When i use a word …: Sloe gin

Last autumn I went down to the banks of the Cherwell looking for blackthorn bushes (Prunusspinosa) to pick sloes with which to make that nectar of homemade liqueurs, sloe gin. I had already looked up the recipe in The Alice B Toklas Cook Book, actually wanting an excuse to reread Brian Gysen's notorious recipe for hashish fudge, which includes a pulverised bunch of “canibus sativa” (obtaining which “may present certain difficulties”). The fudge, we are told, “should …