Cassell's dictionary of cookery

Periwinkles, Boiled. — Wash the periwinkles in several waters, and then let them soak in plenty of fresh water for half an hour ; when that is done, wash them again. These precautions will be found necessary to cleanse the fish from the mud and sand which adhere to them. Before boiling, shake them up to make them withdraw into their shells. Put them into a saucepan, and cover with boiling sea-water that has stood a little while to settle, and then been poured off from the sediment. Boil quickly for twenty minutes, and serve, accompanied by brown bread and butter. Probable cost, 'id. a pint. Sufficient for three or four persons. Perricot. — To make this liqueur take four ounces each of the kernels of apricots and nectarines ; mash them in a mortar along with eight ounces of peach-leaves and half that quantity of black currant-leaves ; add a drachm of beaten cinnamon and a drachm of mace. Put all these ingredients into five quarts of prepared spirit, let them infuse for a week, then draw off about two quarts, or, if it runs clear, five pints, with a gentle heat. Perry and Cider. — These are fermented beverages, prepared from the juice of pears and apples. They are not usually reckoned among the wines, but they belong to that class of beverages as much as those obtained from currants, gooseberries, and other fruits. Both are of ancient date : Pliny tells us that they were made by the Romans in Italy. There are many varieties of pears suited for making peiTy. In Gloucestershire the Tinton squash is in the highest esteem ; it is an early fruit, and remarkable for the tenderness of its flesh. The perry obtained from it is pale and sweet, yet uncormnonly fine, and of a strong body. The Oldtield pear is another favourite ; it yields a finely-flavoured liquor. The Barland pear of Worcestershire is in high repute, as is also the red pear. The best pears for perry, or, at least, the kinds which hitherto have been deemed the fittest for making the liquor, are so excessively tart and harsh, that no one can think of eating them as fruit : even hungry swine will not feed on them. All pears which possess colour and richness are capable of making peny, but a good perrs' pear requires an assemblage of qualities which are not often met with in the same fruit. " It must contain a large proportion of sugar, or its juice can never possess sufficient strength ; and unless it be at the .same time a.stringent, the liquor produced from it will be acetous whenever it ceases to be .saccharine ; in the latter state it Avill agree with few constitutions, in the former with none. The juice of the best perry pears, according to one authoritv, ' is so harsh and rough as to occasion a long-continued heat and ii-ritation in the throat when the fruit I is attempted to be eaten ; yet by being simply pressed from the pulp, it becomes rich and sweet, without more roughness than is agroe- ' able to almost every palate.' This circumstance, though extraordinary, does not stand alone in the vegetable world ; there are many cases where similar changes take place with acrid vegetable substances."