[Sca-cooks] Rectifying Bitter Medieval Recipes

[Suey]

I just made one of Nola's recipes for pomegranate juice. Brighid's 
translation reads:

*"171. Pomegranate juice*

/ZUMO DE GRANADAS
/

"You will take the seeds of the pomegranates and crush them in a mortar 
in such a way that you do not break the seeds; and strain them through a 
clean linen cloth; and put in it the juice of toasted almonds and pine 
nuts. and you can cast in a little rosewater; and from this juice you 
can make sweet cameline sauce. and if you wish to make it sour, cast in 
red wine and vinegar, and all spices, and more cinnamon than the other 
spices, and cook it before you strain it."

First of all I went through the process of preparing 10 pomegranates, 
decorating the kitchen red but at least I wore rubber gloves! They 
yielded 2 c juice after going through the straining business. I ruined 
that by adding 2 c water.
Then I made 1/2 c ea almonds and pine nuts ground with 1 c rosewater. 
That was too thin to act as a thickener.
My disaster looks like a watery breakfast juice but it is sour! - Don't 
need the wine or vinegar to make it worse!
My first question is:
When medieval recipes are too sour for our taste, what is the rule in 
thumb for correcting them - sugar, honey, proportions, what?
Then should I boil what I have to death to evaporate a couple of cups of 
liquid? - I think this is suppose to be a sauce for fowl so I think I am 
looking for something more like gravy. Starting all over again would be 
a pain as it takes so much time to extract the little red fruits. . .
Many thanks for any suggestions.
Suey



for pomegrante juice as thy are in season here. It says it is served as 
a sauce for roast
On 6/27/12 3:04 PM, sca-cooks-request at lists.ansteorra.org wrote:
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>     1. Midrealm recipe donations. (Michael Gunter)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2012 11:13:09 -0500
> From: Michael Gunter <dookgunthar at gmail.com>
> To: Cooks <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
> Subject: [Sca-cooks] Midrealm recipe donations.
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAJFtL9-EDaTq6nQYRos=qDxVbdVft85opptFmueG20oR7pAdBw at mail.gmail.com>
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> I made a cookbook as 12th Night gifts this year which basically shows how
> to do
> basic building blocks of cooking (making sauces, stocks, how to boil an egg,
> pie crust, etc....) as well as recipes using the technique described.
>
> I can send you a .pdf of the cookbook and you can use parts of it in the
> project
> if you wish.
>
> The Midrealm cooks might remember me as the featured speaker at the Cooking
> Symposium a couple years ago.
>
> Gunthar
>
>
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> End of Sca-cooks Digest, Vol 74, Issue 31
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