38 / 248
38
THE FLOWING BOWL
fill up with water, and so let it remain for two
months ; by which means they make one of the
most pleasant Liquors a man need drink ; the
older the better and sweeter, although you keep
it five and twenty or thirty years."
Weel—I hae ma doots.
Until reading " The English Housewife^ con
taining the inward and outward Vertues which
ought to be in a complete Woman, published by
Nicholas Okes at the sign of the golden Unicorne
in 1631," I had no skill in making
White Bastard
or "aparelling" Muskadine. They used a lot of
eggs in the vintry in those days, and these were
the instructions for making white bastard.
Draw out of a pipe of bastard ten gallans, and
put to it five gallans of new milke, and skim it as
before, and all to beat it with a parill of eight whites
of egges, and a handfull of Baysalt and a pint of
conduit-water, and it will be white and fine in the
morning. But if you will make very fine bastard
which I, personally, have no ambition to do take
a white-wine hog's-head, and put out the lees, and
wash it cleane, and fill it halfe full and halfe aquarter
and put to it foure gallans of new milke, and beate it
well with the whites of sixe egges, and fill it up with
white-wine and sacke, and it will be white and fine.
Bastard had not much rest in the seventeenth
century. The housewife who might wish "to
heipe bastard being eager" had to follow these
directions:—
Take two gallons of the best stoned honey, and