[Sca-cooks] Sekanjabin Origins

[Sue Clemenger]

There's a whole darned chapter of the Anon. Andalusian with some very 
odd flavorings for sekanjabin or oxymel (like carrot), so it's not 
really an SCAism, although specific occurences might be.
I can't, personally, imagine wanting to put any of the varieties in milk 
<<huge shudder>>, or use as a dip--wrong flavors!
--maire, who's sometimes thought of doing a whole bunch of different 
flavors for an A&S entry....

lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:

> 
> Part Two
> 
> Someone answered the above message by saying:
> 
>>  A slight correction - Sekanjabin does not mean Mint.  It means a
>>  sugar/vinegar syrup. It may be flavored with mint, or cardamom, or 
>> ginger,
>>  or strawberry, or anything else.  It is sometimes mixed with water to 
>> drink,
>>  sometimes milk, and sometimes left alone as a salad dip/dressing.
>>  I got my recipes from doing a search on the word sekanjabin on Google.
>>  After seeing that all the recipes were variations fo the same 
>> technique, I
>>  branched out on my own.  I have no idea where you'd get a copy of an
>>  original recipe.  Ask Cariadoc is all I can think of.
> 
> 
> To the best of my knowledge, the basic sweet (originally honey) and 
> vinegar mixture used diluted with water as a beverage is called oxymel 
> (from the Greek for vinegar and honey) and was known to the ancient 
> Greeks and Romans (who also called it oxymel since they used a lot of 
> Greek food terms).
> 
>  From what i can tell, many, if not most, of other flavored recipes are 
> SCAisms. While sekanjabin is a kind of oxymel, not all oxymels are 
> sekanjabin.
> 
> And, uh, i've never heard of mixing an oxymel with milk - i'd think that 
> would curdle the milk. Or am i wrong?