In the first chapter of the Cordial and Liqueur Makers’ Guide, we find receipts for those familiar beverages which are most common in our respectable public firms—public house is what Bentham would call an emotional term—such as Peppermint, Cloves, Rum Shrub, Aniseed, Caraway, Noyeau, Raspberry, Gingerette, Orange Bitters, Wormwood Bitters, Lemonade, Capillaire, Cherry Brandy, Cinnamon, Lovage, and Usquebaugh—of these the receipt for Lovage may be taken as a sole representative.
This aromatic drink, which is comparatively rare, is perhaps not generally known to be prepared from a plant indigenous to Liguria, a country of Cisalpine Gaul—from which country its name is through sundry philological decadences derived.[78] After reading this, the student of human nature and mercantile morality will be fully prepared to learn that the plant indigenous to Liguria enters in no way into its composition.
Mix, says the receipt, five drams of oil of nutmegs, five drams of oil of cassia, and three drams of oil of caraway in a quart of strong spirits of wine. Shake it well, and put it into a ten gallon cask with two gallons more of spirits of wine. Dissolve twenty pounds of lump sugar in hot water, add this to the spirit with a quarter of a pint of colouring, and fill up the cask with water. Fine it down with two ounces of alum dissolved in boiling water, and put into the goods[79] hot; afterwards add one ounce of salts of tartar, and stir the whole well together.
The receipts which follow of German, Dantzig, and French liqueurs postulate a preliminary grinding of all dry substances, such as cloves or cinnamon; the cutting into the smallest pieces of leaves, flowers, peels; and the reducing to a paste, by means of a marble mortar, of almonds and fruit kernels with a small quantity of spirits to prevent them oiling.[79] These ingredients should be allowed to soak in the spirit for a month with diurnal shakings in a warm place. Then the spirit must be poured off and the water added after the quantity in the receipt. After standing a few days, pour off, press out all the liquid, mix with the spirit, add sugar and colouring matter, and filter through a flannel bag. In the matter of gold and silver leaf, an attempt to break it when dry would reduce one half to dust, and so spoil the appearance of the liqueur. It must be spread on a plate which has a little thin syrup on it. The leaf must also be covered with the syrup, and then torn by means of two forks into small pieces about the size of a canary seed. The leaf should not be added until the liqueur is in the bottle. The reader will observe the common use of capillaire.[80]
German Liqueurs.
Eau de Sultane Zoraide.
Lemon peel, 8 ounces; orange peel, 8 ounces; figs, 8 ounces; dates, 4 ounces; jessamine flowers, 4 ounces; cinnamon, 3 ounces; spirits of wine, 60 o.p., 19 quarts; orange-flower water, 2 quarts; pure water, 12 quarts; capillaire, 8 quarts. Colour,[81] rose.
Eau Nuptiale.
Parsley seed, 6 ounces; carrot seed, 5 ounces; aniseed, orris root, 2 ounces each; mace, 1½ ounces; spirit, 60 o.p., 19 quarts; rose water, 7 pints; water, 11 quarts; capillaire, 9 quarts. Colour, yellow.