[Sca-cooks] green ginger upon sirop

[Katherine Rowberd (Kirrily Robert)]

Here's a recipe I've been wanting to try for a bit.  It's from Plat's
"Delightes for Ladies" (1609):

48. To make green ginger upon sirup.

Take Ginger one pound: pare it clean: steep it in red wine and vinegar
equally mixed: let it stand for XII daies in a close vessell, and every
day once or twice stir it up and down: then take of wine one gallon, and
of vinegar a pottle: seethe all together to the consumption of a moity or
half: then take a pottle of clean clarified honey, or more, and put
thereunto, and let them boyle well together: then take halfe an ounce
of saffron finely beaten, and put it thereto, with some sugar if you
please.


I'm pondering a few things related to it, though, before I start.

First off, the recipe seems to be giving us two things: a sour ginger
pickle thing, and a sweet/sour syrup.  Presumably they're meant to be
brought together at the end, but how?

Secondly, I'm presuming that the ginger available at this time would
have been dried.  Since whole dried ginger's hard to come by, how could
this recipe be adapted for whole fresh ginger?

So here's what I'm thinking.  My guess is that they would have started
with whole, dry ginger, and that the 12 days' soaking in wine and
vinegar is mostly to soften it up.  Of course it would also impregnate
the ginger with the sour flavour.

So, perhaps I could settle for just soaking fresh ginger overnight in
a similar mixture, which should achieve some of the impregnation of
the sour flavour.  Then I'd strain what's there and bottle it using
the syrup of wine/vinegar/honey/etc, perhaps made a little more tart
than necessary since the ginger won't have picked up as much vinegar
as it might otherwise have done.

Half an ounce of saffron!?!? Yow. I think I might skimp on that a tad.
And as for adding sugar, I'm not clear on why one might want to do that,
unless it's just that dishes of that period all seem to contain sugar
more as a matter of conspicuous consumption than as a necessary
sweetener.  I'm guessing that the honey probably makes it adequately
sweet, but the sugar could be added if you had a really sweet tooth,
which I don't; also, see earlier notes on perhaps wanting extra
tartness.

Anyway, I think this ginger could be a really nice sweet/sour preserve.
Yum.  Just my favourite sort of thing.

K.

--
Lady Katherine Rowberd (mka Kirrily "Skud" Robert)
katherine at infotrope.net  http://infotrope.net/sca/
Caldrithig, Skraeling Althing, Ealdormere
"The rose is red, the leaves are grene, God save Elizabeth our Queene"