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To Make Absinthe by Distillation
spirit; and, before filtering, add 30 pounds honey.
This splendid bitters is much esteemed for making cocktails.
The Aroma of Cordials.
It requires a great deal of experience to combine different perfumes to produce any certain required aroma; a knowledge is necessary of the effect produced by perfumes in combination. The mere facts laid down in receipts will not be sufficient for a liquor manufacturer; he must know just what, and how much of it to use, to counteract what is objectionable, and produce or increase the correct aroma. He will frequently find that a single aromatic perfume fails to give the effect he anticipated; and yet the addition of a mere atom of some other perfume may be all that is required. Thus, the flavor of star-anise is accompanied by a slight, but objectionable odor of bed-bugs; a very small addition of green anise and fennel counteracts this. Ambergris, alone, gives scarcely any perfume, but musk brings it out. The quince has a peculiar taste which is corrected by cloves; the aftertaste of cinnamon is also destroyed by cloves; vanilla has more flavor if pounded with sugar than when ground with it. Absinthe requires the zest of the lemon to take away its naturally bitter taste. These examples will show that considerable experience is needed to be able to blend perfumes with any degree of success.
To make Absinthe by Distillation.
Put the following ingredients into a cask:-1½ pounds large absinthe, 2½ pounds small absinthe, 2½ pounds long fennel, 2½ pounds star anise (breaking the star only), 2 pounds green anise seed, 6 ounces cori- 264 TO MAKE DOPPELT KUMMEL OR CARAWAY. ander seed, and 1 pound hyssop; moisten the whole with a little water, allowing it time to soften and swell; then add 12 gallons 95 per cent. alcohol, and steep for 2 or 3 days; next add 10 gallons water, and let the whole steep for 1 day more. The water will reduce the alcohol to about 23 gallons of proof spirit. Distill it, and it will produce nearly 15 gallons absinthe of 65 to 70 per cent. strength. Change the receiver as soon as the spirit, as it comes from the worm, begins to assume a reddish tinge. Color the distilled product, by steeping in it for 10 or 15 days 1/2 pound mint leaves, 4 pound melissa leaves, pound small absinthe, 2 ounces citron peel, and 1/2 pound bruised liquorice root.
Strain and filter.
Doppel Kummel.
To 5 gallons 94 per cent. alcohol add 4 ounces oil of caraway, 1/2 drachm (30 drops) oil of anise, 5 drops oil of coriander, 5 drops oil of bitter almonds, and 10 drops oil of calamus. Add 20 gallons French proof spirit; and 15 gallons water in which 10 pounds white sugar have been dissolved. This will make 40 gallons Kummel of a strength of 364 per cent. If for cordial, more sugar may be added.
To make Curacoa.
Slice the outside peel very thin from 60 bitter oranges; infuse for 15 days with 4 drachms bruised cinnamon, and 2 drachms bruised mace, in 5 gallons 95 per cent. French spirit, stirring every day. Then add 25 pounds white sugar dissolved in 2 gallons water; color with caramel; stir thoroughly, and filter.
To make Doppelt Kummel or Caraway.
Dissolve separately, each in a little 95 per cent.
This is a commercial distiller's formula from a trade manual, written for a licensed liquor house working in tens of gallons. It cannot be carried out in a home kitchen, and the notes below explain the vocabulary and the obstacles rather than offering a workable version.
- It is a still recipe, not an infusionThe herbs are macerated in high-proof alcohol, diluted, and then run through a pot still ("the worm" is the coiled condenser). Operating a still to produce beverage spirit without a federal distilled spirits permit is a criminal offence in the United States and is tightly licensed nearly everywhere else, regardless of scale or intent.
- Cut-making by eyeThe instruction to change the receiver when the spirit "begins to assume a reddish tinge" is a practised distiller's rule of thumb for stopping before the heavy, resinous tail fractions carry over. It assumes someone who has made the cut hundreds of times and a still whose behaviour is known; it is not a specification anyone can follow cold.
- Volume and alcohol concentrationTwelve gallons of 95 per cent alcohol is a serious fire and vapour-explosion hazard at this scale. The finished yield is given as nearly 15 gallons at the 65 to 70 per cent strength the text claims.
- Wormwood is a regulated ingredient"Large absinthe" is grande wormwood, Artemisia absinthium; "small absinthe" is petite wormwood, Artemisia pontica. Thujone from grande wormwood is capped by law in the US and EU, and finished absinthe is tested against that limit. The book gives no way to know where a batch lands.
- Old units in the ingredient listA drachm here is an apothecaries' dram, about 1/8 ounce; note that the text's own gloss on the oil of anise reads "30 drops". "French proof spirit" is not the American proof scale, so the percentages quoted cannot be read as modern ABV without care.
- Herb namesMelissa is lemon balm. Hyssop is Hyssopus officinalis, not anise hyssop. "Long fennel" most likely means fennel seed rather than the bulb. Citron peel is the rind of Citrus medica, closer to what is sold candied than to lemon zest.
- The colouring stepThe green of a traditional absinthe comes entirely from the second, cold maceration described here: chlorophyll drawn out of mint, lemon balm and petite wormwood after distillation. It is light-sensitive and fades to amber, which is why old bottles are brown-green rather than emerald.
- Bitter almond oilThe kummel formula that follows on the same page calls for oil of bitter almonds. Unrectified bitter almond oil carries hydrocyanic acid and was a recognised cause of poisoning even in this period. Any modern flavouring sold under that name is required to be free of it.
- If you want to drink absintheBuy it. Commercial absinthe is again legal and widely sold, tested for thujone, and made by people doing exactly what this page describes under licence.
Trade manuals like this one sold a specific promise to nineteenth-century American liquor merchants: the ability to produce European cordials domestically, without importing them. The absinthe formula is close in structure to the Pontarlier method used in the Doubs valley -- grande wormwood, green anise and fennel as the distilled "holy trinity," then a cold colouring maceration of petite wormwood, lemon balm and mint -- which suggests the compiler was working from genuine French practice rather than guessing. What is striking is the essay printed just above it on the aroma of cordials, which treats flavour as a craft of correction: cloves to kill the aftertaste of cinnamon, green anise and fennel to counteract what the author calls the bed-bug odour of star anise, lemon zest to lift absinthe's bitterness. That is the voice of a working blender, and it is a reminder that the trade regarded published receipts as a starting point that only experience made usable. Absinthe was banned in several European countries and in the United States within a generation of this book, in the wake of the temperance movement and the widely publicised Lanfray murder case in Switzerland; the American ban held from 1912 until 2007.