The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; / In Which will Be Found a Large Collection of Original Receipts. 3rd ed.

by Lady Charlotte Campbell Bury

Samphire.

Pick and lay it in strong brine, cold; let it remain twenty-four hours, boil the brine once on a quick fire, and pour it immediately on the samphire. After standing twenty-four hours, just boil it again on a quick fire, and stand till cold. Lay it in a pot, let the pickle settle, and cover the samphire with the clear portion of the pickle. Set it in a dry place, and, should the pickle become mothery, boil it once a month, and, when cold, put the samphire into it.

Smelts.

Lay the smelts in a pot in rows, and lay upon them sliced lemon, mace, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, powdered bay-leaves, and salt. Make pickle of red wine vinegar, saltpetre, and bruised cochineal; when cold, pour it on the smelts, and cover the pot close.

Suckers, before the leaves are hard.

Pare off all the hard ends of the leaves and stalks of the suckers, and scald them in salt and water, and, when cold, put them into glass bottles, with three blades of mace, and thin sliced nutmeg; fill them with distilled vinegar.

Vinegar for Pickling. No. 1.

Take the middling sort of beer, but indifferently hopped, let it work as long as possible, and fine it down with isinglass; then draw it from the sediment, and put ten pounds weight of the husks of grapes to every ten gallons. Mash them together, and let them stand in the sun, or, if not in summer, in a close room, heated by fire, and, in about three or four weeks, it will become an excellent vinegar. Should you not have grape husks, you may take the pressing of sour apples, but the vinegar will not prove so good either in taste or body. Cyder will make a decent sort of vinegar, and also unripe grapes, or plums, but foul white Rhenish wines, set in a warm place, will fine, naturally, into good vinegar.

Vinegar. No. 2.

To a pound and a half of the brownest sugar put a gallon of warm water; mix it well together; then spread a hot toast thick with yest, and let it work very well about twenty-four hours. Skim off the toast and the yest, and pour off the clear liquor, and set it out in the sun. The cask must be full, and, if painted and hooped with iron hoops, it will endure the weather better. Lay a tile over the bunghole.