[Sca-cooks] Boiled Cider/Is there a medieval counterpart?

[Johnna Holloway]

I just ran a search in EEBO-TCP using the term boil near cider.
This turns up 2 books that feature paragraphs where
the treatment of cider barrels are being discussed. One is advised
for instance in 1670 to boil water and treat your barrels before
putting up cider. Or boil pepper or mustard and use the concoction to 
prevent
muddy cider. Boiling cider seems to have been used to make cider keep 
better.
Unboiled cider might keep for a year. Boiled cider might keep for two.
It's noted that

"If you boil your Cider, special care is to be had, That you put it into 
the furnace immediately from the Wring; otherwise, if it be -et stand in 
Vats or Vessels two or three days after the pressure, the best, and most 
spirituous part will ascend, and vapour away when the fire is put under 
it; and the longer the boiling continues, the less of goodness, or 
virtue will be left remaining in the Cider.
My Distillations sufficiently instruct me, That the same Liquor which 
(after fermentation hath pass'd upon it) yields a plentiful quantity of 
spirit, drawn off unfermented, yields nothing at all of spirit. And upon 
the same account it is undoubtedly certain, That Ciderboil'd immediately 
from the Wring, hath its spirits comprest, and drawn into a narrower 
compass, which are for the most part wash'd and evaporated by late 
unseasonable boiling."

This from Pomona, or, An appendix concerning fruit-trees in relation to 
cider the making and several ways of ordering it. by
John Evelyn, 1670. The advice also appears in Sylva, or, A discourse of 
forest-trees which is published the same year by Evelyn.

This is not of course cider boiled down into a syrup and used as a 
sweetener.
I suspect that boiled cider came into use in the American colonies as a 
substitute
for hard to get sugar.

Johnnae


aoife at cableone.net wrote:
> snipped Boiled cider (cider boiled down to a syrup)
> has been used as a sweetener for a long time but was there a medieval
> equivalent? snipped
> Aoife
>