[Sca-cooks] 9 percent vinegar

Mon Apr 29 15:59:00 PDT 2013

Here is some information on the vinegar used in the verdigris process that I pulled from my documentation from Arts and sciences. It may or may not be relevant to the conversation at hand but I thought you all might find it interesting (if a bit out of context from this discussion and from the documentation). The title of my entry was "Piss and Vinegar: Experiments in Recreating Medieval Verdigris. 

Eduardo 

Reactive Agent describes the liquid used in the process that chemically interacts with the copper to produce the verdigris. For this experiment the focus is on vinegar (see vinegar section for more information on specifics of making a 16th century vinegar). In the sources the vinegar is describe in several different ways.

·      strong vinegar (twice)

·      very strong vinegar           

·      very sharp vinegar

·      heated vinegar           

·      the same way as above (heated)                       

None of the sources tells us the type of vinegar used (wine, ale, fruit, etc.). When describing the vinegar “strong” is clearly the word that is used the most, with half the entries using this descriptor (very strong being included in this count).  But what is meant by the word “strong”? We might assume many different things when we think about the word from a modern perspective: sour, high in acid, bitter, etc. Reviewing the period definitions of the word we find many different definitions that align with this modern concept[1]. In William Thomas, Principal Rules of the Italian Grammar (1550) the Italian word for strong is “Rubbeste” and is defined as “rigorouse”. John Florio, in A World of Words (1598) also defines the Italian word for sharp “Racente” as sharp, sowre, or tarte in taste. In Richard Huloet, Abecedarium Anglico Latinum (1552) we find much more that relates to taste “Strong of sauour or soure to be.” And further “Loke in sowre to be strong of tast or soure.” And in John Withals, A Short Dictionary for Young Beginners (1556) vinegar continues to be described as “strong or sharpe” with a “tartnesse that biteth the tongue”. And finally in Thomas Thomas, Dictionarium Linguae Latinae et Anglicanae (1587) the Latin word for sharp “Austērus” is defined as “Sower, rough, sharp, rude: vnpleasant: sadde, austere, seuere:”.

The dictionaries of the time period also use the word “strong” and vinegar when they speak to the definition of verdigris. Thomas Blount’s Glossographia or a Dictionary (1656) says that “Verd grease or vert-greece a green substance made of the rust of Brass or Copper, which hath been hanged certain days over strong vinegar; It is of a fretting nature, and therefore to be used with great discretion.” (emphasis added). And in Elisha Coles, An English Dictionary (1676) Verdigris is defined as “Verd-grease, Vert-greece, Verdig- , the green rust of brass or copper hang'd over strong vinegar.” (emphasis added).

Both the formulas from Theophilus use the word “heated” as a descriptor for the vinegar. But do they mean hot, as in temperature or hot, as in a humoral quality? Humoral theory is a medieval method of categorizing food products and activities into a framework of humors that must be balanced for a particular individual so that they remain healthy. Based on the ancient Greek theory, it was thought that the body was composed of four basic humors such as black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. These humors must be balanced for optimal health. Eating things, or engaging in activities, could throw this balance off and other food or activities would need to be under taken in order to restore the balance. The Tacuinum of Liege vinegar is described as being “Cold in the first degree, dry in the second”[2]. In the Liechtenstein Tacuinum vinegar is mentioned but the humoral nature is not mentioned. All we are told is that “Vinegar should be made from good wine, and it is good for the gums and stimulates the appetite. It can be harmful to the nerves, though, so should be taken with water and sugar.”[3] Although it would seem that the word “heated” does not apply to the humoral quality of the vinegar Platina in De Honesta Voluptate et Valetudine [4] says “There are different opinions of authors about the quality of vinegar: some say vinegar is composed of hot and sharp parts which are derived from its intense dryness, but other affirm that is has more cold than heat in it because it represses bile and blood and also cuts phlegm with intense acidity.” He goes on to say “we realize the varying force of vinegar, for added moderately to cold things, it makes them colder, but if added to hot, hotter, for by penetratig the special property of each, it increases the qualities in things, . . .” So is the vinegar heated by temperature or hot by nature? Examination of the original source documents, in their original languages might give us some other clues as to which was meant, but this must be left for further research (see above section on further research). It would seem that it either would be appropriate, but given that the other sources do not direct the reader to heat the vinegar for this experiment it has not been done. Further experimentation will be undertaken with a heated product to determine if the outcomes vary.

The final description used for the vinegar is “sharp”. As we can see from the above exploration of the Tacuinum Sanitatis: Making Vinegar                                   word “strong” the two words

“sharp” and “strong” are synonymous. The dictionaries of the time period describe the word sharp in similar ways to the word strong. In Thomas Elyot, The Dictionary of Sir Thomas Elyot (1538) Oxyporopola, a sauce made from vinegar, herbs and spices is described as a “sharp sauce, or sowce.” William Turner in The Names of Herbs in Greek, Latin, English, Dutch, and French (1548) a grain called “Capnos” (in Latin) and “Fumitarie” (in English) is described as having “a sharp and a bytter qualitie.” And in Lanfranco of Milan, Chirurgia parva Lanfranci, Lanfranco of Milan his Brief (1565) “Repercussiua medicamina” or medicines that replenish are described as being “sharp, tarte, and adstringent:”.

[1] The following dictionaries can be found at Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME) http://leme.library.utoronto.ca/. LEME is a historical database of monolingual, bilingual, and polyglot dictionaries, lexical encyclopedias, hard-word glossaries, spelling lists, and lexically-valuable treatises surviving in print or manuscript from the Tudor, Stuart, Caroline, Commonwealth, and Restoration periods. Texts of word-entries whose headword (source) or explanation (target) language is English tell us what speakers of English thought about their tongue in the period served by the Short-title and Wing catalogues, from the advent of printing to about 1700.

[2] Arano plate 59

[3] Bovey page 66 – 67

[4] Milham page 167

__________________________________

David Walddon
david at vastrepast.com
www.vastrepast.net
360-402-6135 Cell

On Apr 29, 2013, at 2:59 PM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> When we've discussed vinegar in the past, there were comments that said that it appeared that all vinegar in the U.S. was diluted to a 5% solution.
> 
> Today, when I went looking at my local HEB grocery store for bulk vinegar to dump into my gas hot water heater to try to remove some of the mineral granules and maybe some of the buildup, I found 1 gallon jugs of distilled white vinegar that was in a 9 percent rather than a 5 percent solution.
> 
> The label said "for pickling, salads and marmalades".
> 
> It doesn't say if the vinegar was derived from petroleum, but still, it's not something I would choose to put on food products. But for cleaning…
> 
> Stefan
> 
> --------
> THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
>   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
> **** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Sca-cooks mailing list
> Sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
> http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org