[Sca-cooks] malt sugar

[Alec Story]

(If you wind up using the recipe, please credit Þórfinnr Hróðgeirsson,
which I forgot to include in my original message)

On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 11:47 AM, Alec Story <avs38 at cornell.edu> wrote:

> Malt sugar in a historical context is a mix of sugars actually, formed by
> the action of amylase on starch.  Maltose is prominent, but so is glucose,
> maltotriose and longer chain oligosaccharides, in proportion depending on
> the quality of the mashing.
>
> The recipes I mentioned are from the 544 CE Eastern Wei farm manual Qimin
> Yaoshu, which I'm in the process of translating parts of, mostly for
> brewing the rice and millet wines in it.  I find the malt recipe in it to
> be interesting because we think that malting for alcohol production had
> been phased out by around 200 BCE in favor of the fungal amylase method of
> making grain wine, which is how sake and Chinese rice wines are made
> today.  But malting was apparently preserved for food production.  I tried
> to follow this recipe in my recreation of the 5000 BCE Mijiaya "beer" find,
> although I had some process problems and it didn't work well.
>
> The red text indicates that the text is an annotation added after the
> fact, although they're unprovenanced.  The 1782 edition of Qimin Yaoshu
> printed in the giant collection of most extant works at the time, Siku
> Quanshu <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siku_Quanshu> has the red text
> here in small characters, which also indicates an annotation, but curiously
> the modernly-annotated Chinese edition I work from, 齊民要術校釋 by 繆啟愉 doesn't
> render the text as an annotation.  So that's unclear.  The annotations are
> probably still period, although they could conceivably be as late as the
> mid-1700s.
>
> (apologies to those not using html-enabled email clients... I can't really
> render this translation without html)
> From Chapter 68:
> 作糱法 Making Malt
>
> 〈八月中作。盆中浸小麥，即傾去水，日曝之。
>
> 〈Do this in the middle of the eighth month.  Soak wheat in a basin,
> promptly pour out the water, and then put it in the sun.
>
> 一日一度著水，即去之。
>
> Once a day, soak the wheat with water, and then take it out of the water.
>
> 腳生，布麥於席上，厚二寸許。
>
> When a “foot” grows, spread the wheat on a mat, about two cun [1 cun =
> 2.3 cm, so 4.6 cm] thick.
>
> 一日一度，以水澆之，牙生便止。
>
> Once a day, sprinkle water over the wheat, and when a “tusk/tooth” grows,
> stop.
>
> 即散收，令乾，勿使餅；餅成則不復任用。
>
> Break up and gather the wheat, so that it dries - do not make it into a[n
> entangled] cake; if made into a cake, it will be unusable
>
> 此煮白餳糱。
>
> Boil this down to a white malt sugar/syrup
>
> 若煮黑餳，即待芽生青，成餅，然後以刀𠠫取，乾之。
>
> To make a dark sugar, wait for the sprouts to turn green and knot into a
> cake, and then use a knife to divide it, and then dry the pieces.
>
> 欲令餳如琥珀色者，以大麥為其糱。〉
>
> If you wish to make the sugar an amber color, use barley instead.〉
>
> 《孟子》曰：「雖有天下易生之物，一日曝之，十日寒之，未有能生者也。」
>
> The Book of Mencius writes, “Even though there are many things that grow
> easily on earth, there is none that will grow after one day in the sun and
> ten days in the cold.”
>
> There are additionally some other recipes in chapter 89 that I have not
> translated yet, but have translated the titles of:
>
> 煮白餳法：To Boil White Syrup:
>
> 黑餳法：To Make Black Syrup:
>
> 琥珀餳法：To Make Amber Syrup:
>
> 煮餔法：To Boil a Meal:
>
> 《食經》作飴法：From *The Classic of Food*: To Make Syrup:
>
> 《食次》曰：More From *The Classic of Food*:
>
> 黃繭糖：Yellow Silk-Floss Candy:
>
> If there is particular interest in any of these recipes I can translate
> them, otherwise I'll get to them eventually but probably not for months.
>
> I'll also cross-post this to the sca-china list so if one of them requests
> a translation I'll update here as well.
>
> On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 2:22 AM, Terry Decker <t.d.decker at att.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> Malt sugar is maltose, a disaccharide formed from two molecules.
>>
>> That should be "Malt sugar is maltose, a disaccharide formed from two
>> joined molecules of glucose."
>>
>> Obviously, it's bedtime.
>>
>> Bear
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>
>
>
> --
> Alec Story
>



-- 
Alec Story