[Sca-cooks] 'take wine or vinegar', was: Cinnamon ...

Volker Bach carlton_bach at yahoo.de
Sat Nov 27 06:22:38 PST 2010



--- emilio szabo <emilio_szabo at yahoo.it> schrieb am Sa, 27.11.2010:


> << 
> The instruction 'take wine or vinegar' comes up 
> relatively frequently in North German recipes and 
> suggests that a) wine and vinegar belonged together 
> in upper-class cooking and b) what they considered 
> wine was not what we consider wine.>>
> 
> 
> The two conclusions do not follow from the instruction, in
> addition I think that 
> b) is false.

Given how the wine was produced, aged and transported, I find it very hard to believe it had much in common with the sweetened, bottled product we have today. 
 
> 
> The alternative wine/vinegar is current in humoral theory
> and dietetics. The 
> choice of wine or vinegar depends on season in the first
> place.

Where would that substitution be justified? In my Tacuina, wine is invariably classed as warm and dry, whereas vinegar is usually categorised as cold and dry (though somehow at the same time warm, unsurprisingly). Seasonal variation would make sense, as is often done with vinegar and verjuice, but this is mentionen in none of the recipes I've found. Bock  recommends wine especially for older people while he warns against vinegar for phlegmatics, but that's not carried over into recipes universally. Certainly, the much-repeated recipe for vinegar-pickled fish never substitutes wine. I haven't studied it in detail, but it looks like the 'wine or vinegar' formula applies to cooking liquids.
 






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