SC - General rant (started out as coffee/tea...

[kat]

Ron Martino Jr (Yumitori) wrote:

>         I will bow to your research, unless I hear differently from a
> trusthworthy source. It's not a subject I claim any knowledge of. So,
> what beverages besides watered wine were drunk?

I guess I'm not a trustworthy source. <pout>

<Look out! It's monday and Crystal's grumpy.>

Get off your butt and do some research! Or come to one of the many
brewing/beverage classes offered at the West Kingdom's A&S Tourney or
Collegiums. Why on earth after the work and effort of making good period
food do we let people get away with sneaking diet pepsi into their
goblets? There are lots of equally pleasing alternatives and yet, I've
(almost) never been to a feast and been offered a beverage other than
water. Let alone a beverage approriate to the feast.

If I rattle off a list of *everything they drank*, somebody on this list
is going to say "They drank Lemonade?! Cool! I'll serve it at the
Anglo-Norman feast next fall!" Then, when somebody asks why they served
a hiddeous anachronism like lemonade, they will point to this post and
say, "but Crystal said it's Period!" 

But since you asked:
Sticking to the basics of European beverages, the nobility drank (in
order of number of refrences I've found) wine, spiced&sweetened
wines/hippocras, caudles made from wine/ale/broth/water, ale, beer,
braggot, small beer, mead (sometimes medicinal), cider (sometimes
medicinal), perry, some limited fruit juices including grape, apple and
peach, and sheep milk.

Mead, the perfect drink, is much higher on the list in early period.
Lemonade and hot chocolate are *so* late period (1650's) we shouldn't
really use them.

If you want more, e-mail me privatly and I'll send you a server-crashing
huge file of the beverage citations I've found so far.
crystal at pdr-is.com

Sorry for the rant, I'll try to be good now.
Crystal of the Westermark
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================