[Sca-cooks] Huh? boiled down fruit juices plus sugar?

[Stefan li Rous]

Giano replied to me with:
 >>>
Am Samstag, 18. Februar 2006 09:16 schrieb Stefan li Rous:
 > Gunthar commented:
 >
 > Not sure if it was served in Germany, but a popular beverage
 > throughout the
 > period was to boil down fruit juices and sugar into a syrup and
 > then mix
 > with either hot or cold water.
 > <<<
 >
 > Really? I don't remember that ever coming up in discussions here
 > before. "throughout the period"? and "sugar"? Which period? The way
 > you've written this, it sounds like you mean our entire period of
 > study. To me, that sounds unlikely for Europe. But if this could be
 > documented as period for Europe and popular there, it would be
 > wonderful.

I can document thwe syrupo cooking part for Germany c. 1500.
<<<

More details, please. Do you mean as a drink? Or is that what you  
mean below about not being able to document the use of water with it?

I do seem to remember comments on this list about period use of  
boiled down fruit juices as a sweetener. But that is not the same  
thing as a drink. Still, even if this is for a sweetener rather than  
a beverage, it would be nice to see more details.

 >>>
As to 'popular' -
it made a cookbook, which indicates a degree of poularity.
<<<

Perhaps a degree of popularity. I would not say from that that they  
were "popular".

Besides there are a number of things which have been discussed which  
made it into modern cookbooks, which, at least according to the  
comments on this list most would not consider them popular. Yes,  
cookbooks are much cheaper and more common these days. But even in  
period there appear to be things, especially in the health manuals,  
that don't appear to have been adhered to, even if they did get into  
a book.

 >>>
Unfortunately, I can't document the use of water with it.
<<<

Earlier Maire said:
 >>>
There's a whole chapter of them in the Anon. Andalusian.  I'm
guessing that those are the beverages to which Papa was referring....
<<<

That's not very close to Germany. Still, while I remember discussing  
Sekanjabin and similar drinks, I don't remember any that were just  
boiled down fruit juice with sugar (or honey). It is possible though  
that, at that time, I wasn't drawing a distinction between the  
different types of sugar or honey based non-fermented beverages. I  
guess it is time for me to check through my jalabs-msg and my  
beverages-NA-msg files.

More details or recipes would be nice. There are probably other folks  
that would like to see some alternatives to sekanjabin or alcoholic  
beverages. Unfortunately, these boiled down fruit juice drinks still  
wouldn't be a good choice for us diabetics. :-(

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
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