Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

stirring it once or twice a day, strain out your liquor, and mix with it two quarts of damson juice, put it in a vessel, and when it has done working, stop it close; at four or five months bottle it. _To make Birch Wine_:--In March bore a hole in a tree, and put in a faucet, and it will run two or three days together without hurting the tree; then put in a pin to stop it, and the next year you may draw as much from the same hole; put to every gallon of the liquor a quart of good honey, and stir it well together, boil it an hour, scum it well, and put in a few cloves, and a piece of lemon-peel; when 'tis almost cold, put to it so much ale-yeast as will make it work like new ale, and when the yeast begins to settle, put it in a runlet that will just hold it: so let it stand six weeks or longer if you please; then bottle it, and in a month you may drink it. It will keep a year or two. You may make it with sugar, two pounds to a gallon, or something more, if you keep it long. This is admirably wholesome as well as pleasant, an opener of obstructions, good against the phthisick, and good against the spleen and scurvy, a remedy for the stone, it will abate heat in a fever or thrush, and has been given with good success. _To make Sage Wine_:--Boil twenty-six quarts of spring-water a quarter of an hour, and when 'tis blood-warm, put twenty-five pounds of Malaga raisins pick'd, rubb'd and shred into it, with almost half a bushel of red sage shred, and a porringer of ale-yeast; stir all well together, and let it stand m a tub cover'd warm six or seven days, stirring it once a day; then strain it out, and put it in a runlet. Let it work three or four days, stop it up; when it has stood six or seven days put in a quart