Important: Safety Warning
This page contains a formula or preparation using substances now known to be dangerously toxic, such as arsenic, mercury, lead, or cyanide compounds. Exposure to these substances can cause severe poisoning, permanent injury, or death.
In addition, this page describes additives or treatments for food or drink that are now known to be toxic and are prohibited in food today.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Brandies
Cognac Brandy.
Neutral spirits, 4 galls.; a gall. of honey dissolved in water, 2 pts.; Jamaica rum, 1 gall.; catechu, oz.; butyric ether, 1 oz. Mix.
Sarzerac Brandy.
Neutral spirits, 4 galls.; 3 pts. of water to dissolve honey, 4 pts.; rum, 3 qts.; porter, 3 pts.; infusion of almonds, a pt.; oil of wine, 1 oz.; sugar coloring, 4 oz.; cochineal tincture, 1 oz.; then add the alcoholic solution of starch, 3 pts., and mix. This starch solution is made by infusing 1 qt. of wheat or rice flour in 1½ galls. of equal parts of clean spirit and water for 24 hours.
Cherry Brandy.
Neutral spirits, 4 galls.; refined sugar, 5 lbs.; water, to dissolve, 1 gall.; catechu, 1 oz.; infusion of bitter almonds, 1/2 a pt. cloves, cassia, of each, 1/2 oz. ; these are to be well bruised before adding tartaric acid, 4 oz., dissolved in 1 pt. of water; honey, 1 qt., dissolved in 1 pt. of water; 4 drops of oil of wintergreen, dissolved in 1 oz. of acetic ether, then color with 1 pt. of the tincture of cochineal; burnt sugar, 1 oz. Peach Brandy.
Neutral spirits, 4 galls.; 3 pts. of honey, dissolved in 2 pts. of water; mix infusion of bitter almonds, 1 pt.; sulphuric acid, 80 drops; porter, 1 pt.; tincture of saffron, 1/2 a pt. and flavor with oil of pears, 1 oz., dissolved in 2 oz. of alcohol, and acetic ether, 1/2 oz.
Old Apple Brandy.
Neutral spirits, 4 galls.; decoction of tea, 1 pt.; alcoholic solution of starch, 3 qts., sulphuric acid, 1/2 oz.; this is flavored with the oil of apples, 1 oz., dissolved in alcohol, 2 oz.; color with 4 oz. of sugar coloring; valerianate of amylic oxide is the chemieal name for apple oil.
These are not brandies at all but nineteenth-century rectifiers' formulas for imitating them: neutral spirit bulked out with sweetener, colour and flavouring chemicals. Several of the named ingredients are poisons, and none of them belong in a drink.
- Sulphuric acidThe peach and apple formulas call for sulphuric acid, eighty drops in one and a part-ounce quantity in the other (the fraction is lost from the text). It is a corrosive mineral acid, capable of causing serious injury to the mouth, throat and stomach, and no amount of dilution in spirit makes it a food ingredient.
- Bitter almondsThe "infusion of bitter almonds" appears in two of these formulas (a third calls simply for almonds). Bitter almonds contain amygdalin, which yields hydrogen cyanide when crushed and wetted; unprocessed bitter almonds are not sold as ordinary food in the United States or the United Kingdom for that reason, and a pint of infusion is far beyond any safe exposure.
- Butyric ether, acetic ether, oil of wineThese are old rectifiers' names for ester preparations of varying purity. "Oil of pears" and "oil of apples" are amyl esters; the book itself gives valerianate of amylic oxide as the chemical name for the apple oil. They are irritants at strength, and what a nineteenth-century compounder actually received under these names is not knowable from the formula.
- Catechu and cochineal tinctureCatechu is an astringent tannin extract from acacia heartwood, used to fake the mouthfeel of barrel age. The cochineal tincture is an insect-derived dye in alcohol. Neither is dangerous in the way the acids are, but both signal what the formula is for: making cheap spirit pass as aged brandy.
- ScaleEach formula begins with four gallons of neutral spirit and produces something on the order of five to six gallons of finished liquid. This is trade-scale compounding for a rectifying house, not a domestic recipe, and the quantities of the hazardous components scale with it.
- If you want brandyBuy it. There is no adjusted version of these formulas worth attempting.
This page is squarely trade rather than household. Rectifying — buying plain grain spirit and dressing it up as cognac, rum or whisky — was an entire industry before the food and drink adulteration laws of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and manuals of this kind were how the formulas travelled. Every element here has a job: honey and refined sugar for body, porter and burnt sugar and cochineal for colour, catechu for the drying tannin of a cask, the alcoholic starch solution for viscosity, and the ethers for the fruity top notes that ageing would otherwise supply. "Sarzerac" appears to be a rendering of Sazerac, a cognac brand well enough known through the New Orleans trade that imitating it was worth the effort. The presence of sulphuric acid and bitter almonds in a consumer product is a fair measure of how little regulation stood between the rectifier and the glass.