Put a little in a saucer; take a lump of sugar, set fire to it, and replace it in the saucer, so that the rest of the liquid may be set ablaze. When the flame is burnt out and the sugar melted, the liqueur is fit to drink.
Noyeau
is made from white brandy and apricot-kernels, and is the sweetest, as well as the most pernicious of all liqueurs. I do not know how many glasses it would take to kill an ordinary man, but most people know that noyeau contains hydrocyanic acid of which none but those tired of the world would care to drink too much.
Parfait Amour
“What’s in a name ? ” This is simply bad orange-bitters, and there is neither love nor perfection in it. But they say that in dear old England, in the olden time, before oranges could be bought at three-halfpence per dozen, it was customary for a lover, on New Year’s Day, to present his sweetheart with an orange stuck all over with cloves, as an emblem of Perfect Love. The sweetheart of to-day prefers a bangle, or a bicycle.
One more liqueur,
Maraschino.
This is a bitter-sweet liqueur made at Zara from the kernel of the Marasca cherry, or gean {197} of Dalmatia. The word implies bitterness, yet the liquid is sweet enough to catch flies. “It is a curious fact,” says a modern writer, “in natural history that the fair sex prefer a sweet liqueur to the finest wine; and they have such a tendency to maraschino that Mr. Hayward has proposed that whereas the toast most honoured among men is Wine and Women, they should adopt as their own return toast—Men and Maraschino.”
The French make different imitations of the true liqueur, one of them from peach-stones, which they call “Marasquin de pêches.” And in the true Maraschino of Zara there be a few peach-stones mixed with those of the geans. These are small and quite black, and are fermented first with honey, then with the leaves and kernels of the fruit, and are last of all distilled and sweetened with sugar.
One more cordial, to finish the chapter. The recipe was given in the Lady’s Pictorial, by Mrs. C. E. Humphry, the delightful and ever-welcome “Madge” of Truth. I can vouch for the efficacy of the potion.