SC - Roots and war

[Jennifer L Sweet]

>Looking at the recipe for Sweet Tisane in Le Menagier, I have come across a
>few questions.
>the recipe is:
>
>Sweet Tisane. Take water and boil it, then add for each sixth of a gallon of
>water one good bowl of barley, and it does not (or it does matter?-Trans)if
>it still has its hulls, and get two parisis'worth of licorice, item, or
>figs, and boil it all until the barley bubbles; then let it be strained in
>two or three cloths, and put in each goblet a large amount of rock-sugar.
>This barley is good to feed to poultry to fatten them.
>
>I redact this so far as
>boil 1 cup of  whole barley (with or without hulls) in 1/6th of a gallon of
>water with 3 or 4 licorice sticks or 1 or 2 figs (just a guess) until it
>becomes barley portage. Then strain out the portage part, and drink the
>resulting liquid with a sugar lump in the bottom. (I don't have room in the
>upstairs apt. I live in for the poultry so I'm going to skip that part of
>the recipe :)  )
>
>Now I guessed on the figs and licorice, because I have no idea how much a
>parisis' worth is, much less 2 of them. Can anyone enlighten me on this?
>also, would this had been drunk hot, cold or lukewarm? While it says rock
>sugar, I could see it mean either rock candy, which means it needs to be hot
>to let the candy sweeten the drink, or a sugar cube, which could sweeten a
>lukewarm drink.
>
Looking at what it is, and the fact I have seen similar recipes
somewhere.....I can't remmber where though at the moment.  I would say as
an educated guess it was either served hot or warm.  I'll look around for
those other recipes when I have a chance.  They are in the study....which
should say it all........=(  If I'm not back in a couple of days....send a
search party.

- -A'adeema