[Sca-cooks] cherry wine/cider

[johnna holloway]

Yes, MW's Booke seems to predate Digby. Having actually
sat down and read the one English biography of Digby
 published in 1956,
I have seen very little evidence that Digby really started
 his collection of recipes prior to Venetia's death in 1633.
 They were ordered into the published format by George Hartmann
 from Digby's rough notes made  after his death in 1665.
Karen Hess dates the
MWBofC to being copied in the 1650's( or even earlier)
from an earlier manuscript. See my post of earlier this
evening to Volker's query regarding this dating.
 No one that I have read in the past
20 years has challenged Hess on her dating of the MWB. It
can be described as Tudor-Jacobean, as many individual recipes
have counterparts in both Tudor (Elizabeth 1 was a Tudor)
and Jacobean cookery books. Compare for example Doctor Steephen's
Cordial Water which dates back to Cogan's work of 1584. Other
individual recipes also date back to or are similar to Plat,
Dawson, etc.

As to other cherry wine recipes, I'll post findings here later.
I'll have to pull other volumes off the shelf and do some digging.

Johnna Holloway

Stefan li Rous wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> 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
> **** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****
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