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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.
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Home › Brandy, Whiskey and Imitation Spirits › Imitation Brandy
Imitation Brandy
Highly Flavored Domestic Brandy.
To 40 gallons French proof spirits, add 2 quarts raisin tincture (see page 259), 2 quarts of prune tincture (see page 258), 2 quarts St. John's bread tincture (see page 258), 1 gallon best sherry wine, 2 drachms oil of cognac and 20 drops oil of bitter almonds, both dissolved in a little 95 per cent. alcohol; 1 gallon Jamaica rum (or 1/4 ounce Jamaica rum essence), and 2 pints wine vinegar. Ten gallons of this mixture, mixed with 30 gallons French spirits, make an excellent domestic brandy. Add 1 pound of glycerine to give the liquor age, body and smoothness.
Imitation Cognac Brandy.
To 36 gallons French proof spirits, add 4 gallons Pellevoisin or Marette cognac, 1/2 gallon best sherry or Madeira wine, and 20 drops oil of cognac, dissolved in a little 95 per cent. alcohol. Then pour 2 quarts boiling water over 2 ounces black tea; when cold, filter through flannel, and add a little maraschino; mix this with the other ingredients, and color the whole to suit with caramel. Add 1 pound of pure glycerine to give age, body and smoothness to the liquor.
Imitation Brandy. Fine.
Take 40 gallons French spirit; add to it 1 pint tincture of raisins (see page 259), 1 quart prune tincture, (see page 258), 1/2 gallon best sherry or Madeira wine, and 1 pint wine vinegar. Then add 1 drachm oil of cognac, 12 drops oil of bitter almonds, 1/8 to 1/2 to drachm tannin powder, each dissolved separately in 95 per cent. alcohol. Color to suit with caramel, add 1 pound pure white glycerine, to give age and smoothness to the liquor.
This is not a cook's recipe but a rectifier's formula: three schemes for turning neutral spirit into something that could pass as brandy. It cannot be followed today, and the reasons are worth spelling out.
- Oil of bitter almondsThis is the hinge, and it is why the formula is unusable. Unrectified oil of bitter almonds is roughly a benzaldehyde carrier for hydrogen cyanide, released enzymatically from the amygdalin in the kernels; the undiluted oil has been a documented cause of fatal poisoning in single-teaspoon quantities. The book asks you to handle it neat, count drops of it, and dissolve it in 95 per cent alcohol. Modern almond flavouring is synthetic benzaldehyde and is not the same material.
- Scale and legalityEvery version starts from 36 to 40 gallons of spirit. Blending, rectifying and bottling spirits for anything but personal use requires federal and state permits in the United States and equivalents elsewhere; the volumes here are commercial, not domestic.
- Glycerine as a body agentA pound of glycerine per 40 gallons appears in all three of these formulas, added, as the text says, to fake the viscosity and sweetness of barrel age. Adding undeclared glycerine to a spirit sold as brandy is adulteration under current labelling law, whatever its toxicity.
- "French proof spirits"A trade term for the base spirit, brought to proof strength; in the American usage of the period, proof spirit meant 50 per cent alcohol by volume. Whether it was a genuinely French spirit or, as the term was often used in the rectifying trade, a largely neutral base, is not settled by the page itself, though the formulas clearly treat it as a carrier for added flavour.
- Drachm and dropA fluid drachm is one-eighth of a fluid ounce, about 3.7 mL; an apothecaries' drachm by weight is about 3.9 g, which is what is meant for the tannin powder. "Drops" are not a fixed unit and vary with the dropper and the liquid's viscosity — one reason a cyanide-bearing oil should never be dosed this way.
- St. John's breadCarob pod. A tincture of it gave a dark, faintly chocolate-caramel sweetness; carob was cheap and widely traded through Mediterranean ports and turns up in several nineteenth-century flavouring formulas.
- Pellevoisin and MaretteNames given in the original for grades or brands of cognac; they would have meant something to a trade reader of the period but cannot be identified with any current producer. The instruction amounts to "use four gallons of real cognac to carry thirty-six of base spirit."
- If you want the flavourUse a current recipe for a flavoured spirit or an infusion from a reputable modern source. Nothing on this page should be scaled down and attempted.
Manuals like this one belonged to the rectifier — the tradesman who bought spirit by the barrel and turned it into whatever the market wanted, with essences, tinctures, caramel colour and a pound of glycerine for the illusion of age. The trade flourished in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, when phylloxera had gutted French vineyards and genuine cognac was both scarce and expensive, so that a plausible imitation commanded real money. The recipes are frank about their purpose: the second one instructs you to stretch four gallons of true cognac across forty. Oil of bitter almonds was an ordinary item of the flavouring trade then, sold alongside oil of cloves and oil of cognac, and its cyanide content was known but treated as a matter of careful dosing rather than prohibition. In the United States the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the subsequent fights over what could legally be labelled whiskey or brandy were among the forces that brought this style of manufacture to an end.