[Sca-cooks] Use of fresh juices in period?

[Nick Sasso]

-----Original Message-----
< < < Do you remember what the recipe was and where it originally came from?

It has been my contention that yes, fresh fruit juices were drunk in
the Middle Ages, but because they won't stay fresh without
refrigeration for very long, that they were fermented or drunk very
quickly. However, I've not got much evidence to back this viewpoint up.

So this recipe would be of interest to me, IF the translation is
correct. The recipe might have actually specified a fermented grape
juice and the translation is wrong or the fermentation might have
been assumed. > > > > > >

In the name of pooling our ignoorance until we see the actual recipe . . . .

I see the point you are going for, Stephan.  I think I am coming from a
different direction.  The recipe could just as easily have called for must,
verjus or that concentrated grape stuff I can never remember the name of
(grappa?) and been mis-translated into grape juice.  "Fermented grape juice"
is not called such in the sources that I have read, instead being called
wine or some specific kind of wine.

If I had a crossbow to my head and had to hazzard a wild guess in the dark,
I would postulate that the recipe called for verjus, the translator looked
it up to find green grape juice, and left off the green.  That is just my
purely blind speculation for the lottery.

niccolo difrancesco