1827 Oxford Night Caps

31

Putinto a bowl half a pound of Lisbon sugar; pour on it one pint of warm beer; grate a nutmeg and some ginger into it: add four glasses of sherry and five additional pints of beer; stir it well; sweeten it to your taste: let it stand covered up two or three hours, then put three or four slices of bread cut thin and toasted brown into it, and it is fit for use. Sometimes a couple or three slices of lemon, and a few lumps of loaf sugar rubbed on the peeling of a lemon, are introduced. Bottle this mixture, and in a few days it may be drank in a state of eflfervescence. The Wassail Bowl,or Wassail Cup,was formerly prepared in nearly the same way as at present, excepting that roasted apples, or crab apples, were introduced instead of toasted bread. And up to the present pe riod,in some parts of the kingdom,there are persons who keep up the ancient custom of regaling their friends and neighbours on Christmas-eve and Twelfth-eve with a Was-