[Sca-cooks] Weights for spices? Apothecary or Standard for otherFood?

[m_mc_nealy at yahoo.com]

Thanks for the answer. 
I went with an Apothecary pound of 0.793652 pounds  or  360g,  based on information  in William Alfred  Browne, The Merchants' Handbook of Money,
Weights and Measures, with Their British Equivalents. London: Edward Stanford, 1879.  on google books  http://books.google.com/books?id=GJABAAAAQAAJ, page 185.

This gives a 15g value for a loth, and its been working well so far in the recipes for sugar and spices, and using the historical values listed for Augsburg for the other ingredients. I found them in Universal Dictionary of Weights and Measures, Ancient and Modern:  By John Henry Alexander
 http://books.google.com/books?id=LnUAAAAAMAAJ

-Sophia

----- Original Message ----
From: Terry Decker <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2008 9:20:03 AM
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Weights for spices? Apothecary or Standard for otherFood?


I replied to this from the road.  The message was waiting on moderator 
approval and appears to have gone into limbo.

Spices would commonly have been measured by apothecary weights.  If the
 
measure is other than apothecary weights, you run into the problem of
 each 
German state having its own value for the pfund running from about 450
 grams 
to 560 grams.  Since Welser uses the term "lott" (Lot), she is probably
 
using the pfund rather than the Troyes pound that was the basis of 
apothecary measure.

The pfund is divided into 16 unza or 32 lot.  This would make a lott
 roughly 
15 grams.  Cassell's German Dictionary gives the value as
 "approximately 10 
grams," but makes no allowances for the differences in the variation of
 the 
pfund.  15 grams is also roughly 1/2 of a troy ounce, while 10 grams is
 just 
under 1/32 (11.66 g) of a troy pound.  I'd probably go with the 15 gram
 
measure.

If you have anymore questions, fire away.

Bear

> Hi, I just joined this list after hearing about it for years from
 various 
> friends.
>
> I'm attempting to recreate several Lebkuchen recipes out of Sabina 
> Welserin's cookbook, written in 1553 in Augsburg. I'm using the
 original 
> Middle High German text found at Thomas Gloning's site, 
> http://www.uni-giessen.de/gloning/tx/sawe.htm , because in the
 English 
> translation weights and measurements for the ingredients don't match
 up 
> with the period amounts.
>
> In my research, I've been looking into the weights and measures used
 for 
> various ingredients, and there I've run into a snag. What was used
 for 
> spices? Apothecary weights or regular weights for food?
>
> Thanks for any help,
> Sophia


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