Page:The English housekeeper, 6th.djvu/369

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THE CELLAR.
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primrose pips, then pour in the liquor. Stir every day for a week, add 3 pints of brandy; stop the cask close, and in six weeks bottle the wine.

Cowslip Wine.

Boil 3½ lbs. lump sugar in 4 quarts of water an hour, skim and let it stand until lukewarm, pour it into a pan, upon 4 quarts of cowslip flowers; add a piece of toasted bread spread with yeast, and let it stand four days: put in as many lemons, sliced, as you have gallons of wine, mix and put it into a cask, and stop close.

Grape Wine.

To 1 gallon of bruised grapes (not over ripe), put 1 gallon of water. Let it stand six days, without stirring, strain it off fine, and to each gallon put 3 lbs. moist sugar; barrel, but do not stop it, till it has done hissing.—Or: the fruit barely half ripe, pick from the stalks, and bruise it, then put it in hair cloths, add an equal weight of water, and let it stand eighteen hours, stirring occasionally: dissolve in it from 3 lbs. to 3½ lbs. lump sugar, to each gallon, as you wish the wine to be more or less strong. Put it in a cask, fill it to the brim, and have 2 or 3 quarts in reserve to fill up with, as it diminishes by fermenting. Let it ferment ten days, when that is over, and there is no danger of the cask bursting, fasten it tight, leaving a small vent to open once a week, for a month. Fine and rack the wine in March, and bottle it in October; for a brisk wine, it must ferment eight days longer, and be bottled the following March, in cold weather.

Parsnip Wine.

Boil 1 bushel of sliced parsnips in 60 quarts of water, one hour, then strain it, add 45 lbs. lump sugar, boil one hour more, and when cold ferment with yeast; add a quart of brandy, then bottle it.—Or: to each gallon of water add 4 lbs. of parsnips, washed and peeled, which boil till tender; drain, but do not bruise them, for no remedy will make the wine clear: to each gallon of the liquor add 3 lbs. loaf sugar, and ½ oz. crude tartar, and when cooled to the tem-