. It was a cultural movement that erased a lot of food history: they worshipped machinery, spectacle, and innovation, and distrusted anything well, from grandma. Cordials, well they were grandma territory so they fell out of fashion, and they disappeared around the time that industrialized fruit drinks were becoming available. 

The word Cordial itself comes from the Latin ‘ for the heart’. They were more than just berry infusions, they were a winter source of health for your heart, for your whole person. Infusion, is the technique at the root of this lost wonder of the flavor world. Whenever we move aromatics into water, we are creating an infusion- whether it is a tea or a broth or any other process where flavors move into liquid and get held there. Cordials are infusions that over months and weeks of steeping get even more delicious and more nutritious, and they preserve surprisingly high amounts of winter minerals.

Cordials aren’t just drinks. They’re nourishment. They’re care. They’re lineage. They’re winter medicine. They’re domestic love- and that love is meant to be shared with people that you love, including yourself.

It’s time for Cordials to make a comeback. If like me, you have loads of jams and jellies and still more berries that come your way, this is an excellent way to make use of a glut- or the opposite- if you are foraging and can only get a cup of berries- this is also an excellent way to stretch them. It’s a fruit preservation method that truly honors the deep and best flavors of the actual whole fruit itself.

I’m excited to share my first digital guidebook, Modern Cordials with you. I’m very happy to be reviving a lost and forgotten domestic craft. I’ll take you through the master formula, explain which berries and fruits work well for Cordials, the nutritional benefits they preserve, and uses and applications for them. I’ll also share improvements to the original viral formula, and share how electric pressure canners, carefully used, can give even better results.  And I promise, they are just “Cordials”- so you won’t get accidentally drunk like Anne’s friend Diana did- unless you mix up your cordials with your currant wine in the cellar. Always remember Marilla’s good advice, it’s not meant to be drunk ‘three tumblerfulls at a time’ although I certainly have- and savored every sip along the way.