Included as a recipe, Digby's guide prescribes: Take eight Gallons of Ale; take a Cock and boil him well; then take four pounds of Raisins of the Sun well stoned, two or three Nutmegs, three or four flakes of Mace, half a pound of Dates; beat these all in a Mortar, and put to them two quarts of the best Sack; and when the Ale hath done working, put these in, and stop it close six or seven days, and then bottle it, and a month after you may drink it.
Fuller explained that the drink "sweetens the Acrimony of the blood and humours, incites clammy phlegm, facilitates expectoration, invigorates the lungs, supplies soft nourishment, and is very profitable even in a consumption itself, if not too far gone.
"[4] The drink's supposed medicinal qualities were also advertised in John Nott's Cooks and Confectioner's Dictionary (1723), which claims that Cock ale is "good against a Consumption, and to restore a decay'd Nature.
[6] The drink's entry in Robert Nares's Glossary describes it as "a sort of ale which was very celebrated in the seventeenth century for its superior quality".
Also included in that entry is a quote from Ned Ward's The London Spy, which calls Cock ale "a mixture of small-beer and treacle", although the author continues: "if this be cock-ale, said I, e'en let cocks-combs drink it.