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Imitation Scotch Whiskey
1 gallon peach flavor (see Recipe No. 2), 1 gallon flavoring compound for brandy, (see page 59), 1 pint wine vinegar, 1 pound white glycerine, and 12 drops oil of cognac dissolved in 95 per cent. alcohol. Color with caramel.
To make Rye Whiskey.
RECIPE No. 9.
To 40 gallons proof spirit, add 2 gallons peach flavoring (see Recipe No. 2), 1 pint white vinegar, and 12 drops oil of cognac in 95 per cent. alcohol. Color with caramel, and add 1 pound best white glycerine.
To make Sweet Rye Whiskey.
RECIPE No. 10 Mix 30 gallons proof spirit, 10 gallons proof rye whiskey, and 1 gallon raisin flavor (see page 259).
Colored with sufficient caramel, add 1 pound white glycerine.
Imitation Irish Whiskey.
RECIPE No. 11.
Mix 36 gallons French spirits, 20 above proof, 4 gallons Scotch (Ramsay) whiskey, 3 pints best sherry wine, 2 pints syrup, and 10 drops sassafras flavor. (See next Recipe.) Granulate Sassafras Flavoring for Bourbon.
RECIPE No. 12. pound sassafras bark, and infuse it in gallon 95 per cent. alcohol for 20 days; filter.
Imitation Scotch Whiskey.
RECIPE No. 13.
Mix 30 gallons French spirits, 20 above proof, prepared as directed in next Recipe, 4 gallons Scotch whiskey, and 1 quart syrup.
This is not a cooking recipe but a rectifier's formula — a set of instructions for making cheap neutral spirit pass as aged whiskey. Several of its components are no longer permitted in food or drink, and the operation it describes is licensed activity, not home work.
- Sassafras bark (Recipe No. 12)Recipe No. 11 calls for sassafras flavor and points to Recipe No. 12: sassafras bark steeped in high-proof alcohol. (Recipe No. 13 refers to spirits 'prepared as directed in next Recipe', which is not printed here.) Sassafras root and bark are rich in safrole, which the FDA prohibited as a food and beverage flavoring in 1960 on the basis of liver carcinogenicity in animal studies. Any commercial sassafras flavor sold today has had the safrole stripped out; the raw bark infusion described here has not.
- "Peach flavor (see Recipe No. 2)"Some nineteenth-century compounding manuals built peach flavorings from peach kernels rather than fruit, for the almond-like benzaldehyde note. Kernels of peach, apricot and bitter almond carry cyanogenic glycosides. Recipe No. 2 is not printed here, so the reader cannot know which is meant, which is itself a reason not to proceed.
- Compounding is regulated, not domesticBlending, flavoring and coloring spirits for sale is rectifying or compounding. In the United States it is regulated by the TTB and requires registration of premises; in the UK it requires an HMRC compounder's licence. These formulas assume a trade operation working in lots of thirty to forty gallons.
- What "proof spirit" and "20 above proof" meantAmerican proof spirit of the period was 50 per cent alcohol by volume. "20 above proof" would put the French spirits near 60 per cent on that scale; if the older British Sikes scale is meant, where proof is about 57 per cent ABV, it would be nearer 68 per cent. Either way this is high-strength neutral spirit, not anything sold on a retail shelf.
- The glycerine and the vinegarA pound of glycerine in 40 gallons gave viscosity and a false impression of sweetness and age on the palate; the pint of vinegar supplied the trace acidity that barrel time normally provides. Both are tell-tales of imitation work rather than flaws in themselves — glycerine is still a legal food additive, and caramel is still the standard whiskey colorant.
- If you want the flavorThere is no salvageable version of this. Buy Scotch, or use a current, published formula from a licensed producer.
Formulas like this one belong to the American rectifying trade of the nineteenth century, when a wholesaler could buy neutral spirit by the barrel, dose it with essences, glycerine and caramel, and ship it out under a Scotch, Irish or Bourbon label. The books that carried these recipes \Liquor Manufacturer is a well-known example — were sold openly as trade manuals, and the presence of four gallons of genuine Scotch in the batch shows the method exactly: enough real whiskey to carry a smoky top note over a great deal of nothing. The practice is what the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897 was written against, giving honest distillers a government stamp that compounders could not copy, and it was fought over again under the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, ending in President Taft's 1909 ruling that such products had to be labelled as imitation or blended rather than straight whiskey. Prohibition then swept the trade away, and Repeal brought back a regulated industry in which formulas of this kind had no legal home.