Q1. what is 'loaf sugar'?
Q2 Jamaica rum--why Jamaica
Q3 Pure rum--sounds like Captain Jack request!
Q4 Are you to drink it from a wine glass or just steal a wine glass 3 times a day?
Q5 a quart and a pint--how many wine glasses would that equal too?
Q6 has to be a flannel cloth? That would use up Nate's and BBF's pj's.
Q7 what kind of spirit-Casper the Friendly Ghost or ???
Period recipes start to sound so natural after reading so many, that it's surprising to be reminded how odd and funny they must seem to the average modern person, coming at them without context. Because
some of those sound like serious questions...
1) White sugar came in the shape of a cone when it was refined, and was usually sold that way and crushed at home. So, short answer, it would be white sugar rather than brown. Lots of states have "Sugar Loaf Mountains," and the name is referring to the shape of the familiar cones. I'd picture taking the loaf out of the cupboard, pulling back the blue paper wrapping, breaking off pieces with sugar nippers, putting a 1-lb weight on the kitchen scale and putting the chunks in the other pan until the needle rested back at the center again. I'd probably crush the chunks a bit more in a mortar and pestle, if they broke off too large, to help them dissolve, then put them in a pan ready to receive the hot mixture.
2 & 3) the specifications about the rum are using common terms to describe what would be considered the best, purest rum. With no Food & Drug Administration, there were lots of substitutes, impure products, etc. The person giving this recipe, in specifying loaf sugar and the kind of rum, is expecting people to use the best and somewhat more expensive ingredients, and I can't help but think that he or she is setting me up for an excuse: you bought cheap rum and substituted brown sugar? Well there's your problem--of course it didn't work!
5) I always have to reduce it to cups: a quart is four cups, a pint is two, four wine glasses in a cup, that's 24 wine glasses. I expect that's due to the influence of Fanny Farmer and a modern cook's reliance on the cup as a standard measure, and that a period person would be as apt to use fluid ounces or gills.
Miss Leslie explains it all for us.
6) Flannel would be absorbant wool, easier to keep moist than cotton or linen, and it had overtones of being healthful anyway. If the author had wanted cotton flannel to be used, he would have specified Canton flannel, but I don't think it would work as well here.
7) That's a funny, right? Or is it?
People do still understand what spirits means today in this context, right...? Because I'm honestly not sure anymore what's going through the average person's head when they read recipes like this today, because apparently it's different than what's going through mine, LOL! Or maybe
all the questions were funnies, because the answers are so obvious, and I just got suckered into giving serious replies to some! Oh well, they might be useful to somebody.