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Manufacture of Bitters (Oz of coriander seed)
2½ oz. of coriander seed, 1 " centaurium, 3 66 orange peel, 2 66 German camomile flower.
All the ingredients should be ground to coarse powder; then macerate with 40 gallons of alcohol, 95 per cent; and add 54 gallons of water, and 1½ ounce of sugar. Filter and color brown.
Aromatic Bitters. 2¾ lbs. of ground dried small orange apples, 66 " " 4 orange peel, 2 oz. " " calamus root, 2 66 " " pimpinella root, 1 66 " " cut hops.
Macerate for 14 days with ten gallons of spirit at 45 per cent; press out the dregs, and add 2½ pints of brown sugar syrup. Filter. Color dark brown with coloring. Stomach Bitters. 1/2 lb. of cardamom seed, 1 " 1 호 " " " 4 “ 1/4 " " 66 14 중 nutmegs, grains of Paradise, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, galanga, orange peel, lemon 66 :
The ingredients should be ground to coarse powder; then macerate with 40 gallons of alcohol, 95 per cent, and add a syrup made of 4+ gallons of water and 12 lbs. of sugar; then filter.
These are three trade formulas for bitters, written for a commercial compounder working in tens of gallons rather than for a kitchen. Two problems make them unusable as printed: one of the botanicals is no longer permitted in food, and the quantities in the second and third formulas have been mangled beyond recovery.
- Calamus root is the disqualifying ingredientThe Aromatic Bitters call for calamus (Acorus calamus, sweet flag). Calamus of Asian origin is high in beta-asarone, which is genotoxic and carcinogenic in animal studies; the FDA prohibited calamus and its oil as a food additive in 1968, and the EU caps beta-asarone in alcoholic beverages at trace levels. There is no way to macerate the root as directed and stay within those limits.
- The quantities are not recoverableThe second and third formulas have been shredded in transcription: "66" and " ed" stand in for fraction marks and unit repetitions, and the Stomach Bitters list gives nine botanicals with perhaps three legible weights. A bitters formula is nothing but proportions, so what survives here is a list of ingredients, not a recipe.
- 95 per cent alcoholThe first and third formulas begin with 40 gallons of 95 per cent alcohol — undenatured neutral spirit at 190 proof, a bonded-warehouse material in most jurisdictions. Retail spirits top out well below this, and denatured or laboratory ethanol is not drinkable at any dilution.
- The first formula is almost certainly mis-set as well1½ ounces of sugar against 94 gallons of finished liquid is a vanishing trace, where the companion formulas use pounds and pints of syrup. Either the figure or the unit has dropped out.
- CentauriumCentaury (Centaurium erythraea), one of the classic European bittering herbs and a legitimate flavouring — it is not the problem here. Nor are the coriander, chamomile, cardamom, grains of Paradise or galangal.
- ScaleEven sound, these are 90-plus gallon batches, roughly 500 standard bottles. Nothing in the text indicates how the maceration time, pressing or filtration should change at household volume.
- If you want to make bittersWork from a current recipe with measured proportions and a permitted botanical list.
Books of this kind — trade formularies for wine, cordial and liqueur manufacture — circulated widely in the second half of the nineteenth century, when a small compounding house could buy neutral spirit by the barrel, macerate a proprietary blend of imported botanicals, sweeten, filter, tint with caramel colouring, and sell the result as a branded stomachic. The recipes here follow that commercial logic exactly: the coloring instruction matters as much as the flavouring, because the customer judged the bottle by eye. Bitters themselves descend from the apothecary's aromatic tinctures, and the botanicals in these three formulas — gentian's relative centaury, calamus, galangal, grains of Paradise, unripe bitter orange — are the standard European bitter and carminative drug list of the period, sold as digestive medicine as much as drink. In the United States that ambiguity began to narrow with the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which required makers to declare alcohol and certain drugs on the label; false therapeutic claims were not clearly reached until the Sherley Amendment of 1912.