particularly among the urban populations of
the Industrial Revolution. In England the
principal scourge was cheap gin, which the
average Londoner in the late 18th century
consumed at the rate of nearly a pint/400 ml a
day “to seek relief in the temporary oblivion
of his own misery,” as Charles Dickens later
wrote in Sketches by Boz. Government control
of production and social progress later
moderated the problem of alcohol addiction,
but hasn’t eliminated it.
Food Words: Distill
The word distill comes from the Latin
destillare, “to drip.” It thus captures the
moment at which the barely visible vapors
from a hot liquid condense and
rematerialize on a cool surface.Whiskey in America Distilled alcohol was so
popular in North America that it gave us an
enduring legacy: the Internal Revenue