This was a project I did for the 2017 Ice Dragon A&S Pentathlon. I think I came in second in the beverages section. I'm not entirely certain. 

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Water of Cloves

Description:

Cordial based on an mid 16th century, French recipe, from Charles Estienne and Jean Liebault ’s L’Agriculture et Maison Rustique. Originally in published French in 1564. First English translation in 1600 by Richard Surflet, reprinted 1606, then revised and republished as Maison Rustique, or, the Countrey Farme by Gervase Markham in 1616.

Intoduction:

To begin with, allow me to define what a cordial is. A cordial is a flavored alcoholic beverage, normally wine, that has been distilled.[1] The majority of cordial recipes date to the end of the SCA period but there are enough recipes that we can conclude that they were well known and popular. Some modern cordials, such as Benedictine and Frangelico, date back to the 16th and 17th Century.[2] The theory of distilling itself dates back to the 4th Century BCE when Aristotle wrote Meteorology in which he details the specifics of the process.[3]

The earliest European records of flavored alcohols were written by a Spanish alchemist by the name of Arnold de Vila Nova. In 1240 he wrote the Boke of Wine in which he details methods for flavoring alcohol and proposed the restorative and life giving properties of these beverages. One of Arnold’s students, Raymond Lully, proclaimed that their production was “a divinely inspired gift from Heaven.”[4] Legal documents dating to 1411 mention the distillation of wine into brandy in the Armagnac region of France.[5]

By the 14th Century, the drinking of these beverages had become very popular in Italy and had also spread into France. A Tuscany native, Catherine de Medici,[6] is often credited with bringing them with her to France. There is some discussion as to whether or not she was the first to introduce them to France, but there is no doubt that she certainly increased the popularity and acceptance of these drinks among the nobility of France.

Most of the surviving recipes offer cordials for medicinal use rather than recreational use, and most of these recipes are listed along side of those for liniments, surfeits, poultices and other medicinal tonics. It is more than likely that the liqueur evolved as a sweet beverage as to counter act the bitterness of the herbs and other ingredients. But is not my intention to reproduce a modern cough syrup, nor is it to flavor brandy or vodka and pretend that it’s period. This recipe will be made from infused wine which is then distilled.

Details of the original recipe:

Water of Cloues [p462]
Take equall parts of Cloues, Ginger, and flowers of Rosemarie, infuse them in verie good Wine the space of eight daies: distill the whole: This vvater comforteth the stomacke,* assuageth the paines and vvringings of the bellie, killeth vvormes, and maketh fat folke to become leane, or maketh fat the leane, if they drinke it mixt with sugar.[7]

Redaction:

Take equal parts of cloves, ginger, and flowers of rosemary. Infuse them in a very good wine for eight days. Distil the whole. This water comforts the stomach, lessens the pains and cramps of the belly, kills worms and make fat folk to become skinny or make the fat become lean, if they drink it mixed with sugar.

• 1.5L of French Bordeaux wine, Chateau La Gourtere brand
• About 1/2 ounce sliced Tailand ginger
• About 1/2 ounce Rosemary leaves
• About 1/4 ounce Rosemary flowers
• 10 Cloves

I placed the herbs and spices into the wine bottle and let sit for eight days. Afterwards, I poured the infused wine into my “still” and distilled it. The distilled liquid was moved into a new bottle and sealed.

Technique:

I will start with the cloves, first. The original recipe called for equal amounts of herbs and spices, but the cloves that I have are very powerful and can quickly overpower any other flavors. I did not want to risk using a full half ounce and ending up with a mouth numbing beverage. I would have used four or five, in a similar recipe, but I used ten because the cordial is called Water of Cloves.

Ginger: I picked up a hand of fresh ginger, and sliced up about a half an ounce. I think that my ginger would be far fresher and superior to anything available in France in the 16th century. The recipe does not give any measurements: either for the additions or for the wine required. I used a half an ounce for the ginger and rosemary (to be discussed below) based on my experience with brewing. A half an ounce of fresh ginger will be strong enough to stand up to four or five of the cloves that I use for spiced wines and meads. As I did not want this beverage to turn into a toothache remedy, I also did not want it to taste like spicy ginger beer. I intended for the final product to have subtle flavors, not be overpowering.

