Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

by William Carew Hazlitt

Mountain Wine:—Pick out the big stalks of your Malaga raisins, then chop them very small, five gallons to every gallon of cold spring-water, let them steep a fortnight or more, squeeze out the liquor and barrel it in a vessel fit for it; first fume the vessel with brimstone; don't stop it up till the hissing is over.

To make Quince Wine;—Take your quinces when they are thorough ripe, wipe off the fur very clean; then take out the cores and bruise them as you do apples for cyder, and press them, and to every gallon of juice put two pounds and a half of fine sugar, stir it together till 'tis dissolved; then put it in your cask, and when it has done working stop it close; let it stand till March before you bottle it. You may keep it two or three years, it will be better.

To make Plumb Wine:—Take twenty pounds of Malaga raisins, pick, rub, and shred them, and put them into a tub; then take four gallons of fair water and boil it an hour, and let it stand till 'tis blood-warm; then put it to your raisins; let it stand nine or ten days, stirring it once or twice a day, strain out your liquor, and mix with it two quarts of damson juice, put it in a vessel, and when it has done working, stop it close; at four or five months bottle it.

To make Birch Wine:—In March bore a hole in a tree, and put in a faucet, and it will run two or three days together without hurting the tree; then put in a pin to stop it, and the next year you may draw as much from the same hole; put to every gallon of the liquor a quart of good honey, and stir it well together, boil it an hour, scum it well, and put in a few cloves, and a piece of lemon-peel; when 'tis almost cold, put to it so much ale-yeast as will make it work like new ale, and when the yeast begins to settle, put it in a runlet that will just hold it: so let it stand six weeks or longer if you please; then bottle it, and in a month you may drink it. It will keep a year or two. You may make it with sugar, two pounds to a gallon, or something more, if you keep it long. This is admirably wholesome as well as pleasant, an opener of obstructions, good against the phthisick, and good against the spleen and scurvy, a remedy for the stone, it will abate heat in a fever or thrush, and has been given with good success.

To make Sage Wine:—Boil twenty-six quarts of spring-water a quarter of an hour, and when 'tis blood-warm, put twenty-five pounds of Malaga raisins pick'd, rubb'd and shred into it, with almost half a bushel of red sage shred, and a porringer of ale-yeast; stir all well together, and let it stand m a tub cover'd warm six or seven days, stirring it once a day; then strain it out, and put it in a runlet. Let it work three or four days, stop it up; when it has stood six or seven days put in a quart or two of Malaga sack, and when 'tis fine bottle it.

Sage Wine another way:—Take thirty pounds of Malaga raisins pick'd clean, and shred small, and one bushel of green sage shred small, then boil five gallons of water, let the water stand till 'tis luke-warm; then put it in a tub to your sage and raisins; let it stand five or six days, stirring it twice or thrice a day; then strain and press the liquor from the ingredients, put it in a cask, and let it stand six months: then draw it clean off into another vessel; bottle it in two days; in a month or six weeks it will be fit to drink, but best when 'tis a year old.

To make Ebulum:—To a hogshead of strong ale, take a heap'd bushel of elder-berries, and half a pound of juniper-berries beaten; put in all the berries when you put in the hops, and let them boil together till the berries brake in pieces, then work it up as you do ale; when it has done working, add to it half a pound of ginger, half an ounce of cloves, as much mace, an ounce of nutmegs, and as much cinamon grosly beaten, half a pound of citron, as much eringo-root, and likewise of candied orange-peel; let the sweetmeats be cut in pieces very thin, and put with the spice into a bag and hang it in the vessel when you stop it up. So let it stand till 'tis fine, then bottle it up and drink it with lumps of double-refined sugar in the glass.

To make Cock Ale:—Take ten gallons of ale, and a large cock, the older the better, parboil the cock, flea him, and stamp him in a stone mortar till his bones are broken, (you must craw and gut him when you flea him) put the cock into two quarts of sack, and put to it three pounds of raisins of the sun stoned, some blades of mace, and a few cloves; put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has done working, put the ale and bag together into a vessel; in a week or nine days' time bottle it up, fill the bottles but just above the necks, and leave the same time to ripen as other ale.

To make it Elder Ale:—Take ten bushels of malt to a hogshead, then put two bushels of elder-berries pickt from the stalks into a pot or earthen pan, and set it in a pot of boiling water till the berries swell, then strain it out and put the juice into the guile-fat, and beat it often in, and so order it as the common way of brewing.

To clear Wine:—Take half a pound of hartshorn, and dissolve it in cyder, if it be for cyder, or Rhenish-wine for any liquor: this is enough for a hogshead.