SC - Foods that I won't eat

[david friedman]

At 11:11 AM +1000 6/29/97, KandL Johnston wrote:

>For me and old favorite is Mulled wine, which until a few years ago was
>a great favorite. That was until I found I was deathly allergic to Honey
>and in Medieval cooking That is a real bummer.
>--Nicolette--

I would have said that a majority of the surviving medieval recipes which
call for sweetener call for sugar rather than honey.  In particular, our
favorite mulled wine (hippocras) recipe uses sugar.

Hippocras (Menagier de Paris, late 14th c.)

To make powdered hippocras, take a quarter of very fine cinnamon selected
by tasting it, and half a quarter of fine flour of cinnamon, an ounce of
selected string ginger, fine and white, and an ounce of grain of Paradise,
a sixth of nutmegs and galingale together, and bray them all together. And
when you would make your hippocras, take a good half ounce of this powder
and two quarters of sugar and mix them with a quart of wine, by Paris
measure. And note that the powder and the sugar mixed together is the
Duke's powder. (end of original)

4 oz stick cinnamon
2 oz powdered cinnamon
1 oz of ginger
1 oz of grains of paradise
"A sixth" (probably of a pound:  2 2/3 oz) of nutmegs and galingale together

Grind them all together. To make hippocras add 1/2 ounce of the powder and
1/2 lb (1 cup) of sugar to 2 quarts of boiling wine (the quart used to
measure wine in Paris c. 1393 was about 2 modern U.S. quarts, the pound and
ounce about the same as ours). Strain through a sleeve of Hippocrates (a
tube of cloth, closed at one end).

Elizabeth/Betty Cook