Subject: RE: MEDIEVAL RECIPE

From: [email-masked] (Michael Mccollum)
Date: 27 Jan 95 16:17:00 GMT

Hiya John,

> >1 to 1 1/3 cups sugar
>
> Really?? Where is the traces of that raffinery????
> If sweets has been used, it must have been some natural sweet stuff,
> not pure, white, refined sugar :-)

Not so. The following is from "The Forme of Cury, A Roll of Ancient
English Cookery, Compiled, about A.D. 1390, by the Master-Cooks of King
Richard II"

Page XXVI, para 2

Sugar, or Sugur, was now beginning here to take place of honey; however,
they are used together. Sugar came from the Indies, by way of Damascus
and Aleppo, to Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, and from these last places to
us. It is here not only frequently used, but was of various sorts, as
cypre, named probably from the isle of Cyprus, whence it might either
come directly to us, or where it had received some improvement by way of
refining. There is mention of blanch-powder or white sugar. They,
however, were not the same. Sugar was clarified sometimes with wine.

NOTE, Page XV, para 2: Cury, as remarked above, was ever reckoned a
branch of the Art Medical; and here I add, that the verb curare
signifies equally to dress victuals, as to cure a distemper.

> >1 1/2 (or more) tablespoons of rosewater
>
> Possibly rose petals themselves was used here. Doubt that the rosewater
> you buys in the shop was available also then.

Secrets in Distillation, Second Chapter from a book Printed in 1609.

Para 14. To distill Rose-water at Michaelmas, and to have a good yield
as at any other time of the year.

In the pulling of your Roses, first divide all the blasted leave, then
take the other fresh leaves, and lay them abroad upon your table or
windows with some clean linen under them, let them lie three or four
hours, or if they be dewy, until the dew be fully vanished: put these
Rose leaves in great stone pots, having narrow mouths, and well leaded
within, (such as the Goldfiners call their hookers, and serve to
receive the Aqua fortis, be the best of all others that I know) and
when they are well filled, stop their mouths with good corks, either
covered all over with wax or molten brimstone, and then set your pot
in some cool place, and they will keep a long time good, and you may
distill them at your best leasure. This way you may distill Rosewater
good cheap. If you buy store of Roses, when you find a glut of them in
the market, whereby they are sold for 7 pence or 8 pence the bushel:
you then engrosse the flower. And some hold opinion, that if in the
midst of these leaves you put some broken leaven, and after fill up
the pot with Rose leaves to the top, that so in your distillation of
them you shall have a perfect Rose vinegar, without the addition of
any common vinegar. I have known Rose leaves kept well in Rondlets
that have been first well seasoned with some hot liquor & Roseleaves,
boiled together, and the same pitched over on the outside, so as no
air might penetrate or pierce the vessel.

I think you'll find these examples both enlightening and helpful.

C-ya,

Katie

... 'Tis better to be absolutely sure, than to deal in absolutes!
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

---

From: [email-masked] (Stephen Bloch)
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 1995 18:45:45 GMT

Michael Mccollum <[email-masked]> wrote:
>The following is from "The Forme of Cury, A Roll of Ancient

Again, I feel compelled to point out that these quotes are NOT from a
book written in 1390, but rather from the 17th- or 18th-century intro-
duction to it (as suggested by the past tense and the basically modern
spellings and grammar in the above two paragraphs).  I see no reason
to trust an anonymous 18th-century editor's opinion on medieval use of
sugar over, say, that of a modern writer like McGee.  (I don't recall
seeing many obvious errors in this particular editor's work, but then
I haven't paid much attention to the introduction.)

However, the point that white sugar WAS available to, and widely used
by, medieval European cooks remains well established, not only by the
numerous mentions of it in medieval culinary recipes, but by discussions
of it in medieval pharmacological treatises, pictures of sugar cones in
apothecary shops that show it clearly as WHITE, not brown, and trade
records.

Aside: modern "brown sugar" is actually MORE processed than white sugar.
The commercial process for making it, at least in the US, is to make
white sugar, with molasses as a by-product, then add some of the
molasses back in.  I'm not sure whether this applies to Demerara as
found on the tables of Britain.  See McGee, _On Food and Cooking_.

>hours, or if they be dewy, until the dew be fully vanished: ...

Now we're getting somewhere; this is a primary source from 1609,
correctly attributed.

--
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           [email-masked]
                                          (or [email-masked])
                                        Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University