Subject: Re: Drinks

From: [email-masked] (Dr. Stephen Bloch)
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 1994 17:26:35 GMT

Rev. Jeffery G.M. Payne <[email-masked]> wrote:
>	Hi there, I'm looking for medieval beverages of a non-alcoholic nature.
>I'm allergic to alcohol and I'm getting tired of lemonade at medival 
>feasts as an alternative to alcohol. Can anyone help me.

There are dozens or hundreds of such beverages described in the medieval
Arabic cookbooks, most consisting of some kind of flavoring, mixed with
sugar and simmered down into a syrup concentrated enough that it keeps
without refrigeration.  When you want to drink it, you dilute it with
warm or cold water in a ratio of from 4:1 to 10:1, depending on the
flavoring, the weather, and your taste.  Among the ones I've tried:

sekanjabin, which various medieval cookbooks describe as a syrup made
from sugar and vinegar, and to which Claudia Roden's modern cookbook adds
mint;

granatus (in Latin; I don't know its Arabic name), a syrup of equal
parts pomegranate juice and sugar.

Another poster mentioned having tasted hypocras, or ypocras, made from
white grape juice at a RenFair.  Every medieval description of hypocras
I've seen uses wine, not grape juice; I presume the grape juice is a
RenFair modification so they can sell it without carding people.

In fact, I don't know of any nonalcoholic beverages from medieval
Europe, off the top of my head (although there are "small meads" and the
like that are fermented only briefly and have very little alcohol).  I
think the alcohol served to kill the critters that would otherwise carry
waterborne infections.  Does anybody know of specific mention in
medieval cookbooks or medical treatises of the health effects of drinking
water (as opposed to, say, beer or wine)?

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

---

From: [email-masked] (Robin Carroll-Mann)
Date: 27 Aug 1994 23:50:25 GMT

>parts pomegranate juice and sugar.
[rest of text deleted]

    A `quick cheat' way of getting such beverages is to visit your local
middle eastern or [Asian] Indian grocery.  They sell syrups (made with some
non-period ingredients like corn syrup) which are diluted with cold water to
make drinks similar to the ones above.  I was browsing in such a store today
and bought a bottle of pomegranate syrup.  This store also had rose syrup,
mango syrup, and sandlewood syrup, plus one or two whose ingredients were
unfamiliar to me.

Robin Carroll-Mann
[email-masked]
SCA: Brighid ni Chiarain