Full transcript of “Switchel - The Farmer's Gatorade of the 19th Century”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 It is hot out, and when it's hot out there is nothing more refreshing than a big glass of vinegar. Right? Well that is one of the ingredients in switchel, nectar of the weary farmhand. So thank you to none other than YouTube Premium for sponsoring this video as we make switchel this time on Drinking History. So earlier this summer I made a drink called shrub which is a fruit flavored vinegar-based drink popular in the 19th century, and in that video lots of people in the comments requested that I make switchel which is another vinegar-based drink, very similar and yet very different at the same time. And switchel was very popular in the 18th and 19th century especially in New England
0:47 which is one of the reasons that it's sometimes referred to as Yankee punch Yankee beverage or simply Yankee. In fact this drink has a whole host of names including swizzle, ginger pop, ginger water, and haymaker's punch as it was often drunk during the harvest as people were making hay. This is also why the 1856 recipe from "Practical American Cookery and Domestic Economy' by Elizabeth M. Hall calls it "Harvest Drink. Mix with five gallons of good water, half a gallon of molasses, one quart of vinegar, and two ounces of powdered ginger. This will make not only a very pleasant beverage, but one highly invigorating and healthful." A very simple yet interesting beverage for a hot summer's day but before we whip up a jug of switchel I wanted to tell you about today's sponsor YouTube Premium.
1:34 One of the things I love about YouTube Premium, because I watch a lot of YouTube, one of the things I really love about it is that you can have the videos still going in the background when you switch on your phone to different apps. I also love that you can download videos because it lets me watch something in those weird awkward minutes on an airplane when you've had to go onto airplane mode but before they have in-flight entertainment or when they don't have entertainment at all, that's the absolute worst. And something that I just found out you get with YouTube Premium is premium access to the YouTube Music App which has over a hundred million songs that you can listen to at any time, and it's all ad free which is just cherry on the cake, cherry on the ice cream?
2:20 On the sundae. :) So if you want to try out YouTube Premium you can get one month free by using my link in the description. It is an affiliate link so I may get a commission if you sign up from there but I'll put that link in the description, one free month of YouTube Premium. And now I'm really looking forward to trying out this switchel which I'm cutting way back on the recipe because 1, I don't need five gallons of it and 2, I don't have a barrel to make switchel so I'll be making a little bit more than one gallon, so for this recipe what you'll need is: 1 and a 1/4 gallons or 4.7 liters of water, 1 cup or 235 milliliters of apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons or 14 grams of powdered ginger, and 2 cups or 475 milliliters of molasses or maple syrup, or a bit of both. So there are lots of different sweeteners that are mentioned in different old recipes,
3:08 sometimes it's honey, sometimes it's maple syrup, or molasses and sometimes when they say molasses they mean something else. They would they would call like maple molasses instead of maple syrup, or they would they would talk about molasses from corn, corn stock molasses which is basically corn syrup and they even had something called birch sap and "The sap, which is very sweet, is boiled down to about one half the natural quantity, and some essence of spruce and chickenberry leaves added to it if you wish to make it super-excellent. This is the true Falernian." Falernian being the finest of wines from ancient Rome, did a whole video on it. Now I was really curious what this birch sap actually tasted like so I got some online, took a while to get here, but I did get it. It's from....
