[Sca-cooks] Malt Syrup History

[Johnna Holloway]

Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking mentions it in connection with China where it was an ancient and popular sweetener until around 1000 CE. He does NOT mention use of it in Europe in the medieval period.
see page 679

A search for "malt" in medievalcookery.com's index turns up no hits. Likewise nothing under barley which leads to malt syrup.

Having worked on the Concordance and also on an article on barley waters, I don't recall seeing mentions of malt syrup in connection with medieval and early modern Europe.
OED doesn't list it. Malt sugar and maltose are 19th century.

A search through EEBO-TCP turns up this passage from Coghan's Haven of Health where barley is said to be best for ale or beer. Nothing about a sweet that replaces honey or sugar.

CHAP. 6. Of Barly.
 
HOrdeum, Barlie, whereof also bread is used to bee made, but it doth not nourish so much as wheat, and after Matthiolus, troubleth the stomack, maketh cold and tough juice in the body, nourisheth little and ingendreth winde, yet some affirme that it is good for such as have the Gout. Barlie is cold and drie in the first degree, and (as Galen saith) howsoever it be used in bread, or pisan, or otherwise, it is of cooling nature, and maketh thinne juyce, and somewhat cleansing. And in the tenth Chapter of the same book, he saith, that Barley bread passeth very soone from the bellie. As of Wheate, so likewise of Barley there is great choice to bee had, for some is better and some is worse. Yet all Barley generallie considering the nature thereof is more meet for drink than bread, and thereof is made the best Malt to make Ale or Beere. And though Barly be cold, yet it maketh such hot drinke, that it setteth men oftentimes in a furie.
1636 edition.

Johnnae

On Feb 18, 2013, at 3:18 PM, lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:

> Anyone know where one can find information about the history of the use of (barley) malt syrup? Is it SCA-period? Was it used then in brewing? I am not a brewster and do not plan to become one, just wondering...
> 
> Someone sometimes called Urtatim
> who has used Japanese rice malt syrup when making Sticky Crispy Rice Treats:
> with crispy brown rice cereal, rice malt syrup, and crunchy peanut butter.