SC - period mead recipes--Le Menagier's Bouchet
david friedman
ddfr at best.com
Fri Mar 3 09:26:37 PST 2000
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/
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