bev-distilled-msg - 1/18/08
Medieval distilled beverages. Distilling.
NOTE: See also the files: cordials-msg, beverages-msg, Peach-Brandy-art, Kiwi-cordial-art. Apricot-Crdal-art, brewing-msg, mead-msg, beer-msg, wine-msg, p-bottles-msg.
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Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous
Stefan at florilegium.org
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From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Liquours Period?
Date: 29 Jun 93 03:57:37 GMT
Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn, who has spent more time with her
Hugh Platt lately in response from questions in this forum than she had in
quite a time.
We have two questions as to whether liquors are period. The short answer is
yes: the second section of Hugh Platt's _Delightes for Ladies_ (London, 1609)
is titled "Secrets in Distillation"; it's first recipe is called "How to make
true spirit of wine." Most of the rest, though, are how to make things like
rosewater, or heavily herbed and spiced things, not what one would think of
as either modern liquors or cordials. Kenelm Digbie (1669), the largest single
locus I know of for near-period brewing information, contains (so far as I
know) no recipes that call for distillation, or for using its product (i.e. you
don't add spirit of wine). The technique is known, at least right at the
end of period, but does not seem to be much used.
Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry
From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Spices and Distillation (was Re: Surprise! Surprise!)
Date: 20 Jul 93 04:51:53 GMT
Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.
In response to Ranvaig's query, Andy Trembley recently wrote,
>Distillation as "distillation of spirits" has been in discussion for the
>last few weeks as of yet with no real conclusion as to whether it was period
>(tho the 'nays' have more support due to the lack of reliable information to
>support the 'yeas').
I may be partly responsible for this impression, so I thought I should
clarify what I have found.
In the fifth collection in _Curye on Inglysch_, which Hieatt calls "Goud
Kokery", there is a 14th C recipe for distilling aqua vite from the lees of
strong wine, which seems to produce something that would appear to be a
heavily spiced (and probably rather weak, given the methods described)
brandy. So some form of such distilling is unmistakably period.
What is unclear is whether anyone ever used the result as a beverage,
i.e. drank it straight, either to quench thirst, to enjoy the flavor,
or to get drunk. The closest I have to an indication of such a use is
that it is used sparingly as an ingredient in some recipes for making
spiced wines or ales (amazingly enough, these recipes tend to indicate
amounts).
This seems to be true through the early 17th C, at least according to
what I have found. Hugh Platt has a recipe for distilling "true spirits
of wine", which again produces a stronger alcohol than brewing provides.
But again, there is no indication that it was drunk; and all the other
recipes in his section on distilling are for things like rosewater, or
for things you apply externally.
I have not seen it myself, but understand that there is sound evidence
that some distilled beverages of enhanced alcoholic content were used
as medicinals (I'd love some non-urban-legend real-life references here,
BTW), and it is very likely true. Surely some of the alchemists thought
they might be useful that way. But there's a huge gap, even today, between
Cognac and Robitussin. The first is a beverage. The second isn't. The
question is whether distilled alcohols in Europe in period were only
ingredients or medicinals, or whether they were also sometimes beverages.
I hope this is a bit clearer.
Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry
From: boyko at skyfox
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: RE: Spices and Distillation (was Re: Surprise! Surprise!)
Date: 21 JUL 93 01:31:35 GMT
Organization: University of Saskatchewan
greetings unto the rialto from laghamon vavasour
angharad makes reference to searchingfor documentation of distilled
spirits as medicinals.
when writing an essay on 16th century science a couple years ago,
I ran across a citation from M. Boas _The Scientific Renaissance_. On
page 161, she makes reference to a certain Michael von Shrick who wrote
a book on distilling liquors in 1478 and suggested the use of such
liquors as brandy for medicinal purposes. It is a slender leg to stand on,
but it might be worth using as leverage
From: DDFr at Best.com (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: How to make Rum *VERY INTERESTING*
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 10:09:38 -0800
Organization: School of Law, Santa Clara University
Anyone interested in a period answer to the question might want to look at
the description of how to make arrack in the (16th century, Moghul) _Ain i
Akbari_. Arrack, like rum, is a distilled liquor made from sugar cane. I
don't believe they are the same thing, but I expect the process is at least
similar.
