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APPLE WINE. To each gallon cider fresh from press, add two pounds good brown sugar; after this has dissolved, strain wine and put into a new cask, cover bung with piece of muslin or perforated tin, let stand for a week, then cork lightly and let remain two weeks longer, cork tightly; the vessel must not be filled, leaving at least one -eight of space; will be good in two or three months, when it should be drawn, bottled and sealed. This wine is equal to catawba.-Rev. D. P. Younge, Ky.
BLACKBERRY WINE. - Measure berries and bruise them, add one quart of boiling water to every gallon of fruit, fill large stone® jar, tie a cloth over it and let stand three or four days to ferment; strain liquor into a cask, adding three pounds brown sugar to each gallon of juice; reserve a part to fill the vessel as fermentation goes on; cover bung hole with piece of muslin; leave two or three weeks, then cork tightly and let remain undisturbed six months; after that time bottle and seal. Superior currant wine may be made by this recipe. - Mrs. F., Va.
CATAWBA WINE, (Superior). - Cut grapes and remove all imperfect or green ones, tack a leather loosely over the end of a small mallet and pad with hay, to prevent mashing grape seeds. Put fruit in a tub and mash, let stand all night, then drain all juice into open vessels, leave standing until scum rises, breaking in cracks and showing little white foam, skim it off, fumigate cask with brimstone , pour in juice adding two pounds sugar to each gallon, put bung in loosely, leave for three weeks, then tighten.
In February drain off very gently, bottle, cork and seal, keep in a cool place. -Mrs. Col. S., Ky.
GINGER ALE. -Two gallons water, two pounds brown sugar, one dessert spoon cream tartar, two tablespoons fibrous part of ginger, half a sliced cream tartar, two tablespoons fibrous part of ginger, half a sliced lemon; when milk warm add half a pint of patent yeast, and bottle when fermentation begins. Do not put over fire after adding yeast.
GINGER BEER.-One and a half ounce each best ground Jamaica ginger and cream tartar, one pound brown sugar, two sliced lemons, four quarts cream tartar, one pound brown sugar, two sliced lemons, four quarts boiling water, one half pint yeast; let it ferment twenty-four hours; in two weeks it will be ready for use . -Mrs. G. W. P., Va.
GOOSEBERRY WINE. -Gather ripe berries and wash well, let stand three or four days, strain and to nine pints juice add four of rain water and four four days, strain and to nine pints juice add four of rain water and four pounds brown sugar, leave for five or six weeks, strain and bottle. LEMONADE. Pare three lemons; peeling gives a bitter taste to lemonade when kept long; slice and squeeze lemons upon six tablespoons sugar, add kept long; slice and squeeze lemons upon six tablespoons sugar, add a very little water, let stand fifteen minutes, then add two quarts water, ice well, stir and serve.
MINT CORDIAL.--While dew is on pick mint without bruising, put two handfuls in a pitcher with quart French brandy, cover and let stand in a pitcher with quart French brandy, cover and let stand twenty-four hours; remove mint and add same quantity fresh mint for two succeeding mornings, then add one pound loaf sugar, bottle and cork well. Some prefer to add three quarts water. -Mrs. E., Atlanta, Ga.
PEACH CORDIAL.-Pare and cut one pound fruit, sprinkle with one pound white sugar, let stand for two hours, boil until they become a thick white sugar, let stand for two hours, boil until they become a thick syrup, strain, add brandy to taste and bottle.
ROMAN PUNCH. - Three coffee cups lemonade, strong and sweet, one glass champagne and one of rum, juice of two oranges, well whipped champagne and one of rum, juice of two oranges, well whipped whites of two eggs beaten with half pound sugar; use ice liberally or freeze.
SHERRY COBBLER. -One lemon and one orange sliced, several slices of pine apple quartered, half a cup powdered sugar and a tumbler sherry apple quartered, half a cup powdered sugar and a tumbler sherry wine; in a wide mouth pitcher place the sliced fruit in layers with sugar, and pounded ice between each layer, cover with sugar and ice, and let stand five minutes, add two tumblers of water and rest of sugar, stir well to dissolve, fill pitcher nearly full of pounded ice, pour in wine and stir until all is well mixed; in serving put a slice of each kind of fruit in the goblet before filling.
STRAWBERRY WINE. -Three pounds sugar, one gallon juice, strain through flannel, pour in jug and leave until spring. - Mrs. Brutus Clay.
A page of home-fermented country wines, small beers and bar drinks from a Southern subscription cookbook. Several of these entries describe practices that no longer belong in a home kitchen, and the notes below explain which ones and why.
- Corking fermenting liquidThe ginger ale is bottled "when fermentation begins" and the ginger beer after only twenty-four hours; the wines are corked tight while sugar remains. Live yeast sealed in glass generates carbon dioxide at pressures ordinary bottles are not built for, and bursting bottles were a recognised hazard. Modern fermentation practice uses airlocks, measured priming sugar and pressure-rated bottles.
- Brimstone fumigationBurning a sulphur match inside the cask before the Catawba juice goes in was the standard nineteenth-century way of suppressing spoilage organisms. The dose is entirely uncontrolled here, and sulphur dioxide is both an irritant to inhale and a serious problem for sulphite-sensitive drinkers. Commercial winemaking now doses potassium metabisulphite by weight against a measured volume.
- Raw egg in Roman PunchThe whipped whites of two eggs are folded into the punch and never heated. Raw shell egg carries a Salmonella risk that alcohol and ice do not eliminate. This is one of the entries that should be taken from a current recipe using pasteurised whites if you want it at all.
- Uncontrolled open fermentationThe blackberry wine sits in a cloth-covered crock for three or four days before it ever reaches a cask, and the gooseberry berries stand three or four days before pressing. With no acid measurement, no starter culture and no sanitation step, what grows is whatever was on the fruit. Acetic and lactic spoilage are likely outcomes.
- Rain waterThe gooseberry wine calls for four pints of rain water to nine of juice. Roof-collected water was an ordinary household supply in the period; untreated roof runoff should not be used today.
- Measures in the textA dessertspoon is two teaspoons. A tumbler in a drink recipe of this date is roughly eight fluid ounces; a "glass" of champagne or rum is less certain, period wineglass measures being reckoned anywhere from two to four fluid ounces. Loaf sugar is refined cane sugar broken from a cone -- granulated is the direct substitute.
- Patent yeastThe "half pint of patent yeast" in the ginger ale is a liquid barm, a home-kept or shop-bought yeast slurry, not modern dried yeast. There is no reliable conversion between a pint of an unknown-density slurry and a packet of active dry.
- The two drinks that are simply drinksThe lemonade and the sherry cobbler involve no fermentation and no raw egg, and read exactly as written. The instruction to pare the lemons first is sound: the oils in the peel turn bitter in a pitcher that stands.
The Dixie Cook-Book was one of the large subscription compilations that circulated in the South after the Civil War, built from contributions credited only by initial and state -- Mrs. F. of Virginia, Rev. D. P. Younge of Kentucky, Mrs. Brutus Clay -- and this page shows how much of a household's drinking supply was still made at home. Catawba, invoked here twice, is an American grape whose origin is traditionally traced to the Carolinas in the early nineteenth century, and it was made famous commercially by Nicholas Longworth's Ohio River vineyards; that a Kentucky apple wine is praised as "equal to catawba" tells you the standard a home winemaker measured herself against. Mint cordial and peach cordial are brandy infusions rather than fermentations, a older and more forgiving branch of the same domestic craft, and the direction to pick the mint "while dew is on" and steep three successive mornings' gatherings reflects the common belief that the essential oils were strongest before the sun struck the leaves.