[Sca-cooks] Drachma Weight

[James Prescott]

At 12:08 -0800 2004-03-07, lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:
> Le Menagier's recipe for Pouldre Fine in Scully and Scully in "Early French Cookery" calls for 1 ounce and 1 drachma of ginger. However, the authors appear not to address the drachma weight (at least i can't find an explanation).
> 
> Checking The Florilegium
> http://www.florilegium.org/files/COMMERCE/measures-art.html
> I found:
> Dram - A weight, orig. the ancient Greek drachma; hence, in Apothecaries' weight, a weight of 60 grains = 1/8 of an ounce; in Avoirdupois weight, of 27.13 grains = 1/16 of an ounce; = drachm
> 
> What i want to verify is WHICH is being used in Le Menagier, Apothecaries' weight or Avoirdupois (since one weighs about twice the other).


Not clear.  None of the sources I've checked so far is clear.
More later if I unearth any additional information.


The cook would probably weigh other things in avoirdupois, but 
perhaps purchase spices in apothecary.  Which does the recipe 
mean?  Or did they have two sets of scales in the kitchen?


In Menagier's Fine Powder recipe we have "half a quarter of an
ounce".  That is, an eighth of an ounce.  If they were using 
apothecary weight, that would be exactly a drachm.  So why 
wouldn't they choose to call it a drachm, given that elsewhere 
in the same recipe it appears that drachms are mentioned?


On the other hand, the ms seems to use the character sometimes
called the 'yogh' (the one that can look misleadingly like a 3), 
which is the apothecary symbol for a drachm.  Does that mean that 
if they are using the symbol then they are also using the apothecary 
definition for the drachm?

On the same other hand, if the ginger is one ounce and one drachm,
why bother with the extra little bit if the drachm is only one 
sixteenth of an ounce, a 6% difference?  The 12% difference
represented by the apothecary dram would be larger, enough to 
be tasted.


Note that the modern Troy drachm is about 3.888 grams.

The Paris avoirdupois drachm of the time of Menagier was about
1.912 grams (not the modern 1.772 grams).


Thorvald