Rosemary: I used a half an ounce of leaves to match the amount of ginger used. I actually grew my own rosemary and let it flower. I harvested the flowers and stashed them in my freezer until I was ready to start this project. Since presentation was not an issue, and that the flowers would be soaking in wine, the freezing process did not damage the flowers relative to what I wanted from them. However, I only managed to gather about 1/4 ounce of flowers and the flowers, when fresh, really did not have much of a flavor. When frozen, they had none. To ensure that there would be rosemary flavor in this beverage, I added 1/2 ounce of fresh rosemary leaves, not the stems, purchased from the grocery store.

I did not feel the need to process the additions, other than to slice the ginger into small enough pieces to fit into the wine bottle. Since they will be steeping in the wine for just over a week, I saw no need to crush or grind them into smaller pieces: the alcohol of the wine can take the time to extract the water and alcohol soluble flavors from them. There are some recipes that call for the additions to be ground into power and then, immediately, added to the still. The recipe that I chose does not call for anything more than soaking in wine.

The medicinal properties of these three giants of flavor were well known:

Rosemary:[8]

Our garden Rosemary is so well known, that I need not describe it. Government and virtues : The Sun claims privilege in it, and it is under the celestial Ram. It is an herb of as great use with us in these days as any whatsoever, not only for physical but civil purposes. The physical use of it (being my present task) is very much used both for inward and outward diseases, for by the warming and comforting heat thereof it helps all cold diseases both of the head, stomach, liver, and belly. The decoction thereof in wine, helps the cold distillations of rheum into the eyes, and all other cold diseases of the head and brain, as the giddiness or swimmings therein, drowsiness or dullness of the mind and senses like a stupidness, the dumb palsy, or loss of speech, the lethargy, and fallen- sickness, to be both drank, and the temples bathed therewith. It helps the pains in the gums and teeth, by rheum falling into them, not by putrefaction, causing an evil smell from them, or a stinking breath. It helps a weak memory, and quickens the senses. It is very comfortable to the stomach in all the cold griefs thereof, helps both retention of meat, and digestion, the decoction or powder being taken in wine. It is a remedy for the windiness in the stomach, bowels, and spleen, and expels it powerfully. It helps those that are liver-grown, by opening the obstructions thereof. It helps dim eyes, and procures a clear sight, the flowers thereof being taken all the while it is flowering every morning fasting, with bread and salt. Both Dioscorides and Galen say, That if a decoction be made thereof with water, and they that have the yellow jaundice exercise their bodies directly after the taking thereof, it will certainly cure them. The flowers and conserve made of them are singularly good to comfort the heart, and to expel the contagion of the pestilence; to burn the herb in houses and chambers, corrects the air in them. Both the flowers and leaves are very profitable for women that are troubled with the whites, if they be daily taken. The dried leaves shred small, and taken in a pipe, as tobacco is taken, helps those that have any cough, phthisic, or consumption, by warming and drying the thin distillations which cause those diseases. The leaves are very much used in bathings; and made into ointments or oil, are singularly good to help cold benumbed joints, sinews, or members. The chymical oil drawn from the leaves and flowers, is a sovereign help for all the diseases aforesaid, to touch the temples and nostrils with two or three drops for all the diseases of the head and brain spoken of before; as also to take one drop, two, or three, as the case requires, for the inward griefs. Yet must it be done with discretion, for it is very quick and piercing, and therefore but a little must be taken at a time. There is also another oil made by insolation in this manner: Take what quantity you will of the flowers, and put them into a strong glass close stopped, tie a fine linen cloth over the mouth, and turn the mouth down into another strong glass, which being set in the sun, an oil will distil down into the lower glass, to bepreserved as precious for divers uses, both inward and outward, as a sovereign balm to heal the disease beforementioned, to clear dim sights, and to take away spots, marks, and scars in the skin.

Cloves: [9] It is vain to describe an herb so well known. Government and virtues : They are gallant, fine, temperate flowers, of the nature and under the dominion of Jupiter; yea, so temperate, that no excess, neither in heat, cold, dryness, nor moisture, can be perceived in them; they are great strengtheners both of the brain and heart, and will therefore serve either for cordials or cephalics, as your occasion will serve. There is both a syrup and a conserve made of them alone, commonly to be had at every apothecary’s. To take now and then a little of either, strengthens nature much, in such as are in consumptions. They are also excellently good in hot pestilent fevers, and expel poison.

