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

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Adamantius wrote:
>This seems to me to be supported by the translated text
>reading "to make six sixths of"...well, duh, why not simply say, "to
>make one", if a sixth is what you're making six of, um, uh, well, you
>know what I mean.


Yes, but isn´t it possible that there was a certain size of cask, one-sixth
of a barrel, that was called a sixth? I seem to remember this was the case
here in Iceland - I know for sure there was a small cask called an eight,
which was 1/8 of a barrel, and a larger one, 1/4 of a barrel, called a
quart? This might explain why it says six sixths instead of one - perhaps it
was for some reason more desirable to have six 10-liter casks instead of one
60-liter barrel (or whatever size the barrel was in Paris at that time; here
it was around 62 liters).

>Anyway, I've seen "sester" defined as being either roughly one modern
>American gallon or two, depending on where and when in medieval Europe
>you are.

I can´t remeber exactly how many liters are in a gallon but pretty close to
five, I think. Which means a cask that is one sixth of a barrel is roughly
two gallons.

Anyway, here is one of the mead recipes from the Danish 1616 cookbook I
posted last year:

Another method

For each part good, clear honey, take eight parts fresh spring water.  Pour
this into a large cauldron and simmer together on a slow fire, and  take
care the fire doesn´t smoke, and skim it carefully and often, as  long as
you see any scum rise to the surface. Do this until the water is  beginning
to be beautifully clear and clean. The longer you want to  keep this mead,
the longer you should boil it. When it cools off, then  pour it into a
barrel, but do not fill it to more than three fingerbreadths  below the
brim, so there is room for the fermentation.

If you want your mead to smell and taste strong and lively, then place  the
following spices, well crushed, in a sack and hang it in the barrel.  For
one barrel of mead, take:

Pepper, 6 lod*
Ginger, 8 lod
Grains of paradise, 2 lod
Cloves, 3 lod
Galingale, 3 lod
Cinnamon bark, 10 lod

If you want less spices, then take for each barrel:

Cinnamon bark, 4 lod
Ginger, 2 lod
Galingale, 1 lod
Cloves, 1 lod
Grains of paradise, 1 lod

When it is well fermented (Some fry an apple** and smear it with yeast  and
cast it into the barrel),  then let it stand tightly closed for 3 months,
before it is drunk.

In certain places in Livonia it is customary to bury the barrel deep into
the ground and cover it with earth and let it lie for a long time. This mead
becomes so strong and potent that it far surpasses wine, when you want to
make sombody drunk.

* A lod is 16 grams
** The term used is "krigsæble", literally "war apple"; I´m not sure what is
meant here. Wasn´t toasted bread sometimes used?

Nanna