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.
Home › Distillation › Whiskeys
Whiskeys
Irish Whiskey.
Neutral spirits, 4 galls.; refined sugar, 3 lbs., in water, 4 qts.; creasote, 4 drops; color with 4 oz. of burnt sugar.
Scotch Whiskey.
Neutral spirits, 4 galls.; alcoholic solution of starch, 1 gall.; creasote, 5 drops; cochineal tincture, 4 wineglassfuls; burnt sugar coloring, 4 pt. Old Bourbon Whiskey.
Neutral spirits, 4 galls; refined sugar, 3 lbs.; dissolved in water, 3 qts.; decoction of tea, 1 pt.; 3 drops of oil of wintergreen, dissolved in 1 oz. of alcohol; color with tincture of cochineal, 2 oz.; burnt sugar, 3 oz.
Monongahela Whiskey.
Neutral spirits, 4 galls.; honey, 3 pts., dissolved in water, 1 gall.; alcoholic solution of starch, 1 gall.; rum, a gall.; nitric ether, an ounce; this is to be colored to suit fancy.
Anisctte de Bordeaux.
Whiskey, 2 galls.; 5 lbs. of refined sugar; water, to dissolve, 1½ galls.; 1 dr. oil of aniseed, dissolved in 1 oz. of alcohol, or well rubbed up in dry sugar, and added; if this is for white anisette, fine with 1/2 oz. of powdered alum; if it is for rose or pink anisette, color to suit taste.
Common rectified whiskey will answer in the above formula, or in any other in which a powerful aromatic is found necessary. Maraschino.
Proof whiskey, 3 galls.; 6 qts. of water, to dissolve; sugar, 12 lbs.; oil of bergamot, and oil of cloves, of each, 1 dr.; oil of cinnamon, 5 drops; 2 oz. of nutmegs, bruised, 1 lb. of orange-peel, 3 oz. of bitter almonds, bruised; oil of lemon, 1 dr.; dissolve the oil in alcohol; color with cochineal and burnt sugar.
Sherry.
Cider, 10 galls.; bitter almonds, 4 oz.; honey, 1 gall.; mustard, 4 oz. Boil for 30 minutes, and strain, then add spirits of orris-root, a pt.; essence of cassia, 2 oz.; and rum, 3 qts. Port Wine.
Claret, 100 galls.; honey, strained, 12 galls.; red tartar, 1 lb.; powdered catechu, 12 oz.; wheat flour, made into a paste, 1 pt.; neutral spirits, 12 galls.: 2 oz. each of bruised ginger and cassia, 1 pt. of tincture of orris-root, and color with alkanet-root, or dissolve 16 oz. bruised cochineal in 1 gall. of the above spirit, and 1 pt. of burnt sugar; this will produce the desired shade of purple.
For giving artificial strength, use tincture-grains of paradise, and the decoction of strong tea, in quantities to suit the palate.
If this is not perfectly transparent, fine with milk or isinglass.
Madeira Wine.
Water, 12 galls.; honey, 1 gall.; clean spirits, 5 qts.; hops, 5 oz.; bitter almonds, 3 oz. Boil for 25 minutes and allow it to ferment by the addition of 1 qt. of yeast; allow the fermentation to continue until the liquor tastes pleasantly acid, then fine with milk, and add 3 qts. of rum and 4 oz. of mustard. Allow it to stand for a few days; the mustard should be inclosed in a thin piece of muslin and be suspended in the wine. Imitation Claret.
Boiled cider, 6 galls.; spirits, 2 galls.; clear water, 5 galls.; catechu, powdered, 2 oz. Color with red beets and tincture logwood to suit taste.
When this is not sufficiently acid, add from 1 to 2 drops of sulphuric acid to the gallon, to suit taste. Cheap Champagne.
