Finding clear information on what mulled porter actually contained, apart from the heated beer itself, has proved to be a little tricky, as although there are many recipes for mulled porters and ales in old (and new) recipe books, pinning down what exactly was in the versions sold in bars in Ireland in the 1800s has been almost impossible.
One point to make is that sometimes 'mulled' just meant heated porter with nothing added to it, akin to the old much-mentioned method of just sticking a hot poker into the beer and hey presto there you had mulled porter. I have no doubt that this may have been the case in certain establishments - with or without the poker - but I did come across some other Irish non-recipe-book references that mention ingredients.
A Louth enquirer in The Farmer's Gazette from 18th of January 1868 regarding a recipe for mulled porter or ale gets the response that it contains sugar and nutmeg or ginger. Also, in Saunders's News-Letter from the 28th of July 1854 there is a brief mention in a published letter of a 'mulled porter you used to make when we were in Dublin, with plenty of nutmeg grated on top of it.' A few other online references mention both ginger, nutmeg, and sugar as well as - less often - cinnamon, which would lead to us to believe that if and when it was spiced it was mostly with these ingredients, either mixed or on their own perhaps? Hardly definitive proof but we can see that there is at least some record of these spices being used in general in Ireland if not specifically in pubs unfortunately.
Mulled porter was not a uniquely Irish drink of course, and I am certainly focussing more so on Irish public houses here, but in Scotland and England there are quite a few mentions of sugar alone being used in mulled porter, and no spice at all is recorded. More interestingly, there were also specific mixes for adding to porter available in England, and possibly in Ireland too given the close trading ties. For example, an advertisement in The Bristol Daily Post on the 26th of October 1864 carries the following claim:
The only Genuine and Original
Lemon and Spice Extract
for making
Mulled Porter and Wine
An earlier advertisement from the same company but in the rival Bristol Daily Post in August of the same year names the mix as 'Caird's Lemon and Spice Extract' but unfortunately does not give us the recipe, just mentioning that it 'combines in soluble form the quintessence of the most esteemed Spices with the fragrance and agreeable acidity of the Lemon' and that it 'comes cheaper than using spice in the ordinary way' - it could also be used in plum puddings and cakes, and all for just 1s a bottle!
And The Morning Advertiser from the 30th of January 1860 has this:
I'll Warm Yer. - Fettle for Mull'd Porter 8s per gallon, Ale Spice, 10s. 6d.
This was a spiced syrup that could be added to the porter for an 'instant' drink. (The word 'fettle' has a similar meaning to mulled, but seems to be more used in England as I could not find many references to the term in Irish publications.)
I did find a bar-related recipe for Porter Spice in the London printed New Guide for the Hotel, Bar, Restaurant Butler, and Chef by 'Bacchus' & 'Cordon Bleu' from 1885 that lists cloves, lemon rinds, cinnamon, allspice, coriander seed and caraway seed to which was added spirit, which was filtered after a fortnight and that spiced spirit added to syrup and bottled. It was suggested that a teaspoon be added to a pint of porter and then it could be sweetened to taste. I would imagine that this might be quite close to the proprietary syrup mentioned above, but no doubt there were a few variants of the actual spice mix.
This recipe certainly seems like one worth trying out and I am sure it would work in a hot whiskey too!
So to sum up, I could find no exact recipe for what was added to the hot porter in Irish public houses - it may have been just heated, possibly with sugar added - but I suspect it was also slightly spiced with ginger and/or nutmeg. Maybe it had a little lemon added too, and perhaps some used an instant syrup mix. In truth it was probably served a number of different ways depending on the pub and on their customers' tastes.
Incidentally, a mention in The Enniscorthy News & County of Wexford Advertiser on the 30th of May 1863 mentions that some cattle that had to swim for shore after a boat capsized were given a 'plentiful supply of mulled porter, sugar and ginger' to get them back to rights. The giving of mulled porter as a restorative to beast as well as man seems to have been quite common given the number of mentions I came across in veterinarian advice columns in newspapers around this time. So it looks like giving beer to cows is not just for certain Wagyu farmers, it was used here too and I suspect for similar reasons - as an appetite stimulant to get, in this case, sick cows to eat more, which would hopefully help with what ailed them!
Liam K.
(If you want further old recipes for spiced beers you could seek out Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks by William Terrington, as well as this post by me on the subject.)
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