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First Combination
To 40 gals. pure spirits, 5 o. p., add : 1/4 or 1/2 gal. Jamaica rum, 1 drachm oil of cognac, 1 pint sugar syrup, oz. tannin powder, 66 1 acetic ether.
This recipe is an imitation of the brandy made by Otard, Dupuy & Co.
SECOND COMBINATION, IMITATION OF SEIGNETTE BRANDY.
To vary the flavor of this brandy, and give it a flavor imitating that of Seignette brandy, instead of Jamaica ruin, use : 1/4 gal. Santa Cruz, or New England rum, + 66 apple brandy.
THIRD COMBINATION, IMITATION OF ARMAGNAC BRANDY.
Instead of the liquors in combinations 1 and 2, use : 1/2 gal. Muscat wine.
This is not a distilling recipe but a compounding one: a rectifier's formula for turning bulk neutral spirit into something that could be sold as Cognac. The terms are worth decoding, but the formula itself belongs to a trade that no longer exists and cannot be reproduced safely or legally in a kitchen.
- Why this one failsThe flavouring agents here are laboratory solvents and essences sold by strength, not by food grade, and the quantities for the tannin and the acetic ether have not survived legibly in this entry. A formula that hangs on fractions of a drachm of concentrated essence in a 40-gallon batch cannot be guessed at.
- Acetic etherThis is ethyl acetate, the fruity-smelling ester that rectifiers used to fake the volatile top notes of aged brandy. It was and is an industrial solvent; the material on sale under that name today is not intended for consumption.
- Oil of cognacAlso called oenanthic ether or oenanthic oil, a compounded essence sold by the drachm to the flavouring trade. Nineteenth-century samples varied enormously in strength and purity, and what is sold under similar names today need not resemble the article the book means.
- "5 o. p."Five degrees over proof on the old British hydrometer scale, roughly 60 percent alcohol by volume rather than the 40 percent of bottled brandy. Handling 40 gallons of spirit at that strength is a fire risk in itself before anything is added to it.
- A drachmA fluid drachm is one eighth of a fluid ounce, about 3.7 ml. The apothecary unit is a signal that these formulas came out of the chemist's shop rather than the cellar.
- Tannin powderAdded to supply the astringency and mouth-grip that real brandy takes from years in Limousin oak. It contributes little aroma; it is there chiefly to make thin spirit feel older on the palate.
- LegalityBlending and flavouring bulk spirit for sale, and labelling the result as brandy or Cognac, is now controlled by both spirits-tax law and protected designation rules in most countries. Cognac and Armagnac are geographic appellations, not styles.
- If you want the flavourBuy a bottle. Nothing in this formula produces anything that a current recipe or a modest brandy would not do better.
The compounding trade this book serves flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century, when phylloxera was destroying French vineyards and genuine Cognac grew scarce and dear just as demand for it peaked. Rectifiers bought cheap neutral grain or beet spirit and dosed it with esters, rum, wine and tannin to mimic named houses, and the houses named here were among the most counterfeited: Otard, Dupuy & Co. of Cognac, established in the 1790s and long associated with the château in that town; Seignette, a name firmly attached to La Rochelle and often said to have served as shorthand for the brandies of that port in the English and American trade; and Armagnac, the Gascon brandy distilled to a lower strength and traditionally rougher and more rustic than Cognac. The three combinations show how the imitator's mind worked: the base spirit never changes, only the small charge of "character" liquor on top, Jamaica rum for one house, New England rum and apple brandy for another, Muscat wine for the Gascon style. Books like this were sold openly to grocers and saloon keepers, and the outrage they provoked helped drive the pure-food and appellation laws that followed in the early twentieth century.