David/(Cariadoc doesn't even approve of undistilled liquors, unless they
are made from dates and fermented no more than three days)
From: DDFr at Best.com (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Liqueurs in History
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 22:27:23 -0800
Organization: School of Law, Santa Clara University
I believe the following is roughly correct, but I haven't checked any sources.
In most of Europe, distilling alcohol for the purpose of drinking is a
late period practice, with the main example being brandy (distilled wine),
c. 1400-1500. Whiskey was apparently distilled much earlier, but in fringe
areas, so to speak (i.e. Ireland and Scotland). So I don't think you get
liquers until near the end of our period, and brandy is the most likely
liquid for them to be based on.
Of course, distillation was known much earlier, but from an (al)chemical,
not culinary, standpoint.
Perhaps someone with more precise information can add to or correct my
memory on this.
David/Cariadoc
From: hrjones at uclink.berkeley.edu (Heather Rose Jones)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Liqueurs in History
Date: 22 Feb 1997 21:39:14 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
David Friedman (DDFr at Best.com) wrote:
: I believe the following is roughly correct, but I haven't checked any sources.
: In most of Europe, distilling alcohol for the purpose of drinking is a
: late period practice, with the main example being brandy (distilled wine),
: c. 1400-1500. Whiskey was apparently distilled much earlier, but in fringe
: areas, so to speak (i.e. Ireland and Scotland).
Regarding this last, I have yet to see _any_ solid evidence for the
distillation of whiskey (by any spelling) any time prior to the general
spread of brandy-type distillation. You get some vague statements in
"history of whiskey" books put out by distillaries, but nothing I've ever
seen that could be backed up or pinned down. (I think it's not
insignificant that the Irish phrase from which the word "whiskey" derives
is a direct translation of "aqua vitae".)
Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn
From: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy at abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 14:48:19 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: SC - cognac
> Ok, as if Stefan hasn't asked enough questions, What is cognac?
This is just a too easy question.
co.gnac \'ko-n-.yak, 'ka:n-, 'ko.n-\ n [F, fr. Cognac, France] cap 1: a
brandy from the departments of Charente and Charente-maritime distilled
from white wine 2: a French brandy
I know it is a distilled alcoholic beverage of some type. But what is it made
of? Is it period? What makes a good bottle of cognac? Are there period
food recipes that use it?
A similar distilled beverage is armagnac, also from France. It is period, I
do believe. (But have no citations to hand.)
What makes it a good bottle? Aging, ingredients....
Hmmm. Like most strong beverages, cognac has a certain bite. It also has a
natural smokey kind of complexity, not like the peaty flavor of scotch, but
sharper in the nose. It also has a vanilla sort of texture. A light brown
color, a very warm and inviting smell. In large gulps, it can be very
sharp, and it must be sipped slowly, so that the wonderful fumes can wash
into your nose as you savor it. It takes me a good 45 minutes to drink an
ounce. Or longer.
I know of no recipes that call for it, but I have some empty glasses
into which it conforms smartly. (:-)
Tibor
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 16:55:10 -0400
Subject: Re: SC - cognac
Mark Schuldenfrei wrote:
> Hmmm. Like most strong beverages, cognac has a certain bite. It also has a
> natural smokey kind of complexity, not like the peaty flavor of scotch, but
> sharper in the nose. It also has a vanilla sort of texture. A light brown
> color, a very warm and inviting smell. In large gulps, it can be veyr
> sharp, and it must be sipped slowly, so that the wonderful fumes can wash
> into your nose as you savor it. It takes me a good 45 minutes to drink an
> ounce. Or longer.
Just a drop to add: some vintages (a year's "crop" of wine from a given
vineyard) are better than others. Some make better brandy than others.
Part of the way to remove some of the more unpleasant impurities is by
aging under fairly stable, controlled conditions. Generally this
involves storage for up to several years in a cask (usually oak), under
fairly constant temperature and humidity (usually in cellars).
