[Sca-cooks] Re: wine and vinegar

[she not]

  This is not, note, the same as saying it works.  but, keeping in mind that wine in period might
> well be indistinguishable from vinegar, 
Adamantius wrote:
Why do you make this assumption?  If anything, I am inclined to say that wine 'in period' (which spans a very long time) was likely more concentrated than it is today.  I am basing this assumption on the ancient Greek custom of diluting wine with water (certainly something we would balk at today). 
(maybe you, but not me and not the French! it's still a custom, expecially for children)
 Perhaps this custom was a way to stretch the wine, but I think it was likely more to make it less intense.
(Probably both.)

Vinegar is a sour liquid, which cannot really be tolerated in the same quantity as wine.  To
assume that wine and vinegar were 'indistinguishable' is, I think, an error.  If wine did not have
a pleasing flavor to our ancestors, why would they continue to make it?



sorry i've been away for so long, some of those questions have been answered already, but you raised several points and I quess i should explain my comment further

People in period were well acquanted with wine, vinegar and all the stages in between. (ref multitudinous comments and complaints in primary documents about new wine, sour wine, old wine, also ref numerous recipes which make the nastier stuff more palatable) 

I hadn't meant to imply people didn't know the difference, only that often there wasn't much difference.   Wine has a short shelf life, even now- try drinking what you uncorked several weeks ago, or check the current sales on last fall's Beaujolais Nouveau, (price falls in direct ratio to the quality) I don't know what the alchohol content is at this stage-and never managed to choke down enough of it to guess. shelf life was shorter in period, despite attempts to preserve it (at one point, the French? used an arsenic compound called orpiment as a preservative in tuns shipped by sea) It was generally shipped by the (big) cask or (huge)tun, and would turn quickly after it was tapped,  becoming less and less "pleasing", hence the custom of adding water, spices, honey, etc. to correct the problem. 

Not that that was the only reason-water made a precious commodity like wine go further, as well as making the water safe to drink, watered wine is quite tasty, drinking unwatered wine marked a drunkard , and spiced wine is delicious, especially "mulled" with hot water. Also, I believe the greek and roman amphorae tended to lose moisture, so old wine might be a thick syrup that needed dilution- i've run across several references to wine like honey that seemed to refer to texture rather than taste.

As to why they would drink it if it wasn't tasty- several reasons there,too. Food value (they drank beer,too, that needed a piece of burnt bread to give it color and taste, hence drinking a "toast") Any extracted liquid (such as verjuice) or fermented beverage was generally safer than water , given the variety of contaminants that might affect the source.  both were important reasons to use it in cooking too, as was tenderization and flavor. Medicinal properties-pretty well documented what those were thought to be. It's psychoactive and addictive properties-prisoners in Siberia used to drink cologne for its alcohol content, and really, fermented mare's milk? euuw!  Fashion/status-it might be preferable to offer poor wine than good beer. and, since the quality dropped sharply before the next harvest, (note the preference in period for sweet wines), everybody that drank wine regularly would be used to souring wine, yet not wish to continue drinking it once the new wine came in, If and
 when it was replaced with new, The kitchen got to use up any old wine which hadn't been distilled or sold off, which, as i said, might well be indistuinguishable from vinegar. 

 It's hard, in a commercial society, to remember that very few people at any time in period had the option of running out to buy what they wanted to eat or drink- and almost none had the luxury to waste what they had, which was anyway considered both a social and a moral sin.  (I think it was a prince of orange who got whapped upside the head for putting both butter AND cheese on his bread, which waste was NOT the thrift that made his country strong)  But any realistic approach to period cookery has to consider that food came pretty exclusively from hunts, harvests and storerooms , with occasional minor additions from markets, shipments and such. weather, politics, plague, you name it, could disrupt any of these but the storeroom, therefore stored foods-especially imports- were a vital resource at any time-one would certainly not pour out old wine just because the flavor had gone off.  

		
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'