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Scaltheen -whiskey & butter cocktail

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  • 08-05-2010 8:53pm
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 32,381 ✭✭✭✭


    Just reading about the hellfire club on this site

    http://www.abandonedireland.com/hf.html
    The Clubs became associated with excessive drinking. Scaltheen, a drink made from whiskey and butter was served in abundance during meetings of the Hell Fire Club. Malachi Horan, in the book, Malachi Horan Remembers, says how they always had scaltheen ready at the Jobstown Inn.

    Then googling scaltheen I found
    http://www.thebookofdays.com/months/april/28.htm
    In Ireland, before the days of Father Mathew, there used to be a favourite beverage termed scaltheen, made by brewing whisky and butter together. Few could concoct it properly, for if the whisky and butter were burned too much or too little, the compound had a harsh or burnt taste, very disagreeable, and totally different from the soft, creamy flavour required. Such being the case, a good scaltheen-maker was a man of considerable repute and request in the district he inhabited. Early in the present century there lived in a northern Irish town a very respectable tradesman, noted for his abilities in making scaltheen. He had learned the art in his youth, he used to say, from an old man, who had learned it in his youth from another old man, who had been scaltheen-maker in ordinary to what we may here term, for propriety's sake, the H. F. club in Dublin. With the art thus handed down, there came many traditional stories of the H. F.'s, which the writer has heard from the noted scaltheen-maker's lips. How, for instance, they drank burning scaltheen, standing in impious bravado before blazing fires, till, the marrow melting in their wicked bones, they fell down dead upon the floor. How there was an unaccountable, but unmistakeable smell of brim-stone at their wakes; and how the very horses evinced a reluctance to draw the hearses containing their wretched bodies to the grave. Strange stories, too, are related of a certain large black cat belonging to the club. It was always served first at dinner, and a word lightly spoken of it was considered a deadly insult, only to be washed out by the blood of the offender.

    Recipe here but no butter so must be something else
    http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/718047-Scalteen-Irish-Punch

    http://www.chaptersofdublin.com/books/Joycenglish/vocab2.htm
    Scolsheen or scalteen; made by boiling a mixture of whiskey, water, sugar, butter and pepper (or caraway seeds) in a pot: a sovereign cure for a cold. In the old mail-car days there was an inn on the road from Killarney to Mallow, famous for scolsheen, where a big pot of it was always kept ready for travellers. (Kinahan and Kane.) Sometimes the word scalteen was applied to unmixed whiskey burned, and used for the same purpose. From the Irish scall, burn, singe, scald.
    Tagged:


Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 682 ✭✭✭IrishWhiskeyCha


    Very interesting.

    Probably relates to the following saying so.


    An té nach leigheasann im nó uisce beatha, ní aon leigheas ar.


    What butter and Whiskey cannot cure, there is no cure for.


    Old Irish Proverb


  • Registered Users Posts: 16,939 ✭✭✭✭the beer revolu


    Rum, espresso, sugar and butter.
    Yummmmm:D:D:D


  • Registered Users Posts: 32,381 ✭✭✭✭rubadub


    Rum, espresso, sugar and butter.
    Yummmmm:D:D:D
    Have you done this? does the butter blend in? I thought it would separate. Though oils will dissolve in strong alcohol I think, but not the dilution normal whiskey would be


  • Registered Users Posts: 16,939 ✭✭✭✭the beer revolu


    rubadub wrote: »
    Have you done this? does the butter blend in? I thought it would separate. Though oils will dissolve in strong alcohol I think, but not the dilution normal whiskey would be

    Only tried it once and with just a tiny amount of butter, but was yeah, I reckon it separate. Slight buttery film mixed in with the crema.
    Delicious!!:D


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