[Sca-cooks] Tree Saps: Was New World Food

[Stefan li Rous]

Eira said:
<<< I seem to recall reading about some drink in the Germanic area or  
something that used birch sap/syrup.  Definately got my curiousity  
going now.  :c)  >>>

 From the beverages-msg file in the Florilegium:
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Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 11:35:21 -0800
From: "Crystal A. Isaac" <crystal at pdr-is.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Sugar Maples

Par Leijonhuvud wrote:
 > On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, Tim & Dee wrote:
 > > Is/are there any sugar maple trees in Europe?  And what is Sweet
 > > Water?
snip
 > You *can* get a sweet syrup from birches, but I don't know if it was
 > done in the middle ages.

There is some precedent in using tree sap as a fermentable sweetener. In
her text, A Second Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food & Drink: Production &
Distribution (page 229), Ann Hagan notes "Saps were apparently
fermented: Bartholomew Anglicus observes that birch and honey would make
a strong drink, and sycamore saps could be fermented with ale or yeast."
C. Anne Wilson further comments, "Birch tree wine was fermented from the
spring sap tapped from tree trunks in Sussex and in the Scottish
highlands. The sap could also be brewed as ale with only a quarter of
the normal allowance of malt." in Food and Drink in Britain from the
Stone Age to the 19th Century (page 383).

I will cheerfully make beer/mead/nonalcoholics for anybody who has
*primary* documentation for tree sap in medieval drinks (other than
Bartholomew Anglicus, I've already found a copy of him).

Crystal of the Westermark
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Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****