Harper's cook book encyclopædia

Blackberry Wine. — Fill a large stone jar with ripe berries and cover with water. Tie a cloth over the jar, and let stand for three or four days to ferment ; then mash and strain through a coarse cloth. To every gallon of juice add 3 lbs. of brown sugar ; cover, and skim every morning until clear of fermentation; pour off carefully from the sediment into a demijohn, cork, and set in a cool place. Ready in two months. Champagne Cup. — Pour a bottle of champagne into a silver or glass cup, large enough to hold three quarts. Add to this two bottles of soda or seltzer water, a table-spoonful of brandy, and 16 ozs. of pounded ice. Stir it well with a silver spoon, and add, last of all, a table-spoonful of finely sifted sugar. A slice of pineapple or juice of an orange may be added. Chocolate. — -To one-half pint of boiling water add 2 table-spoonfuls of chocolate scraped up. When half done put in half a cupful of fresh milk ; stir with a wooden spoon until the milk has boiled up once. Sweeten to your taste either while cooking or when served on the table. This is only the quantity for one cupful. Chocolate Frappe. — Place over the fire in a double boiler three pints of rich milk ; break three-quarters of a pound of sweet chocolate into small pieces on a plate and put it in the oven, leaving the door open, until the chocolate is melted. When the milk boils, gradually stir in the melted chocolate. Take it from the fire and stir until the mixture is partly cool ; then beat in one pint of cream f shipped to a stiff froth. If not sweet enough, add more sugar. Flavor with vanilla and a dash of brandy. Turn it into a packed ice-cream freezer and partly freeze. Cider Cup. — Put a slice of crumb of bread toasted at the bottom of a large jug; grate half a small nutmeg over it, and place on it two or three slices of thin lemon-rind and half a dozen lumps of sugar. Pour over it two wineglassfuls of sherry, one of brandy, the juice of a lemon, a bottle of soda-water, and, last of all, a quart of cider. Mix well, and add a few lumps of pure ice. This should be used as soon as it is made. Cider for Winter Use (Sweet). — The simplest mode of preserving cider is to boil it down until only two-thirds of the original quantity is left, when it will keep indefinitely, but is too sweet to be enjoyed much as a beverage. Every housekeeper would find -it convenient, however, to have some gallons on hand, thus prepared, for various uses. Sweet cider is an indispensable ingredient of mince-meat, and will be found to improve the taste and color of calf’sfoot and gelatine jellies. Add ^ lb. of gelatine to a cask of cider after dissolving. Allow the cider to remain until its first fermentation is over, and it has become perfectly clarified, then rack it off. Let it settle again, rack it off once more, and bottle. Only pure cider, made out of sound, freshly gathered apples, will be good, even when subjected to the above careful treatment.