Formerly vinegar was prepared on the farm to a greater extent than now.  The introduction of laws for the control of the sale of vinegar, altho intended to help the honest manufacturer, has discouraged the preparation of vinegar for sale in a small way, not because it is difficult to meet the requirements but because some care must be taken in the operation in the order that the finished product comply therewith.

It is unnecessary to point out that low-grade fruit may often be used to advantage in the preparation of vinegar.  This has always been true in the case of apples and may be true with other fruit, especially grapes.  The use of grapes for wine making is an outlet which in now to be denied, and one alternative is the manufacture of vinegar from such grapes as are undesirable for eating.  The juice makes a very excellent vinegar, thought be some to be the superior to apple-cider vinegar. Continue reading The Preparation of Marketable Vinegar

Take the large blue figs when pretty ripe, and steep them in white wine, having made some slits in them, that they may swell and gather in the substance of the wine.

Then slice some other figs and let them simmer over a fire in water until they are reduced to a kind of pulp.

Then strain out the water, pressing the pulp hard and pour it as hot as possible on the figs that are imbrued in the wine.

Let the quantities be nearly equal, but the water somewhat more than the wine and figs.

Let them stand twenty-four hours, mash them well together, and draw off what will run without squeezing.

Then press the rest, and if not sweet enough add a sufficient quantity of sugar to make it so.

Let it ferment, and add to it a little honey and sugar candy, then fine it with white of eggs, and a little isinglass, and draw it off for use.

[From: Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wines, Cordials and Liquerurs From Fruits, Flowers, Vegetables, and Shrubs, Compiled by Helen S. Wright, Boston, The Page Company, Publishers, Copyright 1909, by Dana Estes and Company,  Fourth Impression, January. 1922 Printed by C.H. Simonds Company, Boston, Mass, USA]

INTRODUCTION

The idea of compiling this little volume occurred to me while on a visit to some friends at their summer home in a quaint New England village. The little town had once been a thriving seaport, but now consisted of hardly more than a dozen old-fashioned Colonial houses facing each other along one broad, well-kept street. A few blind lanes led to less pretentious homes; and still farther back farmhouses dotted the landscape and broke the dead line of the horizon.

For peace, contentment, and quiet serenity of life, this little village might have been Arcadia; the surrounding country, the land of Beulah.

The ladies of the Great Houses, as the villagers called the few Colonial mansions, were invariably spinsters or widows of uncertain years, the last descendants of a long line of sea captains and prosperous mariners, to whom the heritage of these old homes, rich with their time-honored furnishings and curios, served to keep warm the cockles of kindly hearts, which extended to the stranger that traditional hospitality which makes the whole world kin. Continue reading Old Time Recipes for Homemade Wines, Cordials, and Liqueurs

EIGHTEEN GALLONS is here give as a STANDARD for all the following Recipes, it being the most convenient size cask to Families. See A General Process for Making Wine 

If, however, only half the quantity of Wine is to be made, it is but to divide the portions of the materials in half.  If on the other hand, double the quantity is to be made, then it is but to double the portions.  So that by variation it will answer every size cask.  Continue reading A Few Wine Recipes