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Bourbon Whiskey
Bourbon Whiskey.
Take 40 gallons of proof spirit, 1 quart hickory-nut tincture (see page 117), 1 gallon peach tincture, 1/2 gallon highly-flavored domestic brandy (see page 58), 1 pound white glycerine.
Color with caramel.
Bourbon Whiskey.
Take 40 gallons of proof spirit, 1 quart hickory-nut tincture (see page 117), gallon prune tincture (see page 258), gallon peach tincture (see page 117), 12 drops oil of cognac dissolved in 95 per cent. alcohol.
Bourbon Whiskey.
Take 40 gallons proof spirit, 4 galls. highly flavored proof Bourbon whiskey, gallon prune tincture (see page 258), 1 pint wine vinegar, and 12 drops oil of cognac dissolved in 95 per cent alcohol.
Bourbon Whiskey.
Take 36 gallons spirit, 4 gallons highly flavored rye whiskey, 1 gallon highly flavored domestic brandy (see page 58), 1/2 galion prune tincture (see page 258), 1 pint wine vinegar, 1 pound white glycerine, Color with caramel.
This is not a distiller's recipe but a rectifier's — four variant formulas for turning bulk neutral spirit into something that could be sold as Bourbon. The notes below explain what the ingredients were and why the formulas cannot be followed.
- What "proof spirit" meantIn the American trade of this period proof spirit meant spirit at 100 proof (about 50% ABV); in formulas of this kind it was in practice cheap neutral grain or molasses alcohol bought in bulk. Nothing in the formula establishes its origin or purity, and no equivalent unlabelled bulk spirit is sold to a private buyer today.
- The scaleEvery variant starts from 36 to 40 gallons of spirit, with further gallons of tincture, brandy or whiskey added on top. These are wholesale batches, not quantities that scale down meaningfully to a domestic kitchen.
- Oil of cognacAlso sold as oenanthic ether, this was a concentrated flavour concentrate of ethyl esters, dosed here at twelve drops per barrel. It was handled as an industrial flavouring chemical, not a grocery item, and the strength of any modern product bearing a similar name bears no relation to what the author had.
- GlycerineA pound of "white glycerine" per barrel was added for body and sweetness on the palate — a standard rectifier's trick to imitate the mouthfeel of barrel-aged whiskey. It contributes nothing that ageing would, and its presence is one of the marks of a compounded rather than a straight product.
- Caramel and vinegarCaramel supplied the colour that time in charred oak would otherwise give, and the pint of wine vinegar in two of the variants presumably supplied a trace of acidity. Both are cosmetic: the formula is engineered to pass as Bourbon rather than to be it.
- The tincturesHickory-nut, peach and prune tinctures are alcoholic extracts made up elsewhere in the book, each with its own page reference. Without those pages the formulas are incomplete, and their strengths were the author's own, not a standard anyone could reproduce.
- Legal positionRectifying and blending spirits for sale is a licensed activity in the United States and in most other jurisdictions, requiring a permit distinct from a distiller's. Anyone wanting Bourbon-style flavour at home should work from a current, licensed product.
Books of this kind were working manuals for rectifiers — the middlemen who bought neutral spirit cheaply, dressed it with tinctures, essences, glycerine and caramel, and sold it under the name of whatever aged spirit it was made to resemble. The practice was widespread enough in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century to provoke a long political fight between straight-whiskey distillers in Kentucky and the compounding houses, which produced the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897 (a federal guarantee of age, proof and single-distillery origin) and, after the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, a protracted dispute over whether a compounded product could be labelled whiskey at all. That the same page offers four different routes to "Bourbon," one of which contains four gallons of rye and no Bourbon whatever, shows exactly what the name was worth to the trade: a flavour profile to be hit by whatever means came cheapest that week.