I like marc myself, another variety. It's a little more barbaric in
nature, rather like the Italian grappa.
> I know of no recipes that call for it, but I have some empty glasses
> into which it conforms smartly. (:-)
Yeah, me too! One of the reasons you're unlikely to find references to
such brandy in period recipes is that it would have been regarded as for
medicinal use, at least officially. The Irish author Malachy McCormick
speaks of his grandmother's justification for the occasional nip of
whisky:
"Sure, an' I drinks it like a physic!"
> Tibor
Adamantius' 2 sesterces
From: gfrose at cotton.vislab.olemiss.edu (Terry Nutter)
Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 16:08:15 -0500
Subject: Re: SC - cognac
Hi, Katerine here. Tibor commented that he didn't know of recipes that
call for brandy, and Adamantius added that one reason for that is that it
would have been regarded as medicinal.
Actually, there are spiced wine recipes that call for aqua vite, and
recipes for flaming dishes using eau ardent; both are almost certainly
brandies (i.e. spirits of wine made from grape-based wines), and cognac
would be a reasonable modern brandy to use. Before anyone asks: no, I
don't know what the difference between aqua vite (as specified in English
recipes going back to the 14th C, not the modern stuff) and eau ardent
was. They may have been the same. A reasonable alternative hypothesis
is that aqua vite is any distilled wine, and eau ardent is specifically
a distilled wine that has a high enough alcohol content to flame
adequately (in modern US terms, about 70 proof).
Cheers,
- --Katerine/Terry
From: gfrose at cotton.vislab.olemiss.edu (Terry Nutter)
Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 13:55:24 -0500
Subject: Re: Re(2): SC - cognac
Hi, Katerine here. Derdriu responds to Tibor responding to me:
>> I agree that brandy is an appropriate thing to use for either aqua vite or
>> eau ardent (and have a sneaking suspicion that eau is clearer than aqua...
>> but I don't know why I think that). But I wouldn't use the (more expensive)
>> and regionally specific cognac in a recipe, unless perhaps the source of the
>> recipe was in or near Cognac, France.
>
>Could the difference be language based? I wonder if eau ardent was available
>in France more readily than it might have been other places.
>>
>> Tibor
>
>Just wondering.
Both appear in English sources. Eau ardent probably appears in French ones
too, but I can't think of any offhand. People tend to forget that the common
language of English cuisine through the 13th century appears to have been
pretty firmly established as Anglo-Norman, and that medieval miscellanies
(in which a number of culinary recipes appear) were fairly well bilingual
between Middle English and Latin, and sometimes in earlier cases trilingual
between English, Latin, and Anglo-Norman.
The evolution (and accellerated corruption) of Anglo-Norman dish names through
the 14th and 15th centuries pretty clearly indicates that the scribes copying
them no longer understood Anglo-Norman. The references I can think of offhand
to eau ardent are early 15th century (in Arundel 334). I strongly suspect
that by then, to those who wrote about it, it was just a name.
- -- Katerine/Terry
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 1997 19:37:02 -0400
From: Ian Gourdon of Glen Awe <agincort at imperium.net>
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Cordial Research
G'day all,
I'm trying to research Cordial ingredients; the easy references are few,
Digby is out of period, etc, but I'll share what I found. Any more out
there?
For the whole page of my limited research, check out what I've found so
far...
http:www.imperium.net/~agincort/Cordial-R.html
Ian Gourdon
SUGAR:
The sugarcane plant, indigenous to southern Asia, was first used for the production of sugar between the 7th and 4th century B.C. in northern India. Cane cultivation eventually spread westward to the Near East and was introduced to the Mediterranean region by the Arabs, giving rise to a cane sugar industry that flourished there until the late 1500's. Columbus introduced sugarcane tothe New World on his second voyage in 1493, when it was first planted on theisland of Hispaniola. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish, English,and French established sugar production in their Caribbean island colonies. The French colony of St. Domingue (present-day Haiti) was, by the late 18thcentury, one of the most important sugar producers in the Caribbean at a time when world demand for sugar was rising rapidly. Shipments of raw sugar from St.Domingue such as those recorded on the displayed bills of lading were destined for the European market by way of refineries in France. -1996 Louisiana State University Libraries
AQUA VITAE:
Originally Whisky was very different to the refined spitits we have today. It had almost a soupy consistency with a strong smoky flavour from the peat used in the fires to dry the malt. Early stories go back to the sixth century AD, but the earliest documented record of distilling in Scotland occurs in 1494, when an entry in the Exchequer Rolls listed "Eight bolls of malt to Friar John Cor wherewith to make aqua vitae" (water of life).
