“As for the making of Perry and Cider,” writes an authority of the seventeenth century, “which are drinkes much used in the West parts, and other countries well stored with fruit in this {182} kingdome; you shall know that your perry is made of peares onely, and your cider of apples; and for the manner of making thereof, it is done after one fashion, that is to say, after your Peares and Apples are well prickt from the stalkes, rottennesse, and all manner of other filthe, you shall put them in the presse mill which is made with a mil-stone running round in a circle, under which you shall crush your peares or apples, and then straining them through a bagge of haire cloth, tunne up the same (after it hath bene a little setled) into hogs-heads, barrels, and other close vessels.
“Now after you have prest all, you shall save that which is within the haire cloth bagge, and putting it into severall vessels, put a pretty quantity of water thereinto, and after it hath stood a day or two, and hath beene well stirred together, presse it over also againe, for this will make a small perry or cider, and must be spent first. Now of your best cider that which you make of your summer or sweete fruit you shall call summer or sweete cider or perry, and that you shall spend first also; and that which you make of the winter and hard fruit, you shall call winter and sowre cider, or perry; and that you may spend last, for it will indure the longest.”
We don’t boil much cider nowadays, but this was a custom in considerable favour with the ancients.
“In many places,” says another writer, “they boyl their cider, adding thereto several spices, which makes it very pleasant, and abates the unsavoury smack it contracts by boyling, but {183} withal gives it a high colour. This way is not to be commended, because the juice of the apple is either apt to extract some ill savour from the brass or copper, we being not acquainted with any other vessels to boyl it in, or the sediment of it is apt to burn by its adhering to the sides of the vessel, it being boyl’d in a naked fire.
“But if you are willing to boyl your cider, your vessel ought to be of Latten, which may be made large enough to boyl a good quantity, the Tin yielding no bad tincture to the liquor. . . . It many times happens that cider that hath been good, by ill-management or other accident becomes dead, flat, sowr, thick, muddy, or musty; all which in some sort or other may be cured. You may cure deadness or flatness in cider by grinding a small parcel of apples, and putting them in at the bung-hole, and stopping it close, only sometimes trying it by opening the small vent that it force not the vessel; but then you must draw it off in a few days, either into bottles or another vessel, lest the Murc corrupt the whole mass. Cider that is dead or flat will oftentimes revive again of itself, if close stopt, upon the revolution of the year and approaching summer.”
Hippocras.
Here is an ancient recipe:—
Take of cardamoms, carpobalsamum, of each half an ounce, coriander-seeds prepared, nutmegs, ginger, of each two ounces, cloves two drachms; bruise and infuse them two days in two gallons of the richest sweetest cider, often stirring it together, then add {184} thereto of milk three pints, strain all through an hippocras bag, and sweeten it with a pound of sugar-candy.
D’you kna-ow—as the curate in The Private Secretary says—I am not taking any hippocras to-day.
“Wormwood imbib’d in cider,” says another writer, “produceth the effect that it doth in wine.” Evidently some nasty effect; only conceive an admixture of absinthe and cider!