ANST - Traveling INN

[Mark.S Harris]

Dennis and/or Dory Grace wrote:

> As for the coffee, no coffee was not available in medieval Europe.  It
> *was* available in Saracen lands, however, after the 8th century.  So if
> you're in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the time of the crusades or in
> Egypt or Morocco in the 14th century, coffee is readily available.  In
> fact, for those gentles stuck in said foreign lands, coffee is about *all*
> that's available.  The Islamic traders won't carry wine because Mahomet
> told them wine is bad.

This is correct, although I believe you are a bit early on the 8th century date.
This has been an ongoing debate on the SCA-Cooks list. For those interested,
there is some more information on medieval coffee in this file in the BEVERAGES
section of my Florilegium:

coffee-msg        (63K)  2/18/98    Coffee and coffee-type drinks.

Perhaps because of this alcohol restriction, the Arab world had a large
number of fruit and mint syrup based drinks. At least one of these, popularized
by Duke Cariadoc, Serkanjabaun, has become quite popular throughout the
Known World. You can find a number of recipes for such drinks in this file:

beverages-NA-msg  (72K)  8/ 4/97    Non-alcoholic beverages.

> Cheesecake and chocolate aer, sadly, right out.  Fresh fruit is always
> good, though.

This really depends upon your definition of "cheesecake". There were a
number of cheesecake-like desserts. See this file in the FOOD section:

cheesecake-msg    (17K) 10/27/97    Medieval cheesecake. Recipes.

Chocolate, at least as we generally think of it, is sadly post period.
For more info on this take a look at:

chocolate-msg     (32K)  7/15/97    History and description of early chocolate.

> Sir Lyonel Oliver Grace

Lord Stefan li Rous
stefan at texas.net
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