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Acetic Ether
Essence of Noyau.
Macerate viously mashed them in a stone mortar) in 2 quarts of al cohol for 10 days, being careful to stir or agitate the ingredients daily; filter, and use 1/4 oz. to flavor 40 gals. of brandy. lb. peach or apricot kernals (having pre- Essence of Vanilla.
The bean of the vanilla plant (Vanilla planifolia) yields an aroma of rare excellence. The finest vanilla is grown in Mexico: the pods, or beans, are about 8½ inches long. An inferior quality is produced in Central America, but the beans are not more than 7 inches long, and are drier and not so pulpy as the true Mexican variety. Vanilla is much esteemed as a flavor by the most successful manufacturers of domestic brandy, and there is no question but that it greatly aids in the perfect imitation of the true Cognac. To prepare this aroma, take 1 oz. vanilla pods, slit them from end to end, so as to lay open the interior, then cut them up in lengths of about ¼ inch, and macerate in a pint of alcohol 95°, with occasional agitation for about a month: the tincture thus formed will only require straining through cotton to be ready for use. The above quantity is sufficient to flavor about 150 gals. brandy. (See "Recipe No. 6.") A smaller quantity of the infusion may be made in the same way.
Essence of Pineapple. (See "Butyric Ether.") Acetic Ether.
Acetic ether is colorless, of a grateful odor, and a peculiar, agreeable taste, and undergoes no change by keeping. It is made by distillation from alcohol, sul
Three separate entries from a compounder's manual sit on this page: a kernel essence, a vanilla tincture, and the opening of a note on acetic ether. Two of the three are not things to make in a kitchen, and the reasons are worth understanding.
- Peach and apricot kernelsThe kernels inside stone fruit pits contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the crushed kernel meets moisture and the fruit's own enzymes. The quantity of kernels is garbled in the text here (only "lb." survives, with the fraction lost), but any such weight of mashed kernels macerated in alcohol produces a concentrate of exactly that, and there is no way to judge the strength of the resulting tincture at home. Commercial noyau flavourings today are made with controlled, hydrocyanic-acid-limited extracts or with benzaldehyde.
- Acetic etherEthyl acetate, made here by distilling alcohol with sulphuric acid. This is bench chemistry with a flammable distillate and a strong mineral acid, not cookery, and the entry breaks off before the proportions are even given.
- Alcohol 95 degreesNineteenth-century spirit strength was quoted on several scales and the page does not say which is meant; "alcohol 95°" here most likely indicates about 95 percent ethanol by volume, roughly 190 proof. Nothing sold for household use in most places today reaches that, and the extraction behaviour of a 40 percent spirit is quite different.
- The vanilla figuresOne ounce of pods is roughly six to eight Mexican beans, depending on size and moisture. The pod lengths given, 8½ inches for Mexican and 7 inches for Central American, sit at or just above the usual top-grade range of about 6 to 8 inches.
- Slitting and cuttingSplitting the pod lengthwise and then cutting it into short lengths is the point of the method: it exposes the seed-bearing interior and the cut ends, which is where most of the extractable vanillin sits. A month of maceration with occasional agitation is still about right for a cold tincture.
- Straining through cottonA cotton plug in a funnel, the period equivalent of a coffee filter. It removes seed and fibre from the tincture.
- ScaleThese are trade quantities. One ounce of vanilla flavouring 150 gallons of spirit means a dose measured in drops per bottle; the book assumes a barrel house, not a home bar.
This page comes from the compounding literature that flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century, when "brandy" and "Cognac" on a label often meant neutral grain spirit coloured, sweetened and dosed with essences until it passed. Noyau, from the French for the stone of a fruit, was a genuine liqueur tradition built on the almond-like bitterness of peach and apricot kernels, and manuals such as this one borrowed it wholesale as an imitation flavour. The vanilla entry shows how carefully the trade graded its raw material: Mexican beans from Vanilla planifolia commanded the premium, with Central American pods dismissed as drier and thinner. Books like this were legal and openly sold until food and drink labelling law caught up with them, in the United States with the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.