[Sca-cooks] Re: dissolved pearls

[ED Reese]

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I've heard it yes, I've heard it no, I've heard it takes coke! :-))

Thanks for clearing it up. :-)

Esther

PS Of course, she could have had the pearl powdered, then "reconstituted"
into a pearl, and dissolved that! She had her divinity on the line with the
acid thing. ;-) I'm sure there would be some fairly white or clear sticky
substance that could have been rolled into a "pearl" and then "dissolved".
I have absolutely NO proof, documentation, etc., but it's kind of neat to
contemplate. Sort of like oyster shooters today.

At 12:22 PM 5/19/2003 +0100, you wrote:

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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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