Acqua D'Oro
There are many names for this liqueur, French, German, and English; but if we are to be just we shall always hold to the Italian name, which every one understands. It is the Italians who invented the liqueur in the thirteenth century, and they brought it with them into France when Catherine of Medici (1533) joined the French court as wife of Henry II. There was at first no gold in it-only a golden colour, like that which we now see in Chartreuse. But as the chemists of the middle ages, and Albert Pudding even of the renascence, nursed their dreams of golden transmutations; as there was much talk of the sovereign virtues of the king of metals; and as it was supposed that the grandest of all elixirs must be " aurum potabile," the makers of the liqueur determined to justify its name in the most palpable manner. They put chips of gold-leaf into it; and so there could be no doubt of the fact that to drink acqua d'oro was to drink gold. A change then became necessary in the appearance of the liqueur. Gold-leaf would not show in a gold-coloured liquid; and therefore the liquid, which had before been yellow, was rendered colourless, to display the gold better. It is possible that Dantzic may have led the way in perfecting some such change of colour, and may thus have succeeded in giving its name to the liqueur. Its real character, however, was due, as above said, to the Italians, who brought with them into France at least two liqueurs-this acqua d'oro, with a predominant flavour of rosemary; and rossolis, with a predominant flavour of sundew.
Brillat-Savarin mentions it as a well-known fact that liqueurs were first invented to soothe the old age of Louis XIV., and on his authority the story has been widely accepted. Any one who thinks for a moment must doubt that it was reserved for so late a period as the old age of Louis XIV. to invent the combination of spirits with highly-perfumed syrups; and the history of acqua d'oro is a positive proof to the contrary.