SC - What are you hiding?

[Seton1355@aol.com]

And it came to pass on 31 Mar 00,, that Philip & Susan Troy wrote:

> Well, here's Le Menagier's recipe, probably the Powers translation,
> courtesy of His Grace Cariadoc:
> 
> > Hippocras 
> > 
> > Goodman p. 299/28 
> > 
> > To make powdered hippocras, take a quarter of very fine cinnamon
> > selected by tasting it, and half a quarter of fine flour of cinnamon, an
> > ounce of selected string ginger, fine and white, and an ounce of grain
> > of Paradise, a sixth of nutmegs and galingale together, and bray them
> > all together. And when you would make your hippocras, take a good half
> > ounce of this powder and two quarters of sugar and mix them with a quart
> > of wine, by Paris measure. And note that the powder and the sugar mixed
> > together is the Duke's powder. 
> 
> Adamantius

Hmmm.... the spice combination (though not the exact proportions) 
looks a lot like the 1525 version of "Duke's powder in another manner".  
Interesting.  I imagine these spice mixtures for wine were a lot like 
Indian garam masala mixtures today -- a basic similarity in contents, 
and a *lot* of variations.

I noticed something else in the above recipe, though.  The "flour of 
cinnamon" made my ears prick up, because I remember something I 
read on Francesco Sirene's web page.  He sells cassia buds, which he 
says are called "flor de canel" in period recipes.  This, he says, is often 
mistranslated "flour of cinnamon" or "flower of cinnamon" (ie., the best).  
The tipoff is if it appears in the same recipe as canel, cinnamon.

Francesco?  Cariadoc?  Someone want to comment on this?


Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
mka Robin Carroll-Mann
harper at idt.net