Name: Artificial, or Cider Without Apples
Ingredients: 1 gallon cold water; 1 lb dark brown sugar; 1 oz tartaric acid; 3 tablespoons yeast

Artificial, or Cider Without Apples

Ingredients

1 gallon cold water
1 lb dark brown sugar
1 oz tartaric acid
3 tablespoons yeast

Directions

Prepare

Combine cold water, dark brown sugar, tartaric acid, and yeast in a container. Shake well to mix the ingredients.

Ferment and serve

Let it ferment overnight; it will be ready for use the next day.
If it gets a little sour, add more ingredients to improve the flavor.
Serve chilled with ice or bottle it for later use.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Yeast: Ferments the sugars, producing the fizz and alcohol that give the drink its character.
Dark brown sugar: Provides the fermentable sugar and a molasses-like sweetness for the yeast to work on.
Tartaric acid: Adds the sharp, tart acidity that stands in for the apple flavor.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.