I love apples and I love cocktails
so by the transitive property I should love
an apple cocktail which is why today I'm making an apple toddy from 1869.
We'll also talk about that legend of American apples, Johnny Appleseed
this time on Drinking History.
Today's recipe comes from the 1869 book 'Haney's Steward & Barkeeper's Manual.
Apple Toddy: Two wine glasses of "apple jack", one tablespoon of white sugar;
half of a baked apple.
Add boiling water and nutmeg. This drink ought never to be made with a suspicion of weakness.
It is only drank in cold weather and needs to be a little strong to be satisfactory to the epicurean."
And as an epicurean I will make sure that there is no suspicion of weakness to my apple toddy,
but first I have a question.
What is that main ingredient apple jack?
Sometimes it's called apple whiskey, or more appropriately apple brandy and it should be made by distilling apple pumice.
But most today now are not because usually they're made with neutral spirits, but
today we have Laird's Old Apple Brandy and this is basically going to be the closest thing that we're going to get
to what he is calling for in this recipe from the 19th century. So if you want to try a bottle of this,
it is available at Curiada, they have all sorts of interesting liquors on the website.
I'll put a link down in the description and they deliver to most of the US,
but you got to be careful with this apple jack because in 1894 the New York Times warned
"There are few compounds that are more sinful than the applejack of New Jersey.
The name has a homely, innocent appearance, but in reality applejack is a particularly powerful and evil spirit.
The man who intoxicates himself on bad whiskey is sometimes moved to kill his wife and set his house on fire,
but the victim of applejack is capable of blowing up a whole town with dynamite
and reciting original poetry to every surviving inhabitant."
It's the poetry that'll get you every time.
All the same I'm going to use the amount that he calls for which is two wine glasses,
or now four ounces wine glasses were much smaller back then.
Four ounces of apple jack which is actually still quite a lot.
And before we mix anything else in I think it's only wise to try this
Laird's Old Apple Brandy by itself.
*glug glug
Hmm. That's good. It is very whisky.
It's not very appley.
I mean because I took drinks so I had to add more- I mean whiskey doesn't taste of corn or whatever they end up using.
It's nice. It's got a little burn but it doesn't have those-
the notes of a lot of whiskeys so if you're looking for something like a very neutral kind of a starter whiskey
this is actually probably a very nice alternative.
Then add a tablespoon of sugar. You could probably add a little bit less. His tablespoon was probably smaller.
It's hard to tell.
Kind of stir that in.
It actually dissolved pretty well but it'll dissolve even better when we add the boiling water.
Then we put in some nutmeg.
The amount of nutmeg that you use is really up to you. I use quite a bit because I like it.
Some people might not want so much and if John Townsend was here he'd probably use the whole darn nutmeg.
Now this is going to be served with some baked apple and for that you can just
core an apple, pop it in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit/175 Celsius for about 40 minutes.
Now he calls for a half apple. I'm probably going to be using a quarter apple
because the apple he was using was probably quite a bit smaller.
I don't know that a half apple is even going to fit in this glass.
He was probably using something more akin to what Johnny Appleseed was planting.
John Chapman was born in Leominster, Massachusetts in 1774
and in the 1790s studied to become an orchardist, and he did become quite the orchardist. See at that time
land on the American frontier was pretty much up for grabs as long as you could take care of it so
people would go out and start a farm and that became their land but if you become a farmer
it's a lot of work. You got to be there year round to take care of the land.
Well, ole Johnny had an idea to scale the operation. So he went every fall to Pennsylvania
and grabbed all of the seeds that had been left over after the cider making process
and then in the spring he would go find a few plots of land and scatter those seeds and plant apple orchards.
He would return every couple years just to make sure they were going well.
He put up fences but really an apple orchard doesn't need a lot of tending.
A brilliant businessman for sure though he didn't really look or act like a brilliant businessman.
Most of us today picture Johnny Appleseed as Walt Disney showed him,
a clean-faced lad with bare feet and a pot on his head,
but according to early accounts he had filthy wild hair and a matted unkempt beard,
and "Usually while traveling through the forests his only garment was a coffee sack
with holes cut out for his head and arms...
He went barefoot most of the time, even in winter.
He was a strict vegetarian eating no meat or fish. He believed it was wrong to take life in order to procure food. "
So Disney got the bare feet part right and oddly enough the pot on the head as well.
"He wore a pyramid of three hats. The first was only a brim. Next came his cooking pot.
Surmounting all was a hat with a crown. The sum total was if extremely odd, rather ingenious."
It was ingenious because it kept his books dry because that's where he kept his books,
in the pot on his head.
And those books were the texts of the church of Swedenborg named after Emanuel Swedenborg of
Sweden.
Swedenborg was a scientist turned revelator after having a vision from God after a particularly large meal
where God told him not to eat so much. That's true.
This was the man who Victor Hugo described as having "...glided into insanity."
And this was the man that Johnny Appleseed followed devoutly.
It was why he was a vegetarian.
It was why he wouldn't even defend himself against wild animals. He once befriended a
wolf cub and took him about on his travels.
And why "He said he would not marry in this world,
but would have a pure wife in heaven."
When visiting people he would often tear out pieces from the Swedenborg books and leave them behind.
Eccentric but harmless.
And John Henry Cook "believed him to be intelligent and full of pleasant story and good advice."
He was entertaining too. Whenever he came to a new town
he would gather all the children around and entertain them by sticking needles into his calloused feet.
Calloused because he had been walking around the country barefoot.
That is a town that needs a bowling alley.
Though not everyone was charmed by him.
One account claims that "[he was] nothing but a bum...
All he did was come and sponge on people. He could
come and stay and eat, and eat, and eat until you finally shoved him out
and sent him on his merry way."
See he was building all these orchards around the country but he wasn't building anywhere for him to live.
And so he would kind of depend on the kindness of strangers to feed him
and to put him up for the night. Though
after feeding him where he stayed was usually the barn to protect everyone
from his what they called 'wee beasties' or lice.
But after nearly 50 years of this itinerant lifestyle he had amassed over 1200 acres of land,
and that's what he left to his daughter when he died at the age of 70 in 1845.
But his legacy was much more than that because
since he planted seeds rather than the more traditional of growing apple trees which was grafting
he left hundreds of different varieties of apple trees around Indiana and Ohio.
Most of which were probably rather inedible.
They were small, sour, almost crab apples that were good for making
cider and applejack.
Probably not the kind of apple that you would want to use to actually put
into our drink today.
And that baked apple should be about ready now.
So take the apple out of the oven, let it cool for a couple minutes and then cut it up.
So I'll add the apple and then I will pour in
some boiling water making a mess all over the place.
I'll give it another little stir here just to see if we can't get some of that dissolved,
but no worries if not.
And here's our apple toddy, perfect for autumn.
Let's give it a taste.
That's good. Oh that is so good.
I mean it's a little sweet from the sugar but
honestly it's not that sweet. It's really- this is the winner.
It really flavors it you know,
but then it also- the sugar, the water, the nutmeg it all softens this. I don't really
know the point of the apple other than you know you put an apple and an apple toddy because
I don't know how much flavor it's really going to give until I get down there and then I'll have
an applejack soaked apple. So you know what, I get the point of the apple.
So again there is a link to this old apple brandy or old applejack down in the description at Curiada
and go make yourself an apple toddy especially
if it's nice and cool outside, which it's not yet here in Burbank but
it's gonna be there any day now.
So yeah! Cheers and I'll see you next time on Drinking History.