[Sca-cooks] Cypres?

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

  Jadwiga Zajaczkowa   jenne at fiedlerfamily.net wrote:
>A while back we were talking of Chypre and Cypres and so forth, and I just
>noticed this recipe in Karen Larsdatter's translation of Manual de
>Mujeres:
>
>"Powders of Cyprus
>Take an oak leaf and dry it, and make it into powder and knead it with
>musk-scented water. And stick this dough inside a box and perfume it with
>pellets two or three times every day until it is soaked. And after the
>soaking, again grind it and make a dough with the same water, and perfume
>it in the same manner. And do this as many times until it has taken the
>powders of the odor of the perfume. And then grind it and, very finely
>ground, bring it together with musk and amber at your will. And thus will
>be made the powders. You are warned that when you perfume the dough you
>should cover the box very well with a cloth, so that no smoke escapes. "
>
>"Fine scented powder of Cyprus
>An ounce and a half of the flower of small holm oak of the northern part,
>that has been dried in the shade, and ground and passed through a sieve.
>One ounce of the powders of cardinal iris that were taken in May. Knead
>these powders with orange blossom water and rose water, and then put this
>dough in a large bowl and perfume it with benzoin until it is dry. And
>when it is dry, pulverize it again. And add musk and storax, also
>pulverized, and a little civet mixed with rose water, and let them dry.
>And then again pulverize it and keep it in a glass flask. "

Hmmm, modern Chypre is made with *oak moss*, not oak leaves. Perhaps
this is what was meant in the first recipe - and maybe even in the
second - since i don't know what oak moss grows on...

Anahita