3:58 I don't know.... Wisconsin, hm! Not New England but close enough and it's really watery. They actually call it birch sap water so I can see why you would have to boil it down to make a little thinner but I wanted to see what it tasted like. Now I am not adding the other things to it obviously just the birch sap water. Has anyone else had this? Curious. I'm not impressed. -__- Tastes more like water, in fact maybe it's just water... There's a flavor to it, I was expecting it to be really sweet because it's replacing other sweeteners in all the old recipes. It's not particularly sweet. Pop um anyway Birch tap water
4:45 Pop. Anyway, birch sap water, now I've had it. But whatever you use for your sweetener go ahead and add it to the jug of water, or bottle of water, or whatever you're making this in. Stir it all together and then add the vinegar, and the powdered ginger, and stir those in as well. Now a whisk is going to let you get that ginger dissolved better than anything else but even then some will likely fall to the bottom or float on top, just do your best. And then once everything is mixed together it's really pretty much ready and I say pretty much because 1 it is supposed to be served cold and back in the day when you were out working on the farm you would take it and put it into a jug, tie a string around that jug, and then have it like from a tree, the jug would be in a cold cold stream,
5:38 or the hauler- I don't know wherever there's cold water, down a well and it would chill so then in the afternoon it would be nice and cold when you wanted it. I'm just putting mine in the refrigerator. The other reason that I say it's almost done is because we have to ask do we add rum to switchel? And we'll have to look at the historic record to decide yes or no. So as I researched historic recipes for switchel none really had rum actually in the recipe. Most read like this article from 1872 from the Hartford Courant which simply describes it as "....a beverage composed of water, molasses, a little vinegar, and a sprinkling of ginger."
6:24 But then many newspapers from the 19th century had it being sold by liquor sellers and so it made me think there is a connection with spirits. It also warned of people being liable to fall "under the inspiration of a mug of switchel, or of a glass of the Frenchman's water of life..." And there are numerous accounts of farmers complaining that their farm hands kept getting drunk in the afternoon on the switchel so yeah and it wasn't just in the farmlands of New England but also in Congress. "On hot days - all summer and spring and often in winter, a great bowl of switchel stood in the center of the Senate or the House. This was made after a favorite recipe and liberally 'flavored' with Jamaica rum. Members paused in their great speeches - those that yet ring through the ages, perhaps -
7:13 and going up to the great bowl, dipped deep. Sometimes they paused, glass in hand, to emphasize a telling sentence; sometimes they orated, glass in hand, and then drank deep, and again stalked back majestically to their places with switchel under their belts." And even after it fell out of favor amongst the political set, switchel remained quite popular amongst most people including sailors and whalers specifically and it was often said that after a whale chase a big old bucket of switchel, spiked switchel, would be served up to the sailors but " 'No whale, no switchel,' is frequently the rule; but I am inclined to think that whale or no whale, a little rum is not amiss after a lusty pull."
7:59 The phrase lusty pull not being used in polite society today. Now for every mention I found of adding rum to switchel there there were also mentions of it being a beverage for the Temperance Movement. An 1832 article said "It can do no harm to mention, that not a drop of ardent spirit was drank on board Capt Kennedy's ship, from the day of her departure to her return. Plenty of hot coffee and chocolate supplied its place in cold weather and the yankee switch will preserve the health of the men in Calcutta, while half the rum drinking crew there, were in the hospital." So sometimes it had rum and sometimes it didn't but that just made it all the more versatile so everyone could enjoy a glass of switchel. As I said switchel was "...that nectar of the weary farmhand."
8:45 But kids enjoyed it as well reminiscing about fishing trips during his childhood in the 1830s the author Charles Dudley Warner recalled waking up early and packing a lunch "with bottles of root beer and a jug of switchel,..." And it was a favorite in the courts of justice as well. In 1869 both lawyers and judge would belly up to what they called "the bar of justice. Behind it was a table with a jar of molasses, a bottle of vinegar, and a jug of water to make 'switchel' for the court." Now that description completely left out any mention of ginger and maybe it was just an oversight, or maybe it was because there was no one way of making switchel. Many people would swap out the ginger in favor of nutmeg,
9:30 and that's okay because "If I want my switchel without nutmeg, I'm not going to war with my brother who prefers that pleasant spice. A gentleman does not call his fellow's mixture slops because it differs slightly from his own... Calm consideration is so much more effective than hasty condemnation." A good lesson for us all to learn but not everyone was so tolerant of their neighbors differing switchel recipes. In fact there is a story of a newspaper man putting out a recipe for switchel and asking for comment about his recipe. Well they always say never read the comments because he got "Eighty-nine of them and each different. That was not all he got. Each correspondent framed his recipe in wordy contempt for the other fellow's.
