Trollied Tuesday: Scultheen
You remember my search for a suitably tigerish drink? No, well I'm still looking.
Here's one worthy contender: scultheen. It was a favourite of the Irish Hellfire Club and consisted of whiskey, buttermilk and, for a suitably diabolic touch a dash of brimstone.
Milk can be surprising effective with spirits like brandy, whiskey and – especially – spiced rum, so why not this variant? I like to think of it as a far superior version of Bailey's Irish Cream.
The lurid tales surrounding the hellfire clubs are legion, and most of the occult stuff is greatly exaggerated. Still the stories about figures such as Buck Whaley - who was reputed to have met the Devil in St Audoen's church in Dublin and who certainly did travel to Jerusalem for a bet and played handball against the Wailing Wall – are all highly entertaining. It's certainly an advertisement of sorts for the benefits of scultheen. and Whaley's memoirs look like something that would well repay the time spent reading them.
As for the Hellfire Clubs themselves, this is a good brief guide to the facts and fictions surrounding them. Remember that their primary purpose was to satirise the religious and moral views of the day (it was somewhat underminded by the conventionally aristocratic anti-Catholic strand to much of the thinking, but then the Roman church as always been a worthy adversary). Nonetheless, if even aspire to go against the grain a suitable drink is needed to toast your endeavours – so scultheen it is. Truly the Devil's Buttermilk.
Here's one worthy contender: scultheen. It was a favourite of the Irish Hellfire Club and consisted of whiskey, buttermilk and, for a suitably diabolic touch a dash of brimstone.
Milk can be surprising effective with spirits like brandy, whiskey and – especially – spiced rum, so why not this variant? I like to think of it as a far superior version of Bailey's Irish Cream.
The lurid tales surrounding the hellfire clubs are legion, and most of the occult stuff is greatly exaggerated. Still the stories about figures such as Buck Whaley - who was reputed to have met the Devil in St Audoen's church in Dublin and who certainly did travel to Jerusalem for a bet and played handball against the Wailing Wall – are all highly entertaining. It's certainly an advertisement of sorts for the benefits of scultheen. and Whaley's memoirs look like something that would well repay the time spent reading them.
As for the Hellfire Clubs themselves, this is a good brief guide to the facts and fictions surrounding them. Remember that their primary purpose was to satirise the religious and moral views of the day (it was somewhat underminded by the conventionally aristocratic anti-Catholic strand to much of the thinking, but then the Roman church as always been a worthy adversary). Nonetheless, if even aspire to go against the grain a suitable drink is needed to toast your endeavours – so scultheen it is. Truly the Devil's Buttermilk.
Labels: history, rakes, trollied tuesday
posted by buff and blue at 2:29 pm
1 Comments:
Scultheen was also used by European pirates sailing around the Cuban seas, but they only used rum. Pouring that concoction down your gullet would do more than put hairs on your chest...it'd turn you inside out! They swigged on this toxicity in a container called a 'black-jack'. This was made from tarred leather...not from glass or pewter. They also liked swilling on another type of drink called 'kill-devil', which was rum laced with gunpowder. Obviously there was no smoking at the time otherwise they'd have their heads & guts blown off...literally!
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