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

[Elaine Koogler]

I don't actually have the recipe in front of me, but it was, IIRC, a Roman
cookbook, possibly Apicius or one of the others.  It had to be because those
were the parameters of the competition.  At the moment I don't have time to
go find it...and Apicius (the new one) is the only one I have, though it
could have been in that book about Roman cooking that had Cato and some of
the others in it.

Kiri

On 4/22/07, Volker Bach <carlton_bach at yahoo.de> wrote:
>
> >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.
>
> We have some evidence for fresh juices in cooking -
> lemon in the Liber de Coquina, apple in IIRC the
> Königsberg MS, and I dimly remember others. Richard
> Fletcher also mentions taxes paid by Christian wine
> growers to Muslim authorities in the for of
> unfermented must, though the purpose is nmot
> explained. However, unless we find good evidence for
> non-citrus juices being drunk, I am unconvinced for
> the simple reason that making fresh juice is a lot of
> *work*, compared to cooking out the juice, grinding up
> the fruit to a pulp, or just eating it. If you were
> going to do it anyway, I could see people drinking
> must from the cider, perry or wine presses, but with
> the freshness needed I can't envision anyone pressing
> fruit fresh so someone can have a litre or two of
> drinkable juice. Except as an idiosyncrasy, of course,
> if you had the money, why not?
>
>
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