Ginger:[10] Action, Medical Uses, and Dosage. Ginger is stimulant, rubefacient, errhine, and sialagogue. When chewed it occasions an increased flow of saliva, and when swallowed it acts as a stimulating tonic, stomachic, and carminative, increasing the secretion of gastric juice, exalting the excitability of the alimentary muscular system, and dispelling gases accumulated in the stomach and bowels. Prepared with rhubarb, in the form of cordial or syrup, few articles are more valuable in cholera morbus and cholera infantum, when there is coldness of the surface and extremities, and nausea and vomiting accompany. It is eminently useful in habitual flatulency, atonic dyspepsia, hysteria, and enfeebled and relaxed habits, especially of old and gouty individuals; and is excellent to relieve nausea, pains and cramps of the stomach and bowels, and to obviate tenesmus, and especially when those conditions are due to colds, or to the ingestion of unripe or otherwise unwholesome fruit. Ginger is occasionally of value in fevers, particularly where the salivary secretions are scanty and there is pain and movement of gases within the intestines. Here, though a stimulant, it will assist in producing sedation by re-establishing secretion and relieving the distressing gastro-intestinal annoyances.

Spicing wines was not an uncommon practice and it is believed to be the “father” of cordials and liqueurs. The spicing of wine is among the oldest of methods of fortifying the beverage and granting it better taste or medicinal properties. Specific commentaries and recipes for it can be found from early Roman Imperial times. Some spiced wines, such as hippocras,[11] were an industry into themselves by the 14th Century. A recipe from a collection of Norman French papers called “B. L. Additional 32085” dating to the reign of King Edward I[12] is as follows:[13]

28. ICI COMENCE COMENT L’EN DEIT FERE CLAREE. Pernez de kanele, de gyngivre, de maces, les deus parties; de gilofres, nois de muge, fuyle de Inde, la tierce partie; semence de fenoyl, anys, karewi, autaunt; kardamome, squinaunte, la quarte partie; spicanardi a la meitJ de tuttes les autres choses. E metez en pudre, e puys metez la pudre en une puche, e pernez vin blaunc ou vermail e versez desus la pudre e fetes coler com lescive, si averez claree; e taunt cum plus reversez e colez la chose avaunt colee, si averez vostre claree plus forte, e si vos n’avez pas tuz ces espices, pernez kanele e gingivre, maces, les deux parties; de gilofres e spicanardi a la meitJ de tuttes les autres choses, e metez en pudre, e colez cum devaunt est dist; si averez claree. Explicit.

28. HERE BEGIN INSTRUCTIONS FOR MAKING CLAREE. Take half a measure of cinnamon, ginger, and mace; a third of a measure of cloves, nutmeg, malabathrum; fennel, anise, and caraway seeds, in the same amount; cardamom and squinant, a fourth of a measure; and spikenard in the amount of half the quantity of al the other spices. Grind this into a powder, and then put the powder in a pouch, and take white or red wine and pour it over the powder, wring it through the cloth, and you will have claree; the more you repeat the process, the stronger your claree will be. If you do not have all these spices, take two measures of cinnamon, ginger, and mace, cloves and spikenard to half the quantity of all other ingredients; grind to a powder, and strain as described above, and you will have claree.

Sir Kenelm Digbie listed the following hippocras recipe:

To make Ypocrasse for lords with gynger, synamon, and graines, sugour, and turnesol:and for comyn pepul, gynger, canell, longe peper, and clarifyed hony.

As I did not have the time to make wine, and let it age, I bought wine. As this is a French recipe, I used a French wine. I could have used an English wine, but no one had anything nice to say about English wine in the 16th century. I chose a red Bordeaux (a Grand Vin de Bordeaux) from Chateau La Goutere, whose vinyards are located “near Saint Emilon in Nouvelle-Aquitaine”.[14] I chose this style of wine not only because the Bordeaux region of France has been making wine since the time of the Romam Empire, but because the English imported it.

