SC - period mead recipes--Le Menagier's Bouchet

[david friedman]

I think this is it.

BOUCHET. To make six sixths of bouchet, take six pints of fine sweet 
honey, and put it in a cauldron on the fire and boil it, and stir 
continually until it starts to grow, and you see that it is producing 
bubbles like small globules which burst, and as they burst emit a 
little smoke which is sort of dark: and then stir, and then add seven 
sixths of water and boil until it reduces to six sixths again, and 
keep stirring. And then put it in a tub to cool until it is just 
warm; and then strain it through a cloth bag, and then put it in a 
cask and add one chopine (half-litre) of beer-yeast, for it is this 
which makes it the most piquant, (and if you use bread yeast, however 
much you like the taste, the colour will be insipid), and cover it 
well and warmly to work.  And if you want to make it very good, add 
an ounce of ginger, long pepper, grains of Paradise and cloves in 
equal amounts, except for the cloves of which there should be less, 
and put them in a cloth bag and throw in.  And after two or three 
days, if the bouchet smells spicy enough and is strong enough, take 
out the spice-bag and squeeze it and put it in the next barrel you 
make. And thus you will be able to use these same spices three or 
four times.

Item. ANOTHER BOUCHET KEPT FOUR YEARS, and perhaps you could make a 
whole batch more or less at one time if you wished. Combine three 
parts water and one part honey, boil and skim until it reduces to a 
tenth, and then throw in a vessel: then refill your pot and do the 
same again, until you have enough; then let it cool and complete your 
batch: your bouchet will emit something like must which works. If you 
can, keep it continually full so that it can emit, and after six 
weeks or a month you must draw off the bouchet as far as the lees and 
put it in a copper tub or other container, then stave in the vessel 
where it stands, remove the lees, scald, wash, replace the staves, 
and fill it with what you have left, and keep; and do not warm it up 
if it broached. And then have four and a half ounces of finely 
powdered cinnamon and an ounce and a half of cloves and one of grains 
beaten and placed in a cloth bag and hung by a cord from the stopper.

Note that the scum which is removed, for each pot of it take twelve 
pots of water, and boil together, and this will make a nice bouchet 
for the servants. Item, any skimming from honey can be used in the 
same proportions.

I don't think it corresponds very closely to Digby's weak honey 
drink, although since I don't know what a "sixth" is (sixth of a 
gallon?) I can't figure out the proportions. But it looks as though 
the spices are in a cloth bag that hangs in it while it is 
fermenting, not while it is boiling. The second version is clearly 
intended to be left a long time. The first version I can't tell--are 
you drinking it after you take the spice bag out (two or three days) 
or leaving it in the barrel for an unstated length of time thereafter.

Suppose a sixth is a sixth of a gallon, a quart a quarter gallon, and 
a pint half a quart (anyone with information on measures of volume in 
Paris in the 1390's is invited to contribute them--I know their quart 
was almost twice ours, but not what the rest of the units were). Then 
we have:

To make a gallon of bouchet, use 3/4 gallon of honey, boil the honey, 
add 7/6 gallon of water, and boil until "it" (the combined liquid?) 
reduces to a gallon again. Doesn't sound possible--way too much honey.

Digby is using nine pints of water and one pint of honey, and boiling 
away about a third of it.

So if my interpretation is right, Digby starts with one part of honey 
to nine of water, Le Menagier with one part of honey to 14/9 of a 
part of water, making the latter almost six times as concentrated as 
the former! Even allowing for the fact that Digby's drink is very low 
alcohol, it can't be right. Either a "sixth" is more than a sixth of 
a gallon or a pint is much less than an eighth of a gallon; my guess 
is the latter.

The second version is clear enough on the proportions, although I 
don't know what "reduces to a tenth" means--maybe "by a tenth?"  On 
that interpretation it's a little more than twice as concentrated as 
Digby's, which isn't unreasonable for something you are going to keep 
a long time.
David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/