Liqueur Maker's Guide. German Liqueurs: Eau d'amour - Eau Divine. Dantzig Liqueurs: Eau Miraculeuse - Eau Aerienne. French Liqueurs: Vespetro - Scubac - Absinthe - Maraschino, etc. The Verger - Vermath, etc.

To a humble and unpretending volume, little known by the world, to the Cordial and Liqueur Makers Guide, and Publicans Instructor, we are indebted for a large part of the information in the present chapter. This excellent and possibly unique volume of modern date contains some two hundred receipts for the manufacture of the most favourite drinks in their greatest perfection; in addition to a variety of miscellaneous matter of much practical utility to the publicans profession, though of no immediate interest probably to the readers of the present book. For instance, we are taught therein the mysteries of Spirit Beading, or, in exoteric language, the putting a head on weak spirits, and the fining of sherry, port, gin, ale, and porter. Most of the receipts, we are assured, have never before appeared in print. They are the result of an experience of some thirty years. A warning is given in the preface about the common and extensive adulteration of liqueurs with essential oils, turpentine, and spirits of wine.

In the first chapter of the Cordial and Liqueur Makers Guide, we find receipts for those familiar beverages which are most common in our respectable public firms - public house is what Bentham would call an emotional term - such as Peppermint, Cloves, Rum Shrub, Aniseed, Caraway, Noyeau, Raspberry, Gingerette, Orange Bitters, Wormwood Bitters, Lemonade, Capillaire, Cherry Brandy, Cinnamon, Lovage, and Usquebaugh - of these the receipt for Lovage may be taken as a sole representative.

This aromatic drink, which is comparatively rare, is perhaps not generally known to be prepared from a plant indigenous to Liguria, a country of Cisalpine Gaul - from which country its name is through sundry philological decadences derived.1 After reading this, the student of human nature and mercantile morality will be fully prepared to learn that the plant indigenous to Liguria enters in no way into its composition.

Mix, says the receipt, five drams of oil of nutmegs, five drams of oil of cassia, and three drams of oil of caraway in a quart of strong spirits of wine. Shake it well, and put it into a ten gallon cask with two gallons more of spirits of wine. Dissolve twenty pounds of lump sugar in hot water, add this to the spirit with a quarter of a pint of colouring, and fill up the cask with water. Fine it down with two ounces of alum dissolved in boiling water, and put into the goods1 hot; afterwards add one ounce of salts of tartar, and stir the whole well together.

1 Here is the etymological process for the linguistic student:

The receipts which follow of German, Dantzig, and French liqueurs postulate a preliminary grinding of all dry substances, such as cloves or cinnamon; the cutting into the smallest pieces of leaves, flowers, peels; and the reducing to a paste, by means of a marble mortar, of almonds and fruit kernels with a small quantity of spirits to prevent them oiling.1 These ingredients should be allowed to soak in the spirit for a month with diurnal shakings in a warm place. Then the spirit must be poured off and the water added after the quantity in the receipt. After standing a few days, pour off, press out all the liquid, mix with the spirit, add sugar and colouring matter, and filter through a flannel bag. In the matter of gold and silver leaf, an attempt to break it when dry would reduce one half to dust, and so spoil the appearance of the liqueur. It must be spread on a plate which has a little thin syrup on it. The leaf must also be covered with the syrup, and then torn by means of two forks into small pieces about the size of a canary seed. The leaf should not be added until the liqueur is in the bottle. The reader will observe the common use of capillaire.2

Ligusticum; Lat, levisticum; Fr., luvesche, leveshe, liveche; O. Eng. livish, lovage. The Italian has the form libistico, and the Portuguese levistico.

1 A technical term.

2 So called because said to be prepared from the maidenhair fern, Adiantum capillus Veneris; "but," says Pereira (Materia Medica), "the liqueur sold in the shops under this name is nothing but clarified syrup flavoured with orange-flower water."