10:18 Each commentator came up to the line bristling for battle." But at least those 89 people had heard of switchel and that was because they were from New England, but outside of New England most people didn't know anything about the drink. There's a story in 1833 where a military officer talks to his Colonel and mentions switchel, and the colonel who's from Mississippi says "Switchel! I've not been to latin-school nor I haint swallowed a dictionary, so tell us what that ere truck is?" I can't do a Mississippi accent so just layer that in. Anyway, over and over I found people wondering what switchel was especially Pennsylvanians who knew what switchel was they just associated it with Yankees or New Englanders and not always in a nice way.
11:04 "These are certainly a very strange race of people... they live upon nothing. A rasher of pork is a feast for them even on holidays. Their favorite drink is nothing but switchel, or molasses and water, which they will tell you is better than burgundy or champagne." And it definitely hadn't made its way to England, in fact one of my favorite mentions of switchel comes from a character Sam Slick who was created in 1835 and he was supposed to be from Nova Scotia, and he was a satirical character who would playfully mock Americans, New Englanders specifically, and Canadians as well. And in one of his stories he goes to England and is thoroughly unimpressed by the selection of beverages at a pub. "The drinks ain't good here; they hante no variety in them nother; no white-nose , apple-jack, stone-wall, chain -lightning, rail-road,
11:55 hail stormginsling-talabogus, switchel-flip gum-ticklers, phlem-cutters, joleps, skate-iron, cast-steel, cock-tail or nothin, but that very stupid black fat porter." Now I know that some of those are real drinks but I'm wondering if they all are like phlegm-cutters or that hail stormginsling-talabogus. What is that? Was it ever real? I don't know but I kind of want to want to find out what it was but even if it was real it clearly has fallen out of favor and is no longer popular just as switchel did. By the late 19th century mentions of switchel and recipes start to fade away and really by the 1930s "Many of the large New England hayfields have disappeared;so has the switchel, which is now merely a name.
12:47 Switchel was a mixture of molasses, ginger, water and a dash of vinegar contained in a brown jug cached under the shade of a bunch of alders as partly submerged in a spring hole. On a hot day when men were mowing, raking, or pitching hay, frequent trips were made to the switchel jug. Dusty throats needed something to wash away the hayseed, and switchel was the answer. It was consumed in quantities. The coldness of the water was tempered by the molasses, while the ginger and vinegar prevented cramps." So if you have cramps ginger and vinegar seems the way to go but be careful that it is actually ginger sure you're putting into that switchel. There's a story from 1864 by a Doctor Chase who talks about another a grocery seller who's trying to undercut him selling switchel
13:36 at only "eighteen cents per bucket, but, by some mistake, he put in mustard instead of ginger. They had a general vomit, which made them think that Cholera had come..." I think that was ginger that I put in there, right? 00:13:50,725 Couldn't have been mustard... I guess we'll find out as I drink this switchel. And here we are switchel the 19th century nectar of the weary farmhand. So I'm going to first try it without any rum in it. Doesn't smell as vinegary as I thought it would. iIn fact it smells more appley which is weird because apple cider vinegar doesn't really taste or smell appley. Anyway here we go. Hmm, that is good.
14:26 Hmm kind of tastes like a really gingery apple pie, but there's the burn of the vinegar but not the flavor of vinegar, you kind of get it in the back of the throat. There is no flavor, you can smell it. You know it doesn't like you know vinegar is potent but- really, really good. Now I'm going to add some of this English Harbor aged five years Antigua rum which is my current favorite rum. It's Antigua, not Jamaica like those in Congress used to have but- is that enough? I don't know we'll stir it around a little bit. Cheers.
15:11 Oh that's the way to do it. I wish I had made five gallons it's actually really good. I would actually like serve that at a party. I was really expecting a much more vinegary drink but that's not. Why did that go out of fashion? That's delightful. Yeah make this. It's like super easy and why wouldn't you it's fantastic. I would use a- you know not just molasses because it is bitter so get something that has some sweetness in it as well. Mix and match and I used a strained apple cider vinegar. Doesn't really affect the flavor but it's just prettier than the really cloudy stuff.
15:58 Yeah go make this. Again putting a link in the description for one free month of YouTube Premium, it's an affiliate link. And I will see you next time on Drinking History.
