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To Make London Cordial Gin
How to make the Essences recommended in the Foregoing Recipe.
Dissolve 1½ oz. of juniper oil in 16 oz. spirit, 95 per cent. Use 4 oz.
Dissolve 1 oz. sweet fennel oil in 12 oz. spirit, 95 per cent., and use oz.
Use as directed.
To reduce Holland Gin.
RECIPE No. 6.
To 25 gals. pure Holland gin, add : 66 25 pure French spirit, proof, 66 2 1/2 " white sugar syrup.
Mix thoroughly.
This is after all the best imitation of genuine Holland gin, and as such we recommend it.
Imitation Old Tom London Gin RECIPE No. 7.
Dissolve in 1 quart 95 per cent. alcohol, 1 drachm oil of coriander, 1 drachm oil of cedar, 1/2 drachm oil of bitter almonds, drachm oil of angelica, and drachm oil of sweet fennel; add it to 40 gallons French spirit, 10 above proof, with 1 pint orange-flower water, 1 quart syrup, and 1 drachm oil of juniper dissolved in sufficient 95 per cent. alcohol to be clear. To make London Cordial Gin.
RECIPE No. 8.
This is gin sweetened with sugar, and slightly flavored or aromatized.
To 90 gals. of good gin, add : 1 drachm oil of sweet almonds, " “ cassia,
This is a compounder's formula rather than a domestic recipe: neutral spirit at 95 per cent, dosed with concentrated essential oils and sweetened. Several of the figures it depends on are missing or unusable, and one of the flavouring oils is a poison.
- Why it cannot be madeThe London Cordial Gin formula breaks off mid-list, after a single drachm of oil of sweet almonds and an unquantified entry for cassia. There is no complete flavouring bill, no syrup quantity and no finishing instruction, so nothing here can be followed to a result.
- Oil of bitter almondsThe neighbouring Old Tom formula (Recipe No. 7) calls for it, though it does not appear in the cordial gin list itself. Undistilled bitter almond oil carries hydrogen cyanide; the cyanide-free grade is largely benzaldehyde, which is a permitted flavouring only at very dilute levels and should not be handled neat by the drachm. It is not a domestic ingredient.
- Essential oils are not seasoningA drachm is about 3.5 ml, and these oils — cedar, coriander, angelica, cassia, juniper — are dosed against 40 to 90 gallons. Scaled down by eye they land far above any safe or palatable level. Oil of cedar in particular is a fragrance material, not a flavouring.
- 95 per cent spiritNeutral alcohol at that strength is restricted or unavailable for beverage use in many places. The "French spirit, proof" and "10 above proof" of the original use a proof notation the book never defines, so it is unclear whether British proof (57.1 per cent ABV) or the American scale is meant.
- Sweetening onlyThe one honest statement in the entry is the definition: cordial gin is simply gin sweetened with sugar syrup and lightly aromatised. That much is worth knowing, and a current recipe should be used if you want to make it.
- Holland gin, recipe 6The paragraph is garbled by stray numerals standing in for what were probably ditto marks for "gals.", so the unit attached to each quantity cannot be read with confidence. Treat the passage as unusable rather than guessing at the intended measures.
Books of this kind were trade manuals, generally understood to have been aimed at rectifiers, publicans and grocers who bought plain spirit and turned it into named goods on the premises. "Old Tom" was the sweetened London gin style that preceded the dry gins of the later nineteenth century, and "cordial gin" meant the same thing: spirit sugared and perfumed rather than redistilled over botanicals. Genuine Holland gin — the malty Dutch jenever the author says is best imitated by cutting it with neutral spirit and syrup — was the older and more expensive product, which is precisely why a manual like this existed. The frankness is striking: the text does not pretend to teach distilling, only the art of making cheap spirit pass for something dearer.