... By the mid 13th century, three fourths of England’s royal wine came from Bordeaux, at a freight charge of 8 shillings the ton. The wine fleet convened twice a year; in October for the “vintage” shipping, and in February for the “rack” shipping of wine drawn off the lees. We have Bordeaux’s export figures for seven years of the early 14th century, averaging 83,000 tonneaux of 12 score and 12 gallons each. England took about half of this, and when the new wine arrived, last year’s was halved in price, or even just thrown away. These wines were the common drink, lower in status the Mediterranean and Rhenish wines, but they were plentiful and cheap. Bordeaux made three kinds of wines: white, red , and clairet. Until about 1600, clairet meant a light colored wine, ranging from yellow, as distinct from white, to pink. To get the desired pink color, called “partridge-eye”, red and white wines were often mixed. Red wines then would have been very light. They were only on the skins one day, and absorbed little color and tannins. After the wine was drawn off, the remainder, redder and coarser, was used for tinting wine, or sold cheaply as “vin vermeilh” or “pin pin”. This amounted to about 15%.[15]

Samuel Pegge’s The Forme of Cury states in the prefence, “Wine is common, both red, and white... This article they partly had of their own growth, and partly by importation from France and Greece. They had also Rhenish, and probably several other sorts. The “vynegreke” is among the sweet wines....”

The most popular wines in the 14th century were (in order of preference) sweet Mediterranean wines, white Rhenish wines, and Claret. The red wines of Burgundy were highly prized, and could still be drunk after two years, but were scarce and more difficult to obtain in England. Claret was definately a young wine, when a new vintage arrived from Bordeaux, the price of the previous vintage was usually cut in half (or the old wine was simply discarded).[16]

Angharad ver’ Rhuawn posted on Stefan’s Florilegium the following, “They classified wines as red, white, and sweet. There is list of wines of all three sorts in John Russell’s Boke of Nurture, There are recipes that call specifically for red, some that call for white, some that call for specific sweet sorts (wine greke, vernage, etc.). I infer from this that period wines were not all markedly sweet, or they would not make the largest distinctions in that area.” The Book of Keruynge, published in 1508, makes the following list of wine names: Reed wyne, whyte wyne, claret whyne, osey, capryke, campolet, renysshe wyne maluely, bastarde, tyerre romney, muscadell, clarrey, raspys, vernage, vernage wyne cut, pymente and Ipocras.”

... By the reign of Edward III (1327-1377) the trade in French wine had reached amazing proportions. Ships of that time were rated at the number of tonnes (252 gallon casks of wine) they could carry. To this day, we speak of ship “tonnage” when we refer to ocean freight transport. The wine fleet would sail for France in late autumn, returning before Christmas with “new wine”. They would sail again after Easter in the spring, and return with “rack wine” of the same vintage. In 1372, the wine fleet consisted of some 200 ships, with average tonnage well over 50 tonnes per ship, for a total cargo of over 3 million gallons of wine that year. The English even had their own name for much of this wine. The French used the term clairet to refer to the light red wine of Bordeaux, before it was blended with heavier, darker red wine from elsewhere in France. It was this that the English came to call Claret. ... Meanwhile, back in Europe, William Turner published the first English book on wines, “A new Boke of the natures and properties of all Wines that are commonlye used here in England”, in 1568. It was primarily a physician’s view on wines, with Turner denouncing red wines, while advocating “whyte Rhennish and whyte French” wines. In 1577, William Harrison identified 56 varieties of small, weak wines (both red and white) that were drunk by the English people, and 30 kinds of sweet wines.[17]

The recipe called for very good wine. While Bordeaux was, at the time, considered “plentiful and cheap”, my 2010 vintage Bordeaux would be a very good wine by comparison, in my opinion. No mention was made as to what kind of wine to use, or what color. I picked a red wine as I felt that the stronger flavor of the wine and its tannins, would stand up to the cloves and ginger far better than a more subtle white wine.

Distillation:

To set the matter straight: distillation is illegal within the USA, and before I started this project I examined the law carefully. Article 10, Section 153 of the Special Provisions Relating To Illicit Alcoholic Beverages And Stills states the following:

Any person who shall manufacture any illicit alcoholic beverage or who, not being duly licensed as a distiller under the provisions of the alcoholic beverage control law, shall own, operate, possesses or have under his control any still or distilling apparatus is guilty of a felony. “Still” or “distilling apparatus shall mean any apparatus designed, intended, actually used, or capable of being used for or in connection with the separating of alcoholic or spirituous vapors, or alcohol or spirituous solutions, or alcohol or spirits, from alcohol or spirituous solutions or mixtures, but shall not include stills used for laboratory purposes or stills used for distilling water, oil, alcoholic or nonalcoholic materials where the cubic capacity of such stills is one gallon or less.

As I would only be distilling a liter and a half of wine in a non-presurized stock pot, and that I would not be selling the product nor transporting it across state lines, I feel that this is a safe project.

