[Sca-cooks] honey butter/OT question

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

>
> > Just a quibble on the honey-butter statement.  Although she does
> > state that:
> > "Honey-butter was a popular spread throughout the Middle Ages.  It
> > is
> > recommended boiled with sweet-flag as a cure for a cough."
>
>    Dad was a Pennsylvania Dutchman.  When he had a cough, his favourite
> cure (from his mom) was melted butter with brown sugar.  This in no way
> resembled honey-butter as used at events.  Mom (English/Scots descent)
> made it for him under severe protest.  I wouldn't want to use what she
> made for him either on bread or as a cough syrup, but it soothed his
> cough to some extent--or maybe he just thought it did.
>
>    But more importantly, I do not see the above statement as
> justification for serving it with bread at a feast.  I realize that books
> on right living through diet were popular throughout the SCA period, the
> sentence describing the mixture makes it sound as if it had a specific
> state in which it was used (boiled) and a specific purpose it served
> (cure coughing).

>
>     Elizabeth


It's not the part about the cough that's the problem, it's the word
"spread". IIRC, the discussion of it being used medicinally talks about
letting the afflicted person lick it a little. This does not to me sound
like it's been spread on anything.

Margaret