SC - cider apples

[Nick Sasso]

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> 
> Master Adamantius, I would be interested in hearing more about this
> basket of travelling foods you put together. What kinds of foods?
> What methods of preservation did you use? What documentation did you
> use?

Lessee, now. I haven't had my tea yet. It included oatcakes, a cheese,
dry smoked sausage, a pot of pickled compost, and a quince marmalade
"cheese", and I added the blood orange mead and the small ale as
accessories. All of the foods were from more or less period sources,
although different ones were used. Digby and Hugh Plat were among them,
though, so technically some of the foods were post-period. In the case
of the oatcakes, I used a late 17th-century recipe which turned out to
be almost identical to HG Cariadoc's Theoretical Peri-oid Oatcakes. My
documentation ended up as an article for TI, which appeared, IIRC, in
the Spring, 1996 issue, entitled "The Pilgrim's Picnic Basket". You can
find it webbed at:

http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/sca/cooking/ppb.html
 
> Unfortunately, your experience with your small ale is not the exception
> from what I have seen. If often seems that flash takes precedance over
> periodness. The one-of-a-kind gift piece will likely win over the
> reproduction of a piece closely identical to a more crudely crafted
> piece used by the thousands in period. The young, small ale drunk
> by the majority of folks in period will likely lose out to the fine,
> aged wine drunk by an extemely small portion of the populace. We seem
> to strive for the best even if it requires non-period ingredients or
> proportions rather than the most authentic.

To a great extent that's true, but on those occasions when I've seen
people produce brews that were not only rather accurate to period, but
also excellent (the small ale, for instance, was OK, but not excellent,
though the blood orange mead was quite good), they were judged in
competition, essentially, at a disadvantage over modern brews
specifically _because_ they were period. Or, more exactly, because they
were different from Bass or Guinness, both of which are styles more or
less invented in the nineteenth century.

Case in point: a friend of mine redacted and made a batch of the Strong
Ale recipe from Gervase Markham's "The English Housewife".The judges
honestly seemed as if they couldn't have cared less about the one major
departure from the recipe, which was that we used neither a lead
cauldron, nor the pewter plate called for in the mash. My friend had
decided that if the pewter plate was there to add lead to the mash
(which humans detect as sweetness, which in turn is why kids sometimes
eat lead paint), he didn't want to include it, and if it was there as a
reflector to indicate color change, the bottom of the stainless-steel
pot he mashed in would do as well. He did flavor his brew with the
prescribed miniscule handful of hops (maybe an eighth of an ounce) and
several leafy oak branches. As it happens the oak branches probably
supplied tannin, which both flavored the ale, changed its color
somewhat, and probably also provided yeast nutrients. The final product
was rich, full-bodied, incredibly malty (he'd used something like 25
pounds of malt for a three-gallon batch) and ever so slightly hazy,
since the low hop levels precluded, theoretically, long aging, according
to the recipe. Clarity, of course, was never really a judgement
criterion for ales in period, probably because glass drinking vessels
were rare for ale-drinkers anyway. I believe the judges simply weren't
familiar with the style, which I find ironic because I'd have to say the
majority of ordinary and strong period English ales (excluding small
ales) would have resembled this, if the descriptions in period
literature are anything to go by. It was like taking points off a
15th-century brigantine because the plates _aren't_ made of bullet-proof
kevlar.

Adamantius     
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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