A Treatise on Cyder-Making, founded on long Practice and Experience; with a Catalogue of Cyder-Apples of Character, in Herefordshire and Devonshire.

This is a rare or used book from the Berkelouw Rare Books Department.

London: Printed for E. Cave, 1753. Small quarto, bound in original full polished calf, skilfully re-spined to match. Raised spine bands and contrasting morocco title-label. (viii, 68pp.). With folding engraved plate depicting the operation of an apple-press, plus 2 woodcuts. Slight dust-soiling to title-page, otherwise a fine complete copy of the extremely rare first edition. The armorial book-plate of the Earl of Jersey (Victor Albert George Child Villiers) and the bookplate of Victor Hilton of Pencombe Hall appear inside the front cover. A detailed instruction manual for the making of apple cider from over two hundred and fifty years ago by expert cider-maker Hugh Stafford of Pynes in Devonshire, including sections on the varieties of cider apples in Herefordshire and Devonshire, "with their excellencies and history"; fruit collection; pulping; appropriate apparatus, vessels etc. and their use; the process of fermentation; preserving the cider, etc. etc. As Stafford sets forth in the Preface, in publishing the present treatise he has surely provided an important public service. Indeed, cider is "generally allowed to be a wholesome drink", and he has given "infallible directions for making it universally agreeable, by varrying it so as to suit every palate, and by improving the flavour and the quality, both of the rough and the smooth, diverting it of its tendency to produce cholics, and giving it the sparkle of champaign, without an eager and windy fermentation, and rendering it more spirituous than a small wine tho' less inflaming." (pp. iv-v).