1903 The Flowing Bowl by Edward Spencer

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