Personal Note: As a hobby winemaker, this is lovely prefatory material. When reading through cookbooks predating Prohibition, they almost universally include recipes for wine, beer, and malts – not to mention the various hot toddy recipes.
Not so past 1920.
Following Prohibition, there is a conspicuous absence of recipes for home brewing in your general homemaker cookbook. As such, wine making has become something of a lost art for your average home cook, but it is as simple as the introduction describes.
“The difficulty and the expense is trifling.”
If you’re curious, I would highly recommend The Joy of Home Wine Making as a starter guide. It’s the gateway wine making book. You could be enjoying a lovely dry apple wine in about 3 months – pairs perfectly with grilled meat!
More Fun Discoveries
- Resolutions on Temperance: “To Uphold Every Vice and Iniquity in the Land…” ~1866
- Grapes, Thus Packed, Will Keep 9-12 Months ~1856
- Frowzy Wives and a Foretaste of Purgatory ~1886
Source: Practical American Cookery and Domestic Economy, E. Hall, 1856.
Convivial Supper 
Do you know if any cookbooks included it again after Prohibition was lifted?
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No, afterwards you see specialty ‘cocktail’ and spirit books, that focus on re-introducing alcohol to the American drinker.
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