The ginger, rosemary leaves and flowers and the cloves were left to infuse for eight days before being poured, along with the wine, into a stockpot into which there was a brick topped with a ceramic bowl. The wine was brought to 170F,[18] the lid placed on the pot and bags of ice placed on top of the lid. This method of low-pressure distillation is often used for home perfume and oil making. The instructions came from a cooking show on how to make home made rose water.[19]

At 170F the alcohol will boil off and rise to the top of the container, where it will condense when in contact with the cold lid and fall into the bowl, which is insulated from the heat by the brick. A turkey baster was used to transfer the cordial from the bowl into a waiting container and the ice was replaced as needed. After two and a half hours, a little more than a pint of clear liquid was distilled out of the wine, meaning that about 4/5th of the original volume was discarded in the production of this cordial. A better still might have reduced this ratio, but I used what I had available.

After distillation, the cordial, now clear, possessed a slightly flowery aroma, and a harsh flavor of cloves. Cloves. A strong enough flavor that my tongue started to tingle, and then, get numb. I am glad that I only used ten cloves instead of a full half ounce. I did not have enough of the cordial to blend half with sugar, so I present only the base cordial.

Aging the cordial in oak might mellow out the flavor, but I am unaware of any period recipes that called for aging cordials. This is not a beverage for casual drinking, and it was not intended to be. Cordials, at this time, were considered to be medicine rather than after-dinner drinks. With the cost involved with the wine, spices, fuel and time, not to mention how little cordial one ends up with, cordials were expensive and I believe that they were made as needed and not mass produced. For people who wished just to get a buzz, there were more cost effective alcoholic beverages. The recipe does not provide any doses for water of cloves, but we can look at other cordial recipes: “...and distyllet aghen ghyf ou wolte and vse at of euer[e]ch day a lytel spone-ful fastyng.”;[20] “...and if a man haue nede, late hym take er-of morn and euyn iiii sponful at onys.”;[21] “helps digestion if two or three or four ounces thereof be drunk, and the patient composes himself to rest.”[22]

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

DuBose Fred; Spingarn, Evan. The Ultimate Wine Lover’s Guide 2006. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 2005

Felter, Harvey Wickes and Lloyd, John Uri. King’s American Dispensatory. 1898. Scanned version by Henriette Kress, 1999

FitzMaurice, Forester Nigel. A Miscellany of Early Cordials. Http://web.raex.com/~obsidian/precwat.html

FitzMaurice, Forester Nigel. A Recipe For Spiced Wines. Http://web.raex.com/~obsidian/spcwine.html

French, John. The Art of Distillation. Or, A Treatise of the Choicest Spagyrical Preparations Performed by Way o£ Distillation, Being Partly Taken Out of the Most Select Chemical Authors of the Diverse Languages and Partly Out of the Author’s Manual Experience together with, The Description of the Chiefest Furnaces and Vessels Used by Ancient and Modern Chemists also A Discourse on Diverse Spagyrical Experiments and Curiosities, and of the Anatomy of Gold and Silver, with The Chiefest Preparations and Curiosities Thereof, and Virtues of Them All. All Which Are Contained In Six Books Composed By John French, Dr. of Physick. London. Printed by Richard Cotes and are to sold by Thomas Williams at the Bible in Little-Britain without Aldersgate, 1651. Http://www.levity.com/alchemy/jfren_ar.html

Frisinger, H. Howard. Aristole’s Legacy in Meteorology. “Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society:” Vol. 54, No. 3, pp. 198–204.

Hannum, Hurst. Brandies and Liqueurs of the World. Doubleday & Company, Garden City, N.Y.

Henslow, G. Medical Works of the Fourteenth Century. Burt Franklin, N.Y., N.Y. 1972 (reprint of the 1899 edn.)

Henslow, George. Medical Works of the Fourteenth Century: Together With a List Of Plants Recorded In Contemporary Writings, With Their Identifications. London: Chapman and Hall, ld., 1899. Archive.org call number: RS125 .H46 1899.

Hieatt, Constance B. and Jones Robin F. Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections Edited from British Library Manuscripts Additional 32085 and Royal 12.C.xii, “Speculum”, Vol. 61, No. 4 Oct. 1986

Jeffs, Julian. Sherry. Octopus Books, 2004

Liebault, John and Stevens, Charles. Le Maison Rustique or The Convntry Farms. Translated into English by Richard Surflet. Arnold Harfield. London. 1606.

