Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

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 lemonpeel ; 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 150 Early Receipts. 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 aleyeast ; stir all well together, and let it stand in 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, Early Receipts. 151 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 elderberries, 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