Cherry Brandy.—(a) Take ripe black geans (Scotch wild cherries); pick off the stalks, and pick over the fruit as for a tart, but do not wash them. Half fill large wide-mouthed bottles with layers of fruit and pounded white sugar, weight for weight; fill up with good French brandy; cork well, and the longer it stands the finer it is. Bruise a few of the fruit, so as to crack the stones. It is useless to attempt to make good liqueurs with anything but French brandy, and that of the best. If you cannot procure black geans, use fine Morella cherries, each of which must be wiped and pricked with a bone stiletto or knitting needle. In this case the cherries are a good dessert dish.
(b) Get the largest Morella cherries, cut off half the stalk, pricking each cherry with a needle, and putting them into a wide-mouthed bottle. Add ¾ of the weight of the cherries in white candy sugar bruised, between the layers of the cherries, until full; add a gill of noyeau, and then fill up with French brandy; cork tight, and tie a bladder over the bottle.
(c) Having cut off half the stalks of some Morella cherries, put them very gently in and ¾ fill a wide-mouthed glass bottle that contains 1 qt. Add 4 oz. white sugar candy finely powdered, fill close up with the best brandy, adding one clove, 2 dr. dried Seville orange peel, and 1 dr. cinnamon. The three last ingredients to be taken out in 14 days; then fill up the vacant space with brandy, and cork carefully.
Cider.—Bottling.—Cider or perry, when bottled in hot weather, should be left a day or two uncorked, that it may get flat; but if too flat in the cask, and soon wanted for use, put into each bottle a small lump or two of sugar candy, or four or five raisins. Cider should be well corked and waxed, and the bottles put upright in a cool place.
Restoring Flavour.—(a) Cider, 1 hhd.; rum, weak flavoured, 2 gal.; alum, dissolved, 1 lb.; honey, or coarse sugar, 15 lb.; bitter almonds, ½ lb.; cloves, ½ lb. Mix, and after a few days fine it down with isinglass.
(b) To fine and improve the flavour of 1 hhd., take ½ oz. cochineal, 1 lb. alum, and 3 lb. sugar candy; bruise them all well in a mortar, and infuse them in 1 gal. good French brandy for a day or two; then mix the whole with the cider and stop it close for 5 or 6 months. After which, if fine, bottle it off.
Cider Cup.—(a) 1 bot. cider, 1 bot. soda water, 2 glasses sherry, powdered sugar, sprig of borage.
(b) 2 bot. sparkling cider, ½ gill curaçao, ½ gill brown brandy, ¼ lb. sugar; the juice, strained, and the peel of one lemon, rubbed on sugar; slice of cucumber; pour ½ pint boiling water on the sugar; when dissolved and cool, add the brandy, cucumber, liqueur, and juice; in a few minutes add the cider and 1 qt. shaven ice; use immediately.
(c) Grate into a cup some nutmeg and a little ginger; add a well-browned toast, a glass or two of sherry, sugar to taste; add a bottle of cider, poured on slowly. It may be drunk at once.
Claret Cup.—(a) 1 bot. claret, 1 bot. soda water, ½ lb. pounded ice, 4 tablespoonfuls powdered sugar, ¼ teaspoonful grated nutmeg, 1 liqueur glass maraschino, and a sprig of green borage.