The complete servant / Being a practical guide to the peculiar duties and business of all descriptions of servants, from the housekeeper to the servant of all-work, and from the land steward to the foot-boy. With useful receipts and tables

by servant Samuel Adams; Sarah Adams

349. EAU SANS-PAREIL.

Take two gallons of fine old honey-water, put it into a still capable of holding four gallons, and add the thinly pared rinds of six or eight fresh citrons, neither green nor mellow ripe. Then add sixty or seventy drops of fine Roman bergamot; and, having luted the apparatus well, let the whole digest in a moderate heat for twenty-four hours. Draw off, by a water-bath heat, about one gallon.

350. JESSAMINE WATER.

Take six pounds of the white sweet almond cakes, from which jessamine oil has been made abroad; beat and sift them to a fine powder, and put to it as much fresh oil of jessamine as will be required to make it into a stiff paste. Let this paste be dissolved in about six quarts of spring water, which has been previously well boiled, and left until it has become about half cold. Stir and mix the whole well together; and when the oil and water has been well combined, let the whole stand until the powder has fallen to the bottom of the vessel. Now pour the liquid off gently, and filter it through cotton, in a large tin funnel, into the glass bottle in which it is to be kept for use.

The powder or sediment which has been left at the bottom of the vessel, when dried by the heat of the sun, answers very well for making almond paste for the hands.

351. JAMAICA PEPPER WATER.

Jamaica pepper is the fruit of a tall tree growing in the mountainous parts of Jamaica, where it is much cultivated, because of the great profit arising from the cured fruit, sent in large quantities annually into Europe.

Take of Jamaica pepper, half a pound; water, two gallons and a half; draw off 1 gallon with a pretty brisk fire. The oil of this fruit is very ponderous, and therefore, this water is made in an alembic.

352. MYRTLE WATER.

Infuse eight or ten pounds of the cuttings of green myrtle, in nearly twenty gallons of rain or river water, and add thereto a pint of fresh yeast, after it has stood for twenty-four hours. At the end of another day and night, put the whole into a still, with a pound of bay salt. Draw off the whole of the water; and, next day, infuse more myrtle leaves, as before, and distil again. Repeat the same a third time.