Alcohol-Free Hot Buttered Cider with Allspice and Cloves
Reader ratingsJerry Thomas’s 1862 hot spiced rum without the rum: sweet apple cider heated with whole allspice and cloves, finished with a piece of butter melting on top.
- Recipe makes
- 1 mug, about 3/4 cup
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Simmer the cider with the spices for about 5 minutes.
Hot buttered cider in a stoneware mug, with whole allspice and cloves and a red apple.
The story behind the recipe
Our hot buttered cider is Jerry Thomas’s 1862 hot spiced rum with sweet cider in place of the rum and water. In his How to Mix Drinks of 1862, the hot spiced rum is a teaspoon of sugar, a wine-glass of Jamaica rum, a teaspoon of “mixed spices, (allspice and cloves.)” and “1 piece of butter as large as half of a chestnut,” filled up with hot water. Two entries further down the same page, his Stone Fence fills a glass of bourbon with sweet cider.
Sweet cider, not hard
In American usage of the time, sweet cider meant fresh, unfermented apple juice. It is what the alcohol-free version uses: the cider brings the sweetness and body that the sugar gave, so the sugar becomes optional. The allspice, cloves and butter stay as Thomas had them.
Putting cider in his hot spiced rum is our idea, not his, and we found no period bar recipe for a hot buttered cider. For the 1862 drink with Jamaica rum, see Hot Spiced Rum with Butter, from 1862.
Read more about this recipe
Making it today
Use cloudy, unfiltered apple juice, labeled apple cider in the United States; clear apple juice is thinner. Simmering the cider gently with whole allspice and cloves for a few minutes flavors the whole mug. The butter goes in last and melts into a thin gold layer on the top.
How cider was drunk on American farms is told in What Did Early Americans Drink at Harvest?, and Thomas’s book is in The Bartenders Who Wrote Down the Classic Cocktails.
207. Hot Spiced Rum.
(Use small bar glass.)
1 teaspoonful of sugar. 1 wine-glass of Jamaica rum. 1 teaspoonful of mixed spices, (allspice and cloves.) 1 piece of butter as large as half of a chestnut. Fill tumbler with hot water.
Recipe makes: 1 mug, about 3/4 cup
Ingredients
For 1 mug, about 3/4 cup. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for 1 mug, about 3/4 cup.
- Sweet apple cider (unfiltered apple juice)3/4 cup
- Whole allspice1/2 tsp
- Whole cloves1/2 tsp
- Butter1 tsp
- Sugar (optional)1 tsp
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 3/4 cup sweet apple cider (unfiltered apple juice)
- 1/2 tsp whole allspice
- 1/2 tsp whole cloves
- 1 tsp butter
- 1 tsp sugar (optional)
Equipment
Small saucepan
Fine strainer
Mug
Instructions
Put the sweet apple cider, whole allspice and whole cloves in a small saucepan and bring it to a simmer.
Simmer gently for about 5 minutes, then taste and stir in the sugar if you want it sweeter.
Strain the cider into a warmed mug.
Add the butter and stir as it melts. Serve hot.
Nutrition
120calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- 1 mug, about 3/4 cup
Roughly estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for unsweetened apple juice and butter.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
This is one mug. For a jug, keep 1/2 teaspoon each of whole allspice and cloves and 1 teaspoon of butter for every 3/4 cup of cider.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
Changes from the source: the rum and the hot water are replaced by sweet apple cider, and the sugar is optional. Simmering the cider with the spices and straining them out are ours; Thomas puts the spices straight into the glass. Using them whole, half a teaspoon of each, is ours too, since he does not say whole or ground. A piece of butter “as large as half of a chestnut” is taken as about 1 teaspoon.
The Stone Fence on the same page uses sweet cider cold, with bourbon; that is where the cider comes from, not from any hot drink of his.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; glassware, ice and timings need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
A modern alcohol-free adaptation of “Hot Spiced Rum”, No. 207, with the sweet cider of “Stone Fence”, No. 209, in Jerry Thomas, How to Mix Drinks, or, The Bon-Vivant’s Companion (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1862), p. 80
Recipe details
- Drink
- Alcohol-free
- Drink family
- Hot Drinks
- Region
- American
- Era
- 19th century
- Source decade
- 1860s
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Occasion
- Christmas