Page:Husbandman and Housewife 1820.djvu/86

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80
MEA

If you wish to make your sugar very nice, cool it until one half or two thirds will grain, turn 'it hot into a tight cask; let it stand undisturbed in a cellar, or other cool place until it is grained at the bottom-Turn off the molasses and turn the cask bottom upwards over some vessel to catch what will dram out: let it stand as long as any will drop, then set your cask upright, and what moisture remains will settle to the bottom, leaving the top dry and of a superiour quality.

If you wish to make dry sugar without draining, there are various modes of ascertaining when it is boiled sufficiently; perhaps as sure a method is to drop some on snow and let it cool, if it is brittle as rosin it is done.

mead or metheglin, how made.

FOR every gallon of wine or metheglin to be made, take one pound and a half of honey, half an ounce of tartar or Bologna argol, and three fourths of a pound of fruit. If for white wine, white argol should be used with white currants, and if for red wine, red argol, with red currants or raspberries. Prepare the honey, by mixing it with as much water as will, when added to the juice of the fruit, allowing for diminution by boiling, &c. make the proposed quantity of wine. This being well boiled and clarified, infuse it in a moderate quantity of rosemary leaves, lavender, and sweetbriar; and when they have remained two days, strain it to the expressed juice of the fruit, put in the dissolved argol, stir the whole well together, and leave it to ferment. In two or three days put it in a seasoned barrel, keep filling it up as the liquor flows over, and on its ceasing to work sink in it a bag of Seville orange and lemon peel, with cinnamon, cloves and nutmegs, and closely bung up the cask. If kept for six months or more, in