SC - Grapes VERY LONG for the gentle who missed the thread

[Philip & Susan Troy]

ChannonM at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Anthimus actually says in the very last line of his letter to Theuduric in
> the 6th C;
> uua passa similiter ipso genere de uuis dulcibus et albis. unfacium de uua
> cruda fit.
> 
> translated by Mark Grant in his edition of the text as;
> Raisins from sweet white grapes have similar properties. Must is made from
> unripe grapes.
> 
> I have also read a second source of English translation, written by a woman
> (can't remember her name at the moment). In it she interprets "cruda" as raw.
> I went to 3 online dictionaries and found that crudus can mean bleeding/ raw/
> uncooked/ unripe/ green/ fresh/ immature/ untimely/ undigested/ harsh. In the
> context of the sentence, raw, just doesn't seem to fit.

IIRC, in Cato's De Agricultura, _some_ wines were made from partially
dried grapes (not to mention a variety of other simply astonishing
techniques, like adding seawater). I'm inclined to favor the idea that
the statement should read, must is made from raw grapes. Bear in mind
that the primary use for must is to make wine (and therefore would have
plenty of fermentable sugars), although it does have other uses, as you
see. It does seem to be fairly frequently used as a sweetener, though,
and I doubt very much that must, a fairly heavy, unfiltered grape
juice/mash is used as verjuice was used later. The Romans certainly used
plenty of vinegar when they needed something sour.

In Roman recipes that we know are supposed to be sour, such as pickles,
they do tend to use vinegar, I'd say, although I wouldn't rule out
lactic fermentation.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
============================================================================

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".

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