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

[Philip Troy]

On Thursday 25 October 2001 10:05, david friedman wrote:
> 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?
> -----
> 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.

<snip>

> 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.


Consider also the culture-specific tradition of using water-diluted syrups as
beverages, and, possibly (given the source) straight up as a pharmaceutical,
_and_ since the source makes no mention of fermentation, specifically
instructs the practitioner to do things that would either prevent
fermentation or cause disaster if fermentation occurred, yes, I'd be inclined
to agree.

Adamantius