Ludington, Charles. The Politics of Wine in Britain: A New Cultural History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Lukacs, Paul. Inventing Wine: A New History of One of the World’s Most Ancient Pleasures: A New History of One of the World’s Most Ancient Pleasures. W. W. Norton & Company, 2013

Maison rustique, or The countrey farme· Compyled in the French tongue by Charles Steuens, and Iohn Liebault, Doctors of Physicke. And translated into English by Richard Surflet, practitioner in physicke. Now newly reuiewed, corrected, and augmented, with diuers large additions, out of the works of Serres his Agriculture, Vinet his Maison champestre, French. Albyterio in Spanish, Grilli in Italian; and other authors. And the husbandrie of France, Italie, and Spaine, reconciled and made to agree with ours here in England: by Geruase Markham. Estienne, Charles, 1504-ca. 1564., Lie´bault, Jean, ca. 1535-1596. aut, Surflet, Richard, fl. 1600-1616., Markham, Gervase, 1568?-1637. London: Printed by Adam Islip for Iohn Bill, 1616. Estienne, Charles. Maison Rustique. Ann Arbor, MI ; Oxford (UK) :: Text Creation Partnership, 2003-09 (EEBO-TCP Phase 1), n.d. Web.

Mareschal, THL Alexander. Alcoholic Drinks of the Middle Ages. “Complete Anachronist” #60. http://home.sunlitsurf.com/~mshapiro/cliqueur.html#liqueur recipes

MacMillan, Lord Alistair. Wine. “Scum” Volume 1, number 16

Mencarelli, Fabio; Tonutti, Pietro. Sweet, Reinforced and Fortified Wines: Grape Biochemistry, Technology and Vinification. John Wiley & Sons, 2013

Millon, Marc. Wine: A Global History. Reaktion Books, 2013

Plat, Sir Hugh. A Closet for Ladies and Gentlevvomen. Or, The Art of Preseruing, Conseruing, and Candying. Entered in the Stationers Registry: 1 September 1602 London: Printed [by F. Kingston] for Arthur Iohnson, dvvelling neere the great north dore of Paules, 1608. Edited and Annotated by Johnna H. Holloway. Published through www.medievalcookery.com: 2011.

Plat, Sir Hugh. Delights for ladies to adorn their persons, tables, closets, and distillatories, with beauties, banquets, perfumes, and waters. London, Printed by J. Young, 1644.

Wilson, C. Anne. Food & Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century. Academy Chicago Pub. 1991

Wright, F. B. A Practical Handbook On The Distillation Of Alcohol From Farm Products Including The Processes Of Malting; Mashing And Mascerating; Fermenting And Distilling Alcohol From Grain, Beets, Potatoes. Molasses, Etc.. With Chapters On Alcoholometry And The De-Naturing Of Alcohol For Use In Farm Engines, Automobiles, Launch Motors, And In Heating And Lighting; With A Synopsis Of The New Free Alcohol Law And Its Amendment And The Government Regulations. 2nd Edition. Spon & Chamberlain. New York. 1907

[1] A flavored non-distilled alcohol is hippocras
[2] 1517 and 1676 respectively
[3] Frisinger
[4] Anonymous
[5] Hannum, pp. 62
[6] Ibid., pp 5, 145.
[7] Maison rustique
[8] Culpeper, Culpeper’s Complete Herbal
[9] Culpeper, The English physitian
[10] Felter and Lloyd
[11] a spiced and sweetened wine, often served steaming hot
[12] 1272-1307
[13] Hieatt and Jones, provided by FitzMaurice
[14] From the bottle’s label.
[15] MacMillan
[16] Corwin, Florilegium
[17] Corwin, Creature.
[18] Measured using a digital thermometer.
[19] Good Eats: Switched on Baklava, aired in 2008.
[20] “...and distill again if you like, and take a little spoonful every day while fasting.” Johnstone Manuscript: 1400-1450, Henslow, p73
[21] “...and if a man have need, let him take 4 spoonfuls at once, morning and evening.” Sloane Manuscript 521: 1490-1500 Henslow, p142
[22] French, no page number listed

 I Hate It.

In every scroll project, there will be a time when, no matter what you are working on, it will look awful. The paint is blotchy and uneven. You went over the lines. The colors aren't working with one another. I can say, after making over 470 scrolls, that you have to power your way through the awful. More layers of paint will even it out. Greater care with the touchups will fix the line issues. 

