SC - documenting cordials

[Cindy Renfrow]

<snip>>
>	I will be teaching a local-level A&S class on making cordials in
>the near future; and I need to know a good place to start looking for
>documentation.  A book title or two would suffice; though I see no need to
>reinvent the wheel, I wouldn't ask y'all to do it for me either...
>
><snip>
>			- kat
>
Hello!  I have a chapter on documented cordials and other distilled
beverages in my book "A Sip Through Time".  Two good late-period sources I
found are:

Hess, Karen, ed.  Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, and Booke of
Sweetmeats:  being a Family Manuscript, curiously copied by an unknown Hand
sometime in the seventeenth century, which was in her Keeping from 1749,
the time of her Marriage to Daniel Custis, to 1799, at which time she gave
it to Eleanor Parke Custis, her grandaughter, on the occasion of her
Marriage to Lawrence Lewis.  Columbia Univ. Press.  New York, 1981.  The
recipes contained in the MS. are dated 1550 to 1625 by the editor.  The MS.
contains many recipes for wines, mead, cordials, etc.

and

Plat, Sir Hugh.  Delightes for Ladies, To adorne their Per=86ons, Tables,
Clo=86ets, and Di=86tillatories:  with Beavties, Banqvets, Perfumes & Waters=
=2E
Printed by Humfrey Lownes.  London, 1609.

There is also a mention in Gerard's Herball (Gerard, John.  The Herball or
Generall Historie of Plants.  London, 1597.  Rpt. Walter J. Johnson, Inc.
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Ltd.  Keizersgracht 526, Amsterdam, 1974.), p. 734:

"There is drawne out of Wine a liquor, which the Latines commonly call Aqua
vitae, or water of life, and al=86o Aqua ardens, or burning water, which as
di=86tilled waters are drawne out of herbes and other things, is after the
=86ame manner di=86tilled out of =86trong wine, that is to =86ay, by certain=
e
in=86truments
made for this purpo=86e, which are commonly called Lembickes."

Hope this helps!

 Sincgiefu
(Cindy Renfrow)
 renfrow at skylands.net
 http://www.alcasoft.com/renfrow/