onful of brown
sugar, or clarified syrup (No. 475); a little grated nutmeg or ginger
may be added, and a roll of very thin-cut lemon-peel.

_Obs._--Before our readers make any remarks on this composition, we beg
of them to taste it: if the materials are good, and their palate
vibrates in unison with our own, they will find it one of the
pleasantest beverages they ever put to their lips; and, as Lord Ruthven
says, "this is a right gossip's cup that far exceeds all the ale that
ever Mother Bunch made in her life-time." See his Lordship's
_Experiments in Cookery_, &c. 18mo. London, 1654, p. 215.

_Sir Fleetwood Shepherd's Sack Posset._--(No. 467*.)

"From famed Barbadoes, on the western main,
Fetch sugar, ounces four--fetch sack from Spain,
A pint,--and from the eastern Indian coast
Nutmeg, the glory of our northern toast;
O'er flaming coals let them together heat,
Till the all-conquering sack dissolve the sweet;
O'er such another fire put eggs just ten,
New-born from tread of cock and rump of hen:
Stir them with steady hand and conscience pricking
To see the untimely end of ten fine chicken:
From shining shelf take down the brazen skillet,--
A quart of milk from gentle cow will fill it.
When boiled and cold, put milk and sack to eggs,
Unite them firmly like the triple league,
And on the fire let them together dwell
Till Miss sing twice--you must not kiss and tell--
Each lad and lass take up a silver spoon,
And fall on fiercely like a starved dragoon."

_To bottle Beer._--(No. 468.)

When the briskness and liveliness of malt liquors in the cask fail, and
they become dead and vapid, which they generally do soon after they are
tilted; let them be bottled.

Be careful to use clean and dried bottles; leave them unstopped for
twelve hours, and then cork them as closely as possible with good and
sound new corks; put a bit of lump sugar as big as a nutmeg into each
bottle: the beer will be ripe, _i. e._ fine and sparkling, in about four
or five weeks: if the weather is cold, to put it up the day before it is
drunk, place it in a room where there is a fire.

Remember there is a sediment, &c. at the bottom of the bottles, which
you must carefully avoid disturbing; so pour it off at once, leaving a
wine-glassful at the bottom.

*.* If beer becomes hard or stale, a few grains of carbonate of potash
added to it at the time it is drunk will correc