Water, 50 galls.; honey, 2 galls.; bruised ginger, 5 oz.; ground mustard, 5 oz. Boil the mass for 30 minutes, and when quite cool add a quart of yeast. Ferment for 10 or 14 days; first add 6 oz. of bitter almonds, bruised; spirits, and grains of Paradise tincture, to suit convenience. The more spirit the Champagne possesses the greater will be its body. For coloring, use cochineal + oz. to 50 galls. The cheapest coloring is red beets, sliced, and added to the mass during fermentation.
Five or 6 common-sized beets will color 50 galls.
The best of this coloring will not compare with cochineal. A fine aroma is given to the champagne by adding 5 drops of spirits of orris, or 3 drops of essence of wintergreen, or essence of vanilla 4 drops; or dissolve 5 grs. of ambergris in glass of pure alcohol; the alcohol should be kept hot for 1/2 an hour; this, when dissolved, should be added to 50 galls. of Champagne.
These are not recipes for making whiskey or wine. They are compounder's formulas for imitating aged spirits and wines out of neutral alcohol, sugar, dye and flavouring oils — the working documents of the nineteenth-century rectifying trade. Several of the ingredients are poisons, and none of the formulas can be reproduced.
- CreasoteThe "creasote" that gives the Irish and Scotch formulas their smoky note is wood-tar creosote, a mixture of phenols and cresols. It is classed as a probable carcinogen and is a corrosive irritant, and it has no place in a modern drink. (The creosote used to preserve railway ties is the coal-tar product, a different and dirtier material.)
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds appear in the maraschino, sherry, madeira and champagne formulas, in quantities up to six ounces. They contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernels are bruised and wetted — which is precisely what these instructions call for. Modern bitter-almond flavouring is benzaldehyde with the cyanide removed; the whole kernels sold in the period were not.
- Sulphuric acidThe imitation claret directs one to two drops of sulphuric acid per gallon to sharpen the acidity. Undiluted sulphuric acid dosed by the drop into a gallon of drink was condemned as adulteration by nineteenth-century analysts.
- Nitric etherThe ounce of "nitric ether" in the Monongahela formula is ethyl nitrite, valued for its fruity, aged aroma. It is a vasodilator and methaemoglobin-former, and it is volatile and unstable; it has long since fallen out of pharmacopoeial use.
- Dyes and finingsTincture of logwood, alkanet root and catechu are textile and tanning materials, not colourings. Alkanet carries pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which are hepatotoxic. Alum as a fining agent and grains of paradise used to counterfeit "artificial strength" were both among the substances early British adulteration statutes and analysts singled out.
- AmbergrisThe five grains of ambergris for the champagne aroma are whale intestinal secretion. Trade in it is prohibited in the United States under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, however the material was obtained.
- Uncontrolled fermentationThe madeira and champagne formulas ferment honey and water in open bulk with no acidity measurement and no sanitation; the champagne runs 10 or 14 days, and the madeira is judged done by taste, with mustard suspended in muslin. That is an invitation to spoilage organisms.
- If you want the drinkFor whiskey, wine or sparkling wine, buy it or follow a current winemaking text with measured sulphite, acid and specific-gravity readings. Nothing on this page can be salvaged into a working procedure.
Mackenzie's book sits squarely in the era of the compounder — the rectifier who bought raw neutral spirit by the barrel and turned it into whatever the label required. Aged whiskey and imported wine were expensive and slow; alcohol, burnt sugar, cochineal and a few drams of essential oil were neither, and formulas like these circulated openly in receipt books and trade manuals through most of the nineteenth century. The names tell you what the market wanted: Monongahela was the rye whiskey of western Pennsylvania, often said to be America's benchmark, and "Old Bourbon" the Kentucky rival, both here reduced to sugar, tea and wintergreen. The frankness is the point — nobody writing this expected the buyer of the finished bottle to see it. Adulteration on exactly this pattern was catalogued as early as Frederick Accum's 1820 *Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons*, which named logwood and alum among the wine-faker's tools and cocculus indicus among the beer-doctorer's, and it remained legal in much of the United States until the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Pages like this one are the best surviving evidence of why that Act was written.