To every pound of fruit (which should not be quite ripe) add one pound of loaf-sugar. Put the apricots into a preserving-pan, with sufficient water to cover them. Let them boil up, and then simmer gently until tender. Remove the skins. Clarify and boil the sugar, then pour it over the fruit, and let it remain twenty-four hours. Then put the apricots into wide-mouthed bottles, and fill them up with syrup and brandy, half and half. Cork tightly, and seal the tops of the corks. This apricot brandy should be prepared in the month of July, and kept at least twelve months before using. _Quince Whisky._ I once superintended the brew of a decoction of quinces and Scotch whisky. The quinces were treated exactly as the apricots are in the above recipe, and we kept the stuff bottled up for a year. I don’t think I ever tasted anything nastier. {192} _Orange Brandy_ should be made in the month of March, and, well-made, is the best of all cordials, being especially valuable on a cold morning just before proceeding with the hounds to draw Newton Wood. Take the thin rinds of six Seville oranges, and put them into a stone jar, with half a pint of the strained juice and half a gallon of good old brandy. Let it remain three days, then add one pound and a quarter of loaf-sugar—broken, not pounded—and stir till the sugar is dissolved. Let the liquor stand a day, strain it through paper until quite clear, pour into bottles, and cork tightly. The longer it is kept the better. The ancients apparently interpreted the word “cordial” in a different way to our later way; and their cordials were chiefly used in the sick-room. _The Saffron Cordial_, for instance, was chiefly employed to cure fainting fits, the ague, and the smallpox. I think I should have preferred all three complaints at once. Fill a large still with marigold flowers, and strew on it an ounce of ground nutmeg; beat them grosly, and take an ounce of the best English saffron, pull it, and mix with the flowers; then take three pints of muscadine or tent, or Malaga sack, and with a sprig of rosemary dash it on the flowers; then distil it off with a slow fire, and let it drop on {193} white sugar-candy; draw it off till it begins to be sowre, save a pint of the first running to mix with other waters on an extraordinary occasion; mix the rest together to drink by itself. Take five or six spoonfuls at a time. As Hamlet observes, on a memorable occasion: “Oh, horrible, horrible, most horrible!” _Curaçoa_