How to Make Turnip Wine, 1796
To make Turnip Wine. Take a good many turnips, pare, slice, and put them in a cyder-press, and press out all the juice very well; to every gallon of juice have three pounds of lump-sugar, have a vessel ready just big enough to hold the juice, put your sugar into a vessel, and also to every gallon of juice half a pint of brandy; pour in the juice, and lay something over the bung for a week, to see if it works; if it does, you must not bung it down till it has done working: then stop it close for three months, and draw it off in another vessel. When it is fine, bottle it off.
Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy
When will your turnip wine taste fine? Maybe right after you’ve downed the last bottle of non-turnip wine.
I assumed that "fine" means something closer to refined or clear after the sediment and yeast have settled to the bottom of the fermentation vessel.
Apparently preserved turnip is a super food... so that wine would have done wonders! Photographic proof here: http://instagram.com/p/xTOg...
Bung: noun and verb
'lay SOMETHING over the bung' ? The mind boggles at the possible choices.
So to me, what we have here is... turnip-flavoured brandy.