Fermented Beverage Recipe Question(was:RE: SC - Michael Scott Shappe <mikey at Hundred-Acre-Wood.com>: Re: [Mid] Society for CREATIVE Anachronism

[Knott Deanna]

Greetings,

Your Grace, you wrote something that sparked a question.

>>>>>Very few, actually. There don't seem to be many surviving period recipes
for fermented drinks, and most people in the SCA who do fermented drinks
are not even using the 17th century recipes, of which there are a lot (in
Digby).

David Friedman


Now my question is, why are there few surviving recipes?  

I have heard that the first *recipe* for bread dates from somewhere in the 14th ot 15th centuries.  This doesn't mean that bread isn't period for earlier times.  I was told that they didn't write a recipe because everyone *knew* how to make bread.  Does this hold true for fermented beverages?  Does the literacy rate amongst the alewives have an effect on this and how most of their knowledge was probably verbal?  Or, is there some other reason (like some crazy people buyrned most of the books with beer recipes in them? hehe)?

Thank you,
Avelina Keyes
Barony of the Bridge
East Kingdom

http://www.geocities.com/athens/academy/9523
============================================================================

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".

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