When you use lemons for punch or lemonade, do not throw away the peels, but cut them in small pieces, and put them into a glass jar or bottle of brandy. You will find this brandy useful for many purposes.
In the same way keep for use the kernels of peach and plum stones, pounding them slightly before you put them into the brandy.
Blanch and break up a pound of shelled bitter almonds or peach kernels. Mix with them the grated rinds of three large lemons, half a pint of clarified honey that has been boiled and skimmed, and three pounds of the best double-refined loaf-sugar. Put these ingredients into a jar or demijohn; pour in four quarts of the best white brandy or proof spirit; stop the vessel, and let it stand three months, shaking it every day for the first month. Then filter it, dilute it with rose water to your taste, (you may allow a quart of rose water to each quart of the liquor,) and bottle it for use.
This and any other cordial may be coloured red by mixing with it (after it is filtered) cochineal, powdered, dissolved in a little white brandy, and strained through fine muslin.
Pound in a mortar, and. mix together a pound of shelled bitter almonds, an ounce of nutmegs, a pound of fine loaf-sugar, and one grain (apothecaries’ weight) of ambergris. Infuse these ingredients for a week in a gallon of white brandy or proof spirit. Then filter it, and bottle it for use.
Powder eight pounds of loaf-sugar, and wet it with three pints of water and three eggs well beaten with their shells. Stir the whole mass very hard, and boil it twice over, skimming it well. Then strain it, and stir in two wine glasses of orange flower water. Bottle it, and use it for a summer draught, mixed with a little lemon juice and water; or you may sweeten punch with it.