“In many places,” says another writer, “they boyl their cider, adding thereto several spices, which makes it very pleasant, and abates the unsavoury smack it contracts by boyling, but {183} withal gives it a high colour. This way is not to be commended, because the juice of the apple is either apt to extract some ill savour from the brass or copper, we being not acquainted with any other vessels to boyl it in, or the sediment of it is apt to burn by its adhering to the sides of the vessel, it being boyl’d in a naked fire. “But if you are willing to boyl your cider, your vessel ought to be of _Latten_, which may be made large enough to boyl a good quantity, the _Tin_ yielding no bad tincture to the liquor. . . . It many times happens that cider that hath been good, by ill-management or other accident becomes dead, flat, sowr, thick, muddy, or musty; all which in some sort or other may be cured. You may cure deadness or flatness in cider by grinding a small parcel of apples, and putting them in at the bung-hole, and stopping it close, only sometimes trying it by opening the small vent that it force not the vessel; but then you must draw it off in a few days, either into bottles or another vessel, lest the _Murc_ corrupt the whole mass. Cider that is dead or flat will oftentimes revive again of itself, if close stopt, upon the revolution of the year and approaching summer.” _Hippocras._ Here is an ancient recipe:— Take of cardamoms, carpobalsamum, of each half an ounce, coriander-seeds prepared, nutmegs, ginger, of each two ounces, cloves two drachms; bruise and infuse them two days in two gallons of the richest sweetest cider, often stirring it together, then add {184} thereto of milk three pints, strain all through an hippocras bag, and sweeten it with a pound of sugar-candy. D’you kna-ow—as the curate in _The Private Secretary_ says—I am not taking any hippocras to-day. “Wormwood imbib’d in cider,” says another writer, “produceth the effect that it doth in wine.” Evidently some nasty effect; only conceive an admixture of absinthe and cider! That the ancients loved mixtures—and sweet mixtures—is pretty evident from the writings of Pliny and others. Were a man to invite me to drink apple juice in the which had been bottled dried juniper-berries, I should probably hit that man in the eye, or send for a policeman. But two or three hundred years ago “juniper-cider” appears to have been a popular drink, although we read that “the taste thereof is somewhat strange, which by use will be much abated.” Ginger, cloves, cinnamon, currants, honey, rosemary, raspberries, blackberries, elderberries, and “clove-July-flowers,” all used to be put into cider, by way of flavouring; “but the best addition,” says the same writer, “that can be to it is that of the lees of _Malaga_ Sack or Canary new and sweet, about a gallon to a hogshead; this is a great improver and a purifier of cider.”