This was my entry for the 2021 Virtual Queen’s Prize Tourney II Entries (Kingdom of AEthelmearc. I was honored to be chosen as the winner of the the best documentation. This was a fun project to do and it took me a while to convert the documentation to a web format. 

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Aqua Alexiteria: A Cure for the Plague.

 Description:

Cordial based on a mid 17th century, English recipe, from Sir Charles Scarborough’s 1665 Practical Method as Used for the Cure of the Plague in London.

Introduction:

In this brief paper I will discuss a recipe that was published in Sir Charles Scarborough’s 1665s Practical Method as Used for the Cure of the Plague in London. This project originally started life as a brief, educational paper, quickly written for The 2021 Great Lady Mary Hunt.[1] While that paper was presented as an educational piece, this will be an actual project to reproduce the 17th century plague cure. While Scarborough’s book was published outside of the SCA time period, I feel that it is a good fit for these trying times of our modern plague. I will be discussing Aqua Alexiteria, a “cure” for plague.

“In the giving this Medicine, you are to consider the Age and Strength of the Patient; the Dose is from Ten Grains, or half a Scruple, to half a Dram, or a Dram, as you see Occasion. Take it dissolved in Sack, White Port, or some other convenient Vehicle; as the Aqua Alexiteria, or some such like. When the Sick takes it for the Plague, or any malignant Fever, let them be in their naked Bed, that they may Sweat well upon it, and so continue for Five or Six Hours; after which they will lie in a kind of breathing Sweat, at which Time moisten their Mouth with the Juice of an Orange, or some other pleasant Cordial, made gratefully Acid, with some few Drops of Oils of Sulphur, Vitriol and Salt, mixed equally alike together.”[2]

I will not be making this cordial exactly as written. Firstly, I think there is an issue with the instructions, which I will cover later on. Secondly, some of the ingredients are very expensive, hard to acquire, and potentially dangerous. I will only use ingredients that I know are not poisonous and that I can get my hands on. Thirdly, I am uncertain that, with my equipment, I can make enough of the cordial to meet the stated volumes listed in the recipe. I will adjust the recipe based on how much alcohol I actual distill.

Before I go any further, allow me to define what a cordial is. A cordial is a flavored alcoholic beverage, normally wine, that has been distilled, mostly for medicinal purposes.[3] The majority of cordial recipes date to the end of the SCA time period but there are enough recipes that we can conclude that they were well known. Some modern cordials, such as Benedictine and Frangelico, date back to the 16th and 17th Century.[4] The theory of distilling itself dates back to the 4th Century BCE when Aristotle wrote Meteorology in which he details the specifics of the process.[5]

The earliest European records of flavored alcohols were written by a Spanish alchemist by the name of Arnold de Vila Nova. In 1240 he wrote the Boke of Wine in which he details methods for flavoring alcohol and proposed the restorative and life giving properties of these beverages. One of Arnold’s students, Raymond Lully, proclaimed that their production was “a divinely inspired gift from Heaven.”[6] Legal documents dating to 1411 mention the distillation of wine into brandy in the Armagnac region of France.[7]

Most of the surviving recipes offer cordials for medicinal use rather than recreational use, and most of these recipes are listed along side of those for liniments, surfeits, poultices and other medicinal tonics. It is more than likely that the liqueur[8] evolved as a sweet beverage as to counter act the bitterness of the herbs and other ingredients. But is not my intention to reproduce a modern cough syrup, nor is it to flavor vodka and pretend that it is period. This recipe will be made from infused brandy, mixed with wine, and then distilled. 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a cordial with regard to medicine, food or beverage, as “any invigorating and stimulating preparation that is intended for a medicinal purpose.” Particularly in regards to one’s health, especially for one’s heart: cordial derives from the Latin for heart: cor. Spirits, distillations of alcoholic beverages (wine and ale) were considered to be good for one’s health all on their own. Whiskey (or whisky) is derived from the Gaelic uisge beatha, or “water of life”: aqua vitae, in Latin.[9] Medieval doctors and alchemists claimed that it could: preserve youth; improve memory; treat diseases of the brain, nerves and joints; revive the heart; calm toothache; cure blindness, speech defects and paralysis and even protect against the plague.[10] By adding additional ingredients, the spirit of alcohol would enhance the medicinal properties of those ingredients, like a super hero team up. 

