[Sca-cooks] 15th century meads, pomys and pomace -- Oh, my!

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Hullo, the list!

'Ere's wot I'm on about...

>From Royal 17. A. iii, f.123v & f.124, as it appears in "Curye On Inglysch":

" 9. To make mede. Take hony combis & put hem into a greet vessel & ley
(th)ereynne grete stickis, & ley (th)e wei(gh)t (th)eron til it be runne
out as myche as it wole; & (th)is is callid liif hony. & (th)anne take
(th)at forseid combis & se(th)e hem in clene water, & boile hem wel.
After presse out (th)erof as myche as (th)ou may & caste it into
ano(th)er vessel into hoot water, & se(th)e it wel & scome it wel, & do
(th)erto a quarte of liife hony. & (th)anne lete it stonde a fewe dayes
wel stoppid, & (th)is is good drinke.

10. To make fyn meade & poynaunt. Take xx galouns of (th)e forseid pomys
soden in iii galouns of fyn wort, & i galoun of liif hony & se(th)e hem
wel & scome hem wel til (th)ei be cleer inow(gh); & put (th)erto iii
penywor(th) of poudir od pepir & i penywor(th) of poudir of clowis &
lete it boile wel togydere. & whanne it is coold put it into (th)e
vessel into (th)e tunnynge up of (th)e forseid mede; put it (th)erto, &
close it wel as it is aboue seid."

		-- Curye On Inglysche, Hieatt & Butler, eds., © The Early English Text
Society, pub. 1985 Oxford University Press, London, New York, Toronto

Various brewers of my acquaintance have tried working with these
recipes, and the conversation generally runs something like this:

	Pat: "Okay, I have my 20 gallons of apples and my 3 gallons of wort,
now what?"
	Mike, a.k.a. myself: "What apples are those?"
	Pat: "The apples the recipe refers to. The 'aforeseid pomys'. Pomys are
apples, right?"
	Mike: "Could be. But since there are no apples referred to in the
previous recipe, nor in any of the previous recipes in the manuscript, I
think it must refer to the boiled honeycombs, which are, in the
aforeseid recipe, pressed for their honey just as apples are pressed for
their juice, olives for their oil, and so on. And those pressed things
are called _pomace_.
	Pat: "But using _pomace_ to describe those things is modern!"
	Mike: "Izzat so? Pomacium is Latin, and refers to pressed apples,
cider, and by extension, anything pressed for juice, oil, or other
liquid. What modern, Latin-speaking culture do you think is responsible
for that?"
	Pat: "Yeah, but the OED sez the first known usage of 'pomace' in
English is in 16mumbledy-something, _THERE_fore your claim that "pomys"
equates to the modern usage of 'pomace' is impossible.
	Mike: "Do you understand how the OED works? A bunch of volunteer
researchers were given manuscripts and early published works to read and
scan them for what they considered 'standard' usage and definition, and
provided citations for what they considered the earliest _known_ usage
of a given term in a given way."
	Pat: "Nope. I don't buy it. The OED wouldn't publish information unless
they were sure it was accurate."

Etc., etc., etc.

By the way, I have considered the possibility of something so simple as
a scribal error in which "combis" gets written as "pomys", or even one
of those Grewe-type transposition-and-omission-errors, and while the
former seems unlikely, and the latter is possible, neither seems as
simple or as likely in the Occam's Razor scheme of things as a hitherto
"unknown" usage of "pomace" in a ME spelling variation.

Adamantius, with the Bembridge scholars breathing down his neck
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98