Came across an interesting thread on another forum in relation to an old Irish drink mixture.
Scalteen ...
http://www.thebookofdays.com/months/april/28.htm
In Ireland, before the days of Father Mathew, there used to be a favourite beverage termed scaltheen, made by brewing whisky and butter together. Few could concoct it properly, for if the whisky and butter were burned too much or too little, the compound had a harsh or burnt taste, very disagreeable, and totally different from the soft, creamy flavour required. Such being the case, a good scaltheen-maker was a man of considerable repute and request in the district he inhabited. Early in the present century there lived in a northern Irish town a very respectable tradesman, noted for his abilities in making scaltheen. He had learned the art in his youth, he used to say, from an old man, who had learned it in his youth from another old man, who had been scaltheen-maker in ordinary to what we may here term, for propriety's sake, the H. F. club in Dublin. With the art thus handed down, there came many traditional stories of the H. F.'s, which the writer has heard from the noted scaltheen-maker's lips. How, for instance, they drank burning scaltheen, standing in impious bravado before blazing fires, till, the marrow melting in their wicked bones, they fell down dead upon the floor. How there was an unaccountable, but unmistakeable smell of brim-stone at their wakes; and how the very horses evinced a reluctance to draw the hearses containing their wretched bodies to the grave. Strange stories, too, are related of a certain large black cat belonging to the club. It was always served first at dinner, and a word lightly spoken of it was considered a deadly insult, only to be washed out by the blood of the offender.
This probably explains the old Irish proverb I use as a signature in a different whisky forum.
An té nach leigheasann im nó uisce beatha, ní aon leigheas ar.
What butter and Whiskey cannot cure, there is no cure for.
God bless the Hell Fire clubs .... any takers for setting up a new order
http://www.chaptersofdublin.com/books/Joycenglish/vocab2.htm
Scolsheen or scalteen; made by boiling a mixture of whiskey, water, sugar, butter and pepper (or caraway seeds) in a pot: a sovereign cure for a cold. In the old mail-car days there was an inn on the road from Killarney to Mallow, famous for scolsheen, where a big pot of it was always kept ready for travellers. (Kinahan and Kane.) Sometimes the word scalteen was applied to unmixed whiskey burned, and used for the same purpose. From the Irish scall, burn, singe, scald.
