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Distillation (Take of spearmint leaves fresh)

Take of spearmint leaves, fresh, any quantity; water, 3 times as much. Distil as long as the liquor which comes over has a considerable taste or smell of the mint. Or, take spearmint leaves, dried, 1½ lbs., water as much as is sufficient to prevent burning. Draw off by distillation 1 gall. Cinnamon Water.

Take of bruised cinnamon, 1 lb.; water, 2 galls.

Simmer in a still for an hour, put what comes over into the still again; when cold strain through flannel.

Eau Sans-Pareil.

Take 2 galls. of fine old honey-water, put it into a still capable of holding 4 galls., and add the thinly pared rinds of 6 or 8 fresh citrons, neither green nor mellow ripe. Then add 60 or 70 drops of fine Roman bergamot; and, having luted the apparatus well, let the whole digest in a moderate heat for 24 hours. Draw off, by a water-bath heat, about 1 gall.

Jessamine Water.

Take 6 lbs. of the white sweet almond cakes from which jessamine oil has been made abroad; beat and sift them to a fine powder, and put to it as much fresh oil of jessamine as will be required to make it into a stiff paste. Let this paste be dissolved in about 6 qts. of spring-water, which has been previously well boiled, and left until it has become about half cold. Stir and mix the whole well together; and when the oil and water have been well combined, let the whole stand until the powder has fallen to the bottom of the vessel. Now pour the liquid off gently, and filter it through cotton, in a large tin funnel, into the glass bottle in which it is to be kept for use. The powder or sediment which has been left at the bottom of the vessel, when dried by the heat of the sun, answers very well for making almond paste for the hands.

Jamaica Pepper Water.

Jamaica pepper is the fruit of a tall tree growing in the mountainous parts of Jamaica, where it is much cultivated because of the great profit arising from the cured fruit, sent in large quantities annually into Europe. Take of Jamaica pepper, lb.; water, 2 galls.; draw off 1 gall. with a pretty brisk fire. The oil of this fruit is very ponderous, and therefore this water is made in an alembic.

Myrtle Water.

Infuse 8 or 10 lbs. of the cuttings of green myrtle in nearly 20 galls of rain or river water, and add thereto a pint of fresh yeast, after it has stood for 24 hours. At the end of another day and night, put the whole into a still, with 1 lb. of bay-salt.

Draw off the whole of the water, and next day infuse more myrtle leaves as before, and distill again. Repeat the same a third time.

Orange-flower Water. used in flatulent colics. A wineglassful may be taken, and often repeated.