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Factitious Liquors (Take lbs of cherries half red)
Take 72 lbs. of cherries, half red and half black, mash or squeeze them to pieces with the hands, and add to them 3 galls. of brandy, letting them steep for 24 hours; then put the mashed cherries and liquor into a canvas bag, a little at a time, and press it as long as it will run. Sweeten it with loaf sugar and let it stand a month; then bottle it off, putting a lump of sugar into every bottle.
Another. To every 4 qts. of brandy, put 4 lbs. of red cherries, 2 lbs. of black, 1 qt. of raspberries, with a few cloves, a stick of cinnamon, and a little orange-peel; let these stand a month close stopped; then bottle it off, putting a lump of sugar into every bottle.
Black-Cherry Brandy.
Stone 8 lbs. of black cherries and put on them a gallon of brandy. Bruise the stones in a mortar, and then add them to the brandy. Cover them close, and let them stand a month or 6 weeks.
Then pour it clear from the sediment and bottle it. Morello cherries, managed in this manner, make a fine rich cordial.
Caraway-Brandy.
Steep 1 oz. of caraway-seed and 6 oz. of loaf sugar, in 1 qt. of brandy; let it stand 9 days and then draw it off.
Lemon-Brandy.
Put 5 qts. of water to 1 gall. of brandy; take 2 doz. of lemons, 2 lbs. of the best sugar, and 3 pints of milk. Pare the lemons very thin and lay the peel to steep in the brandy 12 hours. Squeeze the lemons upon the sugar, then put the water to it, and mix all the ingredients together. Boil the milk and pour it in boiling. Let it stand 24 hours and then strain it.
Orange Brandy.
Put the chips of 18 Seville oranges in 3 qts. of brandy, and let them steep a fortnight in a stone bottle close stopped. Boil 2 qts. of spring-water with 1½ lbs. of the finest sugar, nearly an hour very gently. Clarify the water and sugar with the white of an egg, then strain it through a jelly-bag and boil it nearly half away. When it is cold, strain the brandy into the syrup.
Raspberry Brandy.
Take a pint of water and 2 qts. of brandy, and put them into a pitcher large enough to hold them and 4 pints of raspberries. Put in 1/2 lb. of loafsugar and let it remain for a week close covered. Then take a piece of flannel with a piece of holland over it, and let it run through by degrees. It may be racked into other bottles a week after, and then it will be perfectly fine.
Another Method.
Raspberry brandy is infused nearly after the same manner as cherry brandy, and drawn off with about the same addition of brandy to what is drawn off from the first, second and third infusion, and dulcified accordingly; first making it of a bright deep color, omitting cinnamon and cloves in the first, but not in the second and third infusion. The second infusion will be somewhat paler than the first, and must be heightened in color by adding cherry brandy, about 1 qt., with 10 or more galls. of raspberry brandy; and the third infusion will require more cherry brandy to color it. It may be flavored with the juice of the elderberry.
Whiskey Cordial.
Take of cinnamon, ginger, and coriander-seed, each 3 oz., mace, cloves, and cubebs, each 1½ oz.
Add 11 galls. of proof spirit and 2 galls. of water, and distill; now tie up 5 oz. of English saffron; raisins (stoned), 4 lbs.; dates, 3 lbs.; liquorice root, 2 lbs. Let these stand 12 hours in 2 galls. of water; strain, and add it to the above. Dulcify the whole with fine sugar.
A cluster of brandy infusions and one compound cordial from the distillation section. Two things in it put the page out of reach: the deliberate bruising of cherry stones, and a final receipt that calls for a still. The rest is worth reading as a glossary of how a nineteenth-century household flavoured spirits.
- The cherry stones are the problemBlack-Cherry Brandy has you stone 8 lb of black cherries, bruise those stones in a mortar and return them to the spirit for a month to six weeks. Cherry kernels contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed and wetted; an alcoholic infusion extracts it and nothing in the method drives it off. The almond-marzipan note the receipt is chasing is inseparable from the toxin, and there is no way to judge the dose at home.
- The Whiskey Cordial requires a still"Add 11 galls. of proof spirit and 2 galls. of water, and distill" is home distillation of beverage alcohol, which is a licensed activity in the United States, the United Kingdom and most other jurisdictions regardless of scale. Small unlicensed stills also concentrate whatever volatiles the wash carries and are a fire risk with an open heat source.
- Five ounces of saffronThe same cordial ties up 5 oz of English saffron for a batch of thirteen gallons of spirit and water, before a further two gallons of infusion are added. Saffron in quantity is not merely extravagant; toxic effects are reported at doses of several grams. Treat the figure as evidence of how these compound waters were understood, not as a shopping list.
- ScaleSeventy-two pounds of cherries to three gallons of brandy is a cellar operation, not a kitchen one. The smaller receipts here run to roughly six to eight pounds of fruit per gallon of spirit.
- The vocabularyDulcify means to sweeten. Chips of oranges are thinly pared strips of zest with no pith. Loaf sugar is hard refined sugar broken from a cone, equivalent to plain white sugar. Holland is a smooth linen cloth, laid here over the flannel as a second filter. Cubebs are the dried berries of Piper cubeba, a peppery spice still sold in spice shops.
- Seville oranges and MorellosBoth are specified because both are sour. Seville oranges are bitter marmalade oranges, in season only in late winter; Morello is the standard sour cherry. Substituting sweet navel oranges or Bing cherries changes the balance completely, which is why the receipts name them.
- The milk in Lemon BrandyBoiling milk poured into an acidic citrus and spirit mixture curdles on contact, and the curd traps the haze as it settles. Straining after twenty-four hours leaves a clear, silky liquor. This is the milk-punch clarification technique, and it is the one genuinely clever piece of technique on the page.
- If you want a cherry brandyUse a current recipe from a reputable source, one that leaves the stones whole or omits them. Do not adapt the receipts above.
These are ratafias — fruit, spice or kernel steeped in spirit and sweetened, a class of drink that sat somewhere between dessert wine, digestive and household medicine. Such receipts were gathered from earlier English cookery and pharmacy books without much sorting, which is why an ordinary cherry infusion any housewife could make sits next to a compound cordial requiring a still, eleven gallons of proof spirit and a licensed distiller's stock of saffron and cubebs. The almond flavour of crushed cherry and apricot kernels was prized under the name noyau and appears all over period confectionery and cordial-making. The layered first, second and third infusions in the raspberry method — each weaker, each corrected for colour with a little cherry brandy — show a commercial rectifier's habits rather than a domestic cook's.