posset

Posset appears in English around 1400, and its origin is uncertain — possibly from Latin posca (a vinegar-water drink) or from an unrecorded Anglo-Norman word. The drink itself is older than the word: hot milk curdled with ale or wine, sweetened with sugar and spiced with nutmeg or cinnamon. The curdling was the point. When acid (wine or ale) met hot milk, the mixture separated into curds and whey. The curds were eaten with a spoon; the liquid was sipped. A posset was food and drink simultaneously.

Posset pots — ceramic vessels with spouts and lids — were luxury items in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds several. They were wedding gifts, christening presents, and status symbols. A fine posset pot announced that the household could afford milk, sugar, wine, and spices at the same time. The drink was for celebrations and for illness — posset was the chicken soup of Tudor and Stuart England.

Shakespeare mentioned possets three times. In Macbeth (1606), Lady Macbeth drugs the guards' possets to ensure they sleep through Duncan's murder. The choice is telling: posset was a bedtime drink, a comfort drink, a drink you did not examine before swallowing. It was the last thing the guards expected to contain poison. Shakespeare used the drink's trustworthiness as a plot device.

Posset declined in the eighteenth century as tea and coffee replaced warm milk drinks in English households. The word survived in regional dialects and in a transformed dessert: lemon posset, a set cream made with lemon juice instead of ale. Modern lemon posset is served in restaurants across Britain. It contains no ale, no curds, and no resemblance to the original. The name is the only continuity.