[Sca-cooks] Malvasia (Malmsey) and Rheinfal

[James Prescott]

Greetings,

Three adjustments.

1) Malmsey is most commonly thought to derive ultimately from
Monemvasia, a town in Greece in the same general area as Sparta.

2) The poem in Ouverture de Cuisine merely lists wines (including
two kinds of malmsey), and does not describe how to use them to
imitate each other.  Malmsey is used as an ingredient in a number
of recipes in Ouverture.

3) There *is* a recipe in Ouverture which tells us in great detail
how to make counterfeit malmsey!

The malmsey recipe calls for rain water, Spanish honey, coriander,
juniper berries, and cinnamon.  It is not clear whether the result
is alcoholic or not, but probably not since it has to be extremely
sweet.  "better after three years than the first year"


Thorvald



At 3:12 PM -0400 7/2/10, Sam Wallace wrote:
>  Katherine,
>
>  One very good resource is the Sean Thackrey Library
>  (http://www.wine-maker.net/LibraryIntroPage.html). Also, if you look
>  into de Casteau's Ovverture de Cuisine you should find a poem
>  describing methods of combining wines to imitate others. In some
>  cases, these sorts of descriptions are all we have to indicate how
>  historic vintages tasted.
>
>  Yours,
>
>  Guillaume