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Wine, Cowslip

Take seven pounds of moist sugar, two gallons and a half of water, and two ounces of hops, and boil them together. Pare the rinds of eight lemons or Seville oranges, or a part of each; pour the boiling liquor over them; when this is cool squeeze the juice from the fruit, and add this to the liquor. Ferment the whole with yeast in the usual way, and put it into the cask. Gather cowslips on a fine day, carefully picking out all stalks and leaves. Put into the cask for every gallon of wine as much of the flowers as would equal a quart when fresh gathered; stir well till the flowers sink. Dissolve three ounces of isinglass in a little of the wine, and return it to the rest to fine; in a few days bung it up close. In six months the wine will be fit for bottling, but it will improve by being kept longer in the cask. By managing as just described, the wine will be fined in the cask, and will be as good from the cask as if bottled, which will be a great saving of trouble.