[Sca-cooks] Re: dissolved pearls

[Christina Nevin]

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Stefan wrote:
>Ester gave some good ideas for Roman or psuedo-Roman feasts and among this
said:
> Come up with a dessert -- or even a soup -- based on the grand old cracker
> of Cleopatra dissolving a pearl in wine -- a "soup" in which "pearls"
> of  sour cream/cream cheese, that sort of thing "dissolve".
Pardon me if I misunderstood you, but it sounds like you don't believe they
dissolved pearls in Roman times. But I imagine they did, at least for the
most prosperous. They did it in the Middle Ages, and I suspect they were
doing it from medical tradition handed down from Classical times. For more
information on this, check this file in the ACCESSORIES section of the
Florilegium: pearls-msg (22K) 7/19/99 Period pearls. Use in jewelry and
elsewhere. I suspect though that dissolving pearls in the populace's drinks
might be a bit expensive. Perhaps you could do it for the head table. The
rest of us peons could get say Tums in ours. :-)



Saluti!

[doffs cook's hat, dons jeweller's hat] Sorry to disillusion you but this is
indeed a myth. Pearls are made of calcium carbonate. Their structure is
actually like that of an onion - around the central object which forms the
nucleus of the pearl (usually loose food) are translucent to transparent
layers of aragonite (a form of calcium carbonate), which are in the form of
nacreous crystals. These are separated by layers of conchiolin, which is
basically protein. The vinegar/acid actually required to 'instantly'
dissolve a pearl would also dissolve your internal organs, and anything weak
(and palatable!) enough for you to drink would take some length of time to
dissolve a pearl - say years. The Cleopatra story, entertaining though it is
(it comes direct from Pliny's 'Natural History' Book 37, where he claimed
the pearl Cleopatra dropped into her drink and supposedly 'dissolved' was
worth 10 million sesterces - a large fortune in those days), probably has
some basis in truth, but undoubtedly she dropped the pearl in her wine,
drank it, then had it retrieved the usual way the next time she used the
facilities! Powdering pearls and drinking them as medicine is certainly an
ancient practice, one which continues in the East to this day, but
dissolving them in wine/vinegar and drinking the dissolved-pearl liquid is a
physical impossibility.

ciao
Lucrezia


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