Sack Posset, Sir Kenelm Digby’s Cream and Sack from 1669
Reader ratingsHot cream thickened with egg and poured from a height onto boiling sweet sherry with sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon, then eaten with a spoon: the sack posset of Sir Kenelm Digby’s 1669 cookbook.
- Recipe makes
- About 650 ml, 6 small cups
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Sack posset in an earthenware bowl and small cups, with nutmeg, cinnamon and a glass of sweet sherry.
The story behind the recipe
A sack posset was hot cream thickened with eggs and poured onto boiling sack, the sweet wine that England bought from Spain, with sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon. It set into something between a custard and a soft curd, and it was eaten with a spoon. Our recipe follows the first of several in The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digby Kt. Opened, published in London in 1669, four years after Digby died.
Poured from a height
Digby’s cook boils two quarts of sweet cream, works in the yolks of nine or ten eggs and four whites a few spoonfuls at a time, and warms the mixture “to recover a good degree of heat, but not so much as to boil.” Half a pint of sack goes into a basin over a chafing dish of coals with three quarters of a pound of sugar, quartered nutmegs and sticks of cinnamon. The hot cream is then poured in “from a good height,” and “without any more to be done, it will then be fit to eat.” The book prints other possets beside it. One made in winter, when cream is “thin and hungry,” takes six or seven yolks and no whites; My Lord of Carlile’s asks for eighteen yolks and eight whites to a pottle of cream.
Read more about this recipe
A spoon for each
The rhymed sack posset that Oxford Night Caps printed in 1847 calls for sugar from “fam’d Barbadoes” and sack “from Spain,” and ends with everyone at the table eating from the bowl: “Each lad and lass take up a silver spoon, / And fall on fiercely like a starv’d dragoon.” The same book says its flips and egg drinks “possibly derived their origin from” that posset, and the line runs on to the eggnog.
The Christmas posset on record was humbler. Around Penistone in South Yorkshire, Sidney Addy wrote in 1895, a posset-pot of ale and milk sat in the middle of the kitchen table on Christmas Eve and went round the household with one large spoon, each taking a “sup.” “Ale posset must be the last thing that you drink on Christmas Eve,” the saying went. That was an ale posset, like our Posset Ale; no source we found ties sack posset itself to Christmas. For a hot egg-and-milk cup with no wine at all, make Egg Gruel.
To make a Sack posset. Boil two wine-quarts of Sweet-cream in a Possnet; when it hath boiled a little, take it from the fire, and beat the yolks of nine or ten fresh Eggs, and the whites of four with it, beginning with two or three spoonfuls, and adding more till all be incorporated; then set it over the fire, to recover a good degree of heat, but not so much as to boil; and always stir it one way, least you break the consistence. In the mean time, let half a pint of Sack or White muscadin boil a very little in a bason, upon a Chafing-dish of Coals, with three quarters of a pound of Sugar, and three or four quartered Nutmegs, and as many pretty big pieces of sticks of Cinnamon. When this is well scummed, and still very hot, take it from the fire, and immediately pour into it the cream, beginning to pour neer it, but raising by degrees your hand so that it may fall down from a good height; and without any more to be done, it will then be fit to eat. It is very good kept cold well as eaten hot. It doth very well with it, to put into the Sack (immediately before you put in the cream) some Ambergreece, or Ambered-sugar, or Pastils. When it is made, you may put powder of Cinnamon and Sugar upon it, if you like it.
Recipe makes: About 650 ml, 6 small cups
Ingredients
For About 650 ml, 6 small cups. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for About 650 ml, 6 small cups.
