[Sca-cooks]Wine Lees was: Mainz Ham

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jul 30, 2005, at 3:05 PM, Radei Drchevich wrote:

> Please.  What is wine lees??
>
> joy
>
> radei

The dregs or sediment. Basically, when you ferment the wine, you  
convert  sugar, which is dense, to alcohol, CO2, and various other  
goodies, but since much of the CO2 escapes, you're left with a less  
dense and viscous liquid. It's thinner. So, all sorts of suspended  
proteins and impurities fall out of it like rain, and land on the  
bottom of the container. To clarify it, the best and least intrusive  
way is to let gravity do that work, then rack the wine off of the  
dregs, leaving them, and a little of the liquid part, behind. That  
sludge evidently has some valuable "industrial" uses, like for  
pickling hams, for example.

I vaguely remember some reference to the Romans pickling stuff in  
wine lees.

Adamantius

>
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: "Volker Bach"
>   To: "Cooks within the SCA"
>   Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Mainz Ham
>   Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 18:15:36 +0200
>
>
>>
>> Am Samstag, 30. Juli 2005 17:04 schrieb Sam Wallace:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I am looking for a source or recipe for Mainz ham. All I have so
>>>
>   far is
>
>>> that it is ham that has been soaked in wine lees (or brandy, if I
>>>
>   remember
>
>>> right) before curing. I have a couple of mentions in late period
>>>
>   recipes,
>
>>> but have not been able to find more,
>>>
>>
>> The only reference I found is the Larousse Gastronomique:
>> "Mainz ham is brined, desalted, soaked in brandy or wine lees and
>>
>   smoked for a
>
>> long period"
>>
>> But the matter is sufficiently mysterious for a regional paper to
>>
>   devote an
>
>> article to the search for the exact recipe. Apparently, the Mainz
>>
>   butchers'
>
>> guildmaster doesn't know himself.
>>
>> http://213.187.75.204/ressorts/freizeit/essen_und_trinken/
>> marktfuehrer/?sid=d2a40f9b7045af131e42cad0bf3d650b&cnt=684256
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

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