This was sufficient to produce almost 1500 bottles.
Arnold de Vila Nova, a 13th Century alchemist, wrote of aqua vitae and
its restorative properties and also of the medicinal properties of various flavored alcohols. Legal documents dating to 1411 mention the distillation of wine into brandy in the Armagnac region of France. Das Buch zu Destilliern by Hieronymus Braunsweig was printed in 1519. This book, as its title explains, is a book on distillation.
From: "Sharon L. Harrett" <afn24101 at afn.org>
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 14:56:46 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: SC - Liqueurs
On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Michael F. Gunter wrote:
> I know a similar subject was on this list just a couple of weeks ago but I was
> wondering about the history of liqueurs.
>
> I'm thinking of making up some rose and lilac liqueurs for gifts and as an A&S
> entry. I don't think they are period but I was wondering if there were similar
> things and if anyone knows when liqueurs began.
>
> Gunthar
M'Lord Gunthar,
The history of liqueurs goes back to around the 12th C., beginning
with the discovery that distillation could separate two liquids. Wine was
distilled to produce "aqua vitae", meaning water of life. This in turn began
to be used to produce medicinal liqueurs, some of which are mentioned in Sir
Hugh Plat's Secrets in Distillation, and others in Sir Kenelme Digbie's book
on Chirurgerie. Chartreuse Liqueur is probably the best known of those with
their roots in period. As far as the flowers go, I have many instances of
distilling "flower waters" for use in flavoring, cosmetics, and for washing
hands at table, but so far none for drinkables, although some of the
medicinal recipes do *include* various flowers.
Ceridwen
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 09:28:30 +0000
From: "James Pratt" <cathal at mindspring.com>
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: fortified wine?
> << Not being much of a drinker I don't know much about the
> "periodness" of the whiskeys Scotch or other wise. Could some one help
> me?
> Lady Katherine Malveren McGuire
Popular tradition accords the introduction of distillation into
Ireland at the hands of St. Patrick. A common Gaelic usage was
"Uisgebeatha" (water of Life) which eventually became our word
"whiskey".
The earliest surviving legal reference to the matter can be found in
the Exchequer Rolls of James IV of Scotland (1473-1513) which note
that the King had his aqua vitae distilled from barley by a friar
(_The Scots Cellar_ by F. Marian MacNeill, Edinburgh, MacDonald
Printers, 1956).
Henry VIII was the first monarch to officially require that the
product come only from licensed distilleries. However it was not
until 1661 that the first direct tax (4d. a gallon) was imposed.
(_An Encyclopedia of Drinks & Drinking_, by Frederick Martin,
Toronto, Coles Press, 1980)
Cathal Mac Edan na faeled,
Barony of the South Downs, Meridies
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 15:06:20 -0600
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - Brandy
>Philippa said:
>>Please remember that Brandy, of a sort, and thus
>>distilling has been around since Roman times.
>
>I thought Brandy was not known until the 13th century or
>later. What makes you think it was known in Roman times?
>
>What is Brandy distilled from? Is there a drink distilled
>from mead?
>
>Stefan li Rous
Brandy is distilled from wine, any wine. What we normally call brandy
is distilled from grape wine. Other fruit brandies are distilled from
fruit wine or fermented juices, peach brandy, black berry brandy,
kirchwasser, etc.
Distillation has long been used to seperate liquids and a simple
distillation will produce about a 40 proof alcohol. The distillation
process was improved around 800 C.E. by Jabir ibn Hayyan.
The first modern brandy was distilled in approximately 1300 C.E. at the
Montpellier medical school by Arnaldus de Villa Nova, a French medical