- Nutmeg1
- Double cream480 ml
- Large egg1
- Large egg yolk1
- Sweet sherry, such as cream sherry or sweet oloroso60 ml
- Caster sugar85 g
- Cinnamon stick1
- Ground cinnamon and sugar, to finish (optional)
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 1 whole nutmeg
- 480 ml double cream
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk
- 60 ml sweet sherry, such as cream sherry or sweet oloroso
- 85 g caster sugar
- 1 cinnamon stick
- ground cinnamon and sugar, to finish (optional)
Equipment
Medium saucepan- Small saucepan
Heatproof bowl or jug
Whisk
Instant-read thermometer
Small heatproof cups
Instructions
Set the whole nutmeg on a board and press down hard on it with the heel of a heavy knife to break it into 3 or 4 pieces.
Bring the double cream to the boil in a medium saucepan, let it bubble for about 30 seconds, then take it off the heat.
Whisk the large egg and the large egg yolk together in a heatproof bowl or jug. Whisk in 2 or 3 spoonfuls of the hot cream, then the rest a little at a time, until it is all smoothly mixed in.
Pour the mixture back into the saucepan. Set it over low heat and stir constantly, always in the same direction, until it reaches 71 to 75 °C (160 to 167 °F) on the thermometer, about 5 minutes. Do not let it boil.
Meanwhile, put the sweet sherry, the caster sugar, the broken nutmeg and the cinnamon stick in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves, then let it bubble gently for 1 minute and skim off any froth.
Rinse the heatproof bowl or jug with hot water, dry it and pour in the hot sherry syrup with its spices.
Pour the hot cream onto the syrup straight away, starting close to the bowl and raising your hand as you pour, so that the last of it falls from about 30 cm (12 in). Do not stir.
Lift out the nutmeg and cinnamon, then spoon the posset into small heatproof cups and serve hot with spoons, dusted with ground cinnamon and sugar if you like. Or cover, chill and serve it cold.
Nutrition
450calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 650 ml, 6 small cups
- Servings
- 6
Roughly estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for whole egg, egg yolk, granulated sugar and sweet sherry, with double cream at about 450 kcal per 100 ml, for one small cup.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
This is a quarter of Digby’s posset. Keep his proportion: eight parts cream to one of sack.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
This is the old posset, not the modern lemon posset, a set cream dessert. Digby’s is hot cream and egg poured onto hot sack, eaten hot or cold with a spoon; the plainer posset was hot milk turned by ale, and drunk.
Changes from the source: this is a quarter of Digby’s quantities. His two wine-quarts of cream are about 1.9 liters, and his half pint of sack about 240 ml, so we use 480 ml cream and 60 ml sherry. His nine or ten yolks and four whites come down to one whole egg and one extra yolk, a little under a quarter. The sugar is his full proportion, 85 g, a quarter of his three quarters of a pound; it makes a very sweet posset, and you can cut it to 60 g. The thermometer is ours: the FDA advises cooking egg dishes to 71 °C (160 °F), which sits within Digby’s “good degree of heat” short of the boil. If you prefer not to cook the eggs that far, use pasteurized eggs.
Sack was the period name for the sweet-leaning white wines shipped from Spain and the Canary Islands; a cream sherry or sweet oloroso stands in for it. Digby also allows “White muscadin,” a sweet Muscat wine, which works the same way. We leave out his ambergris, ambered sugar and pastils, the perfumes of a seventeenth-century kitchen.
Strength: 60 ml of 17% sherry is about 10 ml of alcohol in roughly 650 ml of posset, so about 1.5% before the short boil drives a little of it off.
A posset can be turned with treacle instead of wine, as an 1877 London cookery school taught: Treacle Posset.
Storage
Eat it hot as soon as it is made, or cover and chill it and eat it cold the same day, as Digby says it is “very good kept cold.”
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
The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digby Kt. Opened (London, 1669), “To make a Sack posset”, pp. 129–130
See the original pages (scan at Internet Archive) (opens in a new tab)
Recipe details
- Drink
- DrinkLow-alcohol
- Drink family
- Hot Drinks
- Region
- British
- Era
- 17th century
- Base
- WineMilk & whey
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Occasion
- Christmas
- Season
- Winter