[Sca-cooks] cherry wine/cider

[Stefan li Rous]

Johnnae llyn Lewis said:
> The Tudor-Jacobean "A Booke of Sweetmeats" which is included
> as part of Martha Washington's Booke of Cookerie has a recipe
> for "To Make Cherry Wine" on pages 378-379. That would date
> cherry wine prior to Digby.
>
> grizly at mindspring.com wrote:
> > precisely.  Could be two months old, could be 400 years old.  Cannot assume either way.
> > niccolo
> > sca-cooks at ansteorra.org wrote:
> > > Digby (1669) has a couple of cherry wine recipes.  I can post theCountess of Newport's Cherry wine in about 8hrs time (when I get home
> > from work).  It was fermented cherry juice with a sugar cube dropped
> > into each bottle and the corks wired down.
> > Drakey...who brews better than he cooks...
> > ps.  Before anyone mentions it...  Yes I know Digby is post-period but
> > the recipes were printed in 1669 after his death and who knows how old
> > some of the recipes he collected are...

Okay, what time period are you defining by "Tudor-Jacobean"? And how
does this indicate that the cherry wine recipe in Martha Washington's
book predates Digby's?

Both of the these books were written/added to over a long time period.
Is there something in the two recipes that indicates one was written
before the other?

All in all though, it looks like cherry wine was not that common
in period. Any ideas why? Were the cherries not sweet enough? There
was some mention here of sugar having to be added, which would definitely
be a late or post period thing. Were cherries not common enough that
there would be enough juice for this? Or maybe simply a matter of taste?
Although fermented cherry juice has got to be better than fermented
mare's milk. :-)

--
THLord  Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas         stefan at texas.net
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