SPRIG OF BORAGE IN GLASS CUP OF THE THIRD OR FOURTHCENTURY.
London Published by John Van Voorst Paternoster Row.
CUPS AND THEIR CUSTOMS
SECOND EDITION.
LONDON:
JOHN VAN VOORST, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCLXIX.
PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND FRANCIS,
RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET.
PREFACE.
The principal object of these pages is to furnish a collection ofrecipes for the brewing of compound drinks, technically called "Cups,"all of which have been selected with the most scrupulous attention tothe rules of gastronomy, and their virtues tested and approved byrepeated trials. These we are inclined to put into type, from a beliefthat, if they were more generally adopted, it would be the means ofgetting rid of a great deal of that stereotyped drinking which atpresent holds sway at the festive boards of England. In doing this, wehave endeavoured to simplify the matter as much as possible, addingsuch hints and remarks as may prove serviceable to the uninitiated,whilst we have discarded a goodly number of modern compounds asunpalatable and unscientific. As, in this age of progress, most thingsare raised to the position of a science, we see no reason whyBacchanology, if the term please our readers, should not hold arespectable place, and be entitled to its due mead of praise;so, by way of introduction, we have ventured to take a cursory glanceat the customs which have been attached to drinking from the earliestperiods to the present time. This, however, we set forth as noelaborate history, but only as an arrangement of such scraps as havefrom time to time fallen in our way, and have helped us to form ideasof the social manners of bygone times.
We have selected a sprig of Borage for our frontispiece, by reasonof the usefulness of that pleasant herb in the flavouring of cups.Elsewhere than in England, plants for flavouring are accounted of rarevirtue. So much are they esteemed in the East, that an anti-Brahminicalwriter, showing the worthlessness of Hindu superstitions, says, "Theycommand you to cut down a living and sweet basil-plant, that you maycrown a lifeless stone." Our use of flavouring-herbs is the reverse ofthis justly condemned one; for we crop them that hearts may be warmedand life lengthened.
And here we would remark that, although our endeavours are directedtowards the resuscitation of better times than those we live in, timesof heartier customs and of more genial ways, we raise no lamentationfor the departure of the golden age, in the spirit of Hoffmann vonFallersleben, who si