[Sca-cooks] Drachma Weight

[James Prescott]

At 08:17 -0800 2004-03-08, Susan Fox-Davis wrote:
>>
>>>>Remember that most spices in period were sold through apothecaries or
>>>>spicers and that the spices were sold in apothecary measures.
>>>>
>>>Correct.  But did the cooks measure them that way once they had
>>>them in the kitchen?
>>>
> Maybe.  Even a "pinch of this and dash of that" style cooks might want to verify that they had equal weight amounts of different spices in a mixture.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough.  My question should have read "did the
cooks measure them in the kitchen using Troy (Apothecary) weights; or 
did the cooks measure them in the kitchen using Avoirdupois weights 
(or other non-Troy local weights such as the pound Parisis)?"

Cooks bought some things (meat, fish) by Avoirdupois (or by local 
weight).  Cooks bought the spices and related items including sugar 
by Troy (Apothecary).  Did they have two sets of weights in the 
kitchen?  Were they comfortable with weighing, say, one pound eight 
ounces of meat Avoirdupois (or by local weight), and adding three 
drachms of spice powder Troy?

We today buy flour by weight Avoirdupois, and (in most North American 
cookbooks) measure it for our recipes by US volume.  That's a 
disconnect that doesn't usually bother us.

For things like butter, we can't make up our minds today.  One recipe 
will call for butter by weight, and the next for butter by US volume.

Is there any archaeological or documentary evidence to prove what
a cook did in any particular time and place in the middle ages?

   Interesting aside:  Even until quite late English bread was sold by 
   Troy weight.


Viandier *does* specify in some recipes that he is using the Paris 
volume measure.  Menagier *does* give two versions of a recipe for
Hippocras, one for Paris volume measure, and one for the local volume 
measure for Béziers, Carcassonne, and Montpellier (presumably the
three were close enough that the same recipe would work for any of
them).  So clearly they were aware of the issue for different
volumes.  Was there an issue for weights?  Or was it too obvious
to require writing about?


The Hippocras recipes in Menagier give us one more data point.

The second Hippocras recipe implies that there may have been two
sets of weights in the kitchen, for it says (Power translation) 
"with it put a pound and half a quarter (by the heavy weight) of 
lump sugar".

Does this mean that he is using Paris or Avoirdupois for the
lump sugar?  The Paris and Avoirdupois pounds weigh more than
the Troy pound, and either might be the "heavy weight".  On the 
other hand, the Troy ounce is the heaviest of the three.

If the lump sugar were exceptionally weighed using "heavy weight",
this suggests that by contrast that all of the other spices were 
being weighed using the "light weight".  If the comparative weight 
of the pound is what mattered, this would strongly suggest that the 
spices were being weighed, even in the kitchen, using Troy (Apothecary) 
weight.  So the lump sugar may have been purchased using Troy and
weighed in the kitchen for this recipe using either Avoirdupois or 
Paris weight.


Thorvald