Old-Time Recipes for Home Made Wines Cordials & Liqueurs 1909 by Helen S. Wright
The proportions of this may vary. Loaf sugar is preferable to moist; some say a pound to a gallon, others a pound and a half. Some allow but half an ounce of ginger (sliced or bruised) to a gallon, others an ounce. A lemon to a gallon is the usual proportion, to which some add a quarter of an ounce or half an ounce of cream of tartar. The white of an egg to each gallon is useful for clarifying, but not absolutely necessary. Some people put a quarter of a pint of brandy to four gallons of beer by way of keeping it; half an ounce of hops boiled in it would answer the same purpose. Boil the sugar, and shaved rind of lemons; let it boil half an hour. Clear the lemons of the white pith and put them in the wine. When cool, stir in the yeast (two tablespoonfuls to a gallon), put it in the barrel without straining, and bung close. In a fortnight draw off and bottle. It will be ready for use in another fortnight, and will keep longer than ginger pop. If cream of tartar is used, pour the boiling liquor over it, but do not boil it.
GINGER BEER, NO. 2
Seven pounds crushed white sugar, eight gallons water, one-half cup of yeast, four ounces best powdered ginger, a few drops of essence of lemon, one-half teaspoonful essence of cloves. To the ginger pour one pint of boiling water and let it stand fifteen or twenty minutes. Dissolve the sugar in two quarts of warm water, pour both into a barrel half-filled with cold water, then add the essence and the yeast; let it stand one-half hour, then fill up with cold water. Let it ferment six to twelve hours and bottle.
GINGER WINE
Take four gallons of water, ten pounds of loaf sugar, one and one-quarter pounds of bruised ginger, one ounce of hops, the shaved rinds of five lemons or Seville oranges. Let these boil together for two hours, carefully skimming. Pour it, without straining, on to two pounds of raisins. When cool, put in the juice of the lemons or oranges; rinse the pulp in a pint or two of the wine, and strain it to the rest. Ferment it with yeast; mix one-half cup of solid yeast with a pint or two of the wine, and with that work the rest. Next day tun it, raisins, hops, ginger, and all together, and fill it up for a fortnight either with wine or with good new beer; then dissolve one ounce of isinglass in a little of the wine, and return it to the rest to fine it. A few days afterward bung it close. This wine will be in full perfection in six months. It may be bottled, but is apt to fly; and if made exactly by the above directions, and drawn from the cask, it will sparkle like champagne.
Old-Time Recipes for Home Made Wines is a cookbook for those who want to make their own wines & liqueurs from available ingredients, including fruits, flowers, vegetables, & shrubs from local gardens, farms, & orchards. It includes ingredients & instructions for making & fermenting spirits, from wine & ale to sherry, brandy, cordials, & even beer.
Colonial Era Cookbooks
1615, New Booke of Cookerie, John Murrell (London)
1798, American Cookery, Amelia Simmons (Hartford, CT)
1803, Frugal Housewife, Susannah Carter (New York, NY)
1807, A New System of Domestic Cookery, Maria Eliza Rundell (Boston, MA)
1808, New England Cookery, Lucy Emerson (Montpelier, VT)
Helpful Secondary Sources
America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking/Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
Colonial Kitchens, Their Furnishings, and Their Gardens/Frances Phipps Hawthorn; 1972
Early American Beverages/John Hull Brown Rutland, Vt., C. E. Tuttle Co 1996
Early American Herb Recipes/Alice Cooke Brown ABC-CLIO Westport, United States
Food in Colonial and Federal America/Sandra L. Oliver
Home Life in Colonial Days/Alice Morse Earle (Chapter VII: Meat and Drink) New York : Macmillan Co., ©1926.
A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America/James E. McWilliams New York : Columbia University Press, 2005.
