Page:The White House Cook Book.djvu/510

 470 COFFEE, TEA, BEVERAGES.

Fahrenheit, and strained or filtered previous to dissolving the sugar, will keep for an indefinite time, canned hot in glass jars.

The juice of soft fruits is best when allowed to drop therefrom by its own weight; lightly mash the fruit and then suspend in a cloth, allowing the juice to drop in a vessel beneath. Many housekeepers, after the bottles and jars are thoroughly washed and dried, smoke them with sulphur in this way: Take a piece of wire and bend it around a small piece of brimstone the size of a bean ; set the brimstone on fire, put it in the jar or bottle, bending the other end over the mouth of the vessel, and cover with a cork; after the brimstone has burned away, fill the vessel with the syrup or preserves and cover tightly. There is no sulphurous taste left by the process.

KOUMISS.

KOUMISS is prepared by dissolving four ounces of white sugar in one gallon of skimmed milk, and placing in bottles of the capacity of one quart; add two ounces of baker's yeast or a cake of compressed yeast to each bottle. Cork and tie securely, set in a warm place until fermentation is well under way, and lay the bottles on their sides in a cool cellar. In three days, fermentation will have progressed suffi- ciently to permit the koumiss to be in good condition.

PINEAPPLE VINEGAR.

COVER sliced pineapples with pure cider vinegar; let them stand three or four days, then mash and strain through a cloth as long as it runs clear; to every three quarts of juice add five pounds of sugar.

Boil it altogether about ten minutes 1, skim carefully until nothing rises to the surface, take from the fire ; when cool, bottle it. Black- berries and raspberries, and, in fact, any kind of highly flavored fruit, is fine; a tablespoonful in a glass of ice-cold water, to drink in warm weather.

RASPBERRY VINEGAR. No. 1.

PUT a quart of raspberries into a suitable dish, pour over them a quart of good vinegar, let it stand twenty-four hours, then strain through a flannel bag and pour this liquor on another quart of ber- ries; do this for three or four days successively and strain it; make it very sweet with loaf sugar ; bottle and seal it.

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