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.