Important: Safety Warning
This page recommends preserving food with chemicals such as salicylic acid, borax, or formaldehyde. These substances are toxic when eaten, and their use in food is now prohibited.
In addition, this page describes additives or treatments for food or drink that are now known to be toxic and are prohibited in food today.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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To Remedy Sour Wine
The souring of wine is produced by various cirfrom its having been kept in a warm cellar where it has been exposed to draughts of air, often by the vibration occasioned by the rolling of heavy bodies its natural color, a little more tartaric acid few days, when, if the wine has not regained must be added.
Wine. The technical terms "sweating in" 757. Sweating In and Fretting In and "fretting in" are applied to the partial production of a second fermentation, for the over the cellar; but most frequently it origi- purpose of mellowing down the flavor of fornates from the wine having been imperfectly eign ingredients (chiefly brandy) added to fermented. The only safe remedy for the wine. For this purpose 4 or 5 pounds sugar souring of wine is the cautious addition of a or honey, with a little crude tartar (dissolved), little neutral tartrate of potash; it may also are commonly added per hogshead; and when be mixed with a larger quantity of rich wine the wine is wanted be mixed with a larger quantity of rich wine of its kind, at the same time adding a little of yeast, or a few bruised vine leaves are also in haste, 1 or 2 spoonfuls good brandy. Wine treated in this way mixed in, the cask being placed in a modershould be fined after having stood 2 or 3 ately warm situation until the new fermentaweeks, and then immediately bottled, and tion is established , when it is removed to the consumed as soon as possible, for it will never wine-cellar, and, after a few days, fined down. prove a good keeping wine. (Sce No. 761.) Wine. The disagreeable taste in wine, gene- 758. To Remove Mustiness from rally known as mustiness, is occasioned by the presence of an essential oil. This may be removed by adding a little sweet or almond oil, and then violently stirring the wine for some time. The fixed oil attracts and seizes on the essential oil, and rises with it to the surface, when it is easily skimmed off, or the liquid under it drawn off.
A few slices of burnt or toasted bread , or a little bruised mustard seed or coarsely powdered charcoal, will often have the same effect. 752. To Restore Pricked or Decaying Wine. If the wine is only thick, add 2 pints of milk to every 30 gallons of wine, and stir 10 minutes. But if the wine has an inferior taste, or is partly or entirely spoiled, treat it as follows: Put the 30 gallons wine into a clean cask , then take 2 pints spirit of wine, 95 per cent.; 3 ounces common salt; 1 pound white sugar. Dissolve the salt and sugar in gallon of the wine, and add the spirit. Then pour the whole gradually into the wine, being careful to stir it continually with a stick during the operation. After the mixture is all poured in the wine, stir the whole for 10 minutes longer. Then add 2 pints milk and continue stirring 10 minutes of the presence of microscopic organisms, more. After some days the wine will be com- which could be destroyed by exposing the pletely clarified and restored. "Pricked" wine, for a few moments only, to a temperawine signifies wine which has been slightly ture of 131° Fahr. wine signifies wine which has been slightly ture of 131° Fahr. A committee of experts Remedy Excessive Acidity ination of wines which had and which had was appointed to make a comparative examin German Wine. Simply add a little chalk. This mode of correcting the sourness not been subjected to heat; M. Lapparent
German Wine. Simply add a little not been subjected to heat; M. Lapparent soured. chalk. This mode of correcting the sourness of wine is perfectly harmless, whereas the of using white and vitrified lead for this fied lead for this purpose cannot be too much any form is a poison. 754. To Restore Sour Wine with Potash. To 25 gallons wine, add 4 ounces potash dissolved in a little water, and stir well with a stick for 10 minutes.
Wines. M. Pasteur announced some time 759. Pasteur's Method of Preserving ago that wines became spoiled in consequence being President, and M. Dumas and M. Pasteur assisting. They concluded that the prcservation of wine in bottles is greatly improved by heating; that the destruction of ment of the taste, color, or limpidity of the the germs is perfect, without the least impai:wines. 760. To Determine the Nature of the acetous fermentation, then convert it at Acidity in Wine. If wine has undergone 755. To Test Wines Beginning to Decompose. Many persons are unaware of once into vinegar by one of the usual modes. the difference between a wine that is begin- But if its acidity proceeds from an excess of tartaric acid, this defect may be remedied by shaking the wine with a concentrated solution of neutral tartrate of potassa, which, with the surplus of tartaric acid, will form bitar- Cordials or Liqueurs. cordials are rain or distilled water, white materials employed in the preparation of sugar, and clean, perfectly flavorless spirit. trate of potassa, and precipitate as such. To To these may be added the substances from discover the nature of the acidity, neutralize which the flavor and aroma are extracted, an ounce or so of the wine with some car- which distinguish and give character to the bonate of soda, then add a small quantity of particular cordial to be made, and also the artisulphuric acid, and boil up; if acetic acid or cles employed as "finings" when artificial vinegar be present, it will be perceptible by clarification is had recourse to. In the prepits odor. (See No. 751.) the first objects which engages the operator's aration or compounding of cordials, one of attention is the production of an alcoholic solution of the aromatic principles which are to give them their peculiar aroma and flavor. ( See No. 812.) This is done either by simple
761. Parent's Method of Preserving Wine. This consists in the addition of a small quantity of tannin or tannic acid to the wine, which perhaps acts in a similar way, by destroying the vitality of the spores of the fungus, since a microscopic examination of infusion or maceration, or by maceration and wine known to contain these germs, within subsequent distillation, or by flavoring the a few weeks after being treated with the tan- spirit with essential oils. In the preparation nin, has failed to detect the slightest trace. of liqueurs, glycerine has been found to be Indeed, wine which has already begun to admirably adapted for preserving the characchange, and become turbid, can be restored to teristic flavors of those compounds, and it has its primitive clearness, and with a great im- consequently become the great favorite of provement in its taste. Care must be taken, this class of manufactures. (See No. 725.). however, to use only tannin which has been prepared from the constituents of the grape, or with Essential Oils. When essential 768. Cordials Made by Maceration, since the slightest proportion of the extract oils are employed to convey the flavor, they of nut-gall, although accomplishing the genare first dissolved in a little of the strongest eral object of destroying the fungus, will im- rectified spirit of wine, and when added to the part a peculiar taste, which never disappears. spirit they are mixed up with the whole mass