[Sca-cooks] "An Arab Mead" !!!

[david friedman]

The latest T.I. has an article describing a recipe from an Arabic
medicinal formulary which the author thinks is a mead or, more
precisely, pyment. I have sent off the following letter to T.I..
Comments?
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The article "An Arab Mead" in T.I. 140 describes its recipe as
"clearly a variety of mead (or, more properly, a sort of sack
pyment)." I would have said that, on the evidence provided, it is
clearly nothing of the sort. Consider:

1. The recipe specifies boiling the liquid until it is reduced by
half. That is a very long boil, and one could not reasonably expect
any yeast in the original grape pulp to survive it. Nothing is said
about adding any additional source of yeast after the liquid has
cooled.

2. The liquid contains grape juice at about twice its natural
concentration, plus about three pounds  of honey per gallon. The
combination comes to roughly three times the sugar concentration
normally used to make wine or mead.

3. The recipe says to put the liquid into flasks and stopper them.
There is no intermediate fermentation and nothing is said about
leaving the stoppers loose. Failing to do so, as the author of the
article points out, leads to problems.

Each of those points by itself is evidence that what is being
described is not a fermented drink. Combining them and  adding the
religious prohibition against drinking fermented gape juice makes the
article's interpretation highly implausible.
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Those of you who have not received you T.I. yet will find the article
webbed by the author at:

http://web.raex.com/~obsidian/arabmead.html
--
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/