In a re-enactment context, the evidence suggests that royalty or high nobility could avail themselves of various distilled medicines, mostly through having someone in camp/ their home castle carrying out such distillations. It is still very unclear how much the production of distilled medicines spread down through the social scale. I can imagine that if the King in the 1450’s has it being done for him, at the least the earls and similar will have their own before long. It is clear too by the last decade or two of the 15th century that distilled medicines were widely available in northern Europe, with various illustrations from that time, added to books such as Heironymous Braunschweig’s “Book of Distillation” in the early 16th century, indicating that medical men knew of and used it’s products.

But to return to the opaque area, it is unclear to me at the moment how these remedies fitted in with the wider medical realm and the public at large, in England of the 1440’s- 1490’s. It might be possible to dig up more from MS and more obscure papers, but for comparison, the early 1440’s “A leechbook or collection of medical recipes of the fifteenth century” by Warren R. Dawson, has nothing about distilled medicines, and neither are there any modern additions to the copy of Gilbertus Anglicus pharmaceutical writings, made around 1460 or so. Of course there would be a certain amount of innate conservatism in the official medical profession, but also it takes time for knowledge to spread and become accepted. Clearly some texts were being copied and translated, such as the aforementioned Lily of medicine and the Book of the fifth essence” by John of Rupescissa, which was translated into English in the 1460’s. [11]

 The word distillation is from the Latin destillare, which means to drop or trickle down. This is in references to the end product of any distillate dripping out of a still, after it has been vaporized and then condensed back into a liquid. Medieval stills were of a low pressure variety and they had to be monitored so that they were kept at a particular temperature range. Too low and the alcohol will not vaporize. Too high and too much of the water will also vaporize.

Distillation works by taking advantage of the different boiling points of the alcohol and the water in the starting beverage. While water will start to boil at 212F, ethyl alcohol will start at around 170F. This difference in boiling points lets us boil the alcohol out of the liquid, to be condensed into another container, while leaving the water and other things behind. Mostly. Some of the water will also vaporize, even below the water’s boiling point. The higher the temperature, the more water will be vaporized and higher grades of alcohol, as well as esters, present in the starting liquid, will be extracted. In addition, alcohol and water soluble oils and flavors will also be extracted. Some sugar, for instance, will end up in the distillate container as it tags along with the water vapor. It is this process that makes a cordial different than putting herbs and spices into an existing spirit. The process of distillation cooks the ingredients and produces a better product.

In my mind, using a double, or a triple, distilled vodka will not give one the same end result. First of all, vodkas made in the SCA time period were made from wheat. Not a good substitute for wine, which is made from grapes. Secondly, the lack of the wine’s sugar, esters, and flavors, that get carried along during the distillation, gives a completely different product. 

With that in mind, here is Scarborough’s Aqua Alexiteria.

R Mithridate, Nine Ounces; Virginia Snake-Root, an Ounce; Contrayerva, Zedoary, Winters-Bark, Cinnamon, Bay-berries, Six Drams; Mace, Cloves, Nutmegs, Cardamoms, Juniper-Berries, Jamaica Pepper, Ginger, of each Three Drams; Saffron, Cochineel, Limon-Peels, Orange-Peels, of each Two Drams; Rue, Rosemary, Bawin, Mint, Peniroyal, Sage, Savory, Mother of Thyme, and Lavender-Flowers, Angelica, of each a good Pugil;[12] Spirit of Wine Three Pints; bruise what are to be bruised, and digest all together for a Fortnight, then put thereto White Wine Two Quarts; Distil all in an Alembick, with a Refrigeratory, and draw off Three Pints of Spirit, which reserve; then change the Receiver, and draw off a Quart more, which with treble refined Sugar, make into a Syrup, to which put thereunto the first distilled Spirit, and let them stand until they are clear. This Water may be given from half a Spoonful, to Two Spoonfuls, upon any emergent Occasion: As, in the Morning, a little before Dinner, and at Night going to Bed.[13]

This is such shopping list that I can only conclude that if an apothecary were to make this, they would charge thousands of dollars, in modern money, per dose, like epinephrine. Sir Hugh Plat’s recipe “How to make the ordinarie spirit of wine, that is solde for five shillings & a noble, a pinte”[14] shows how costly these beverages were. A noble was the first gold coin minted in Medieval England and was worth 80 pence. Or 6 shillings and 8 pence. So, Plat’s cordial could be sold for 11 shillings and 8 pence per pint. According to MeasuringWorth.com, this would be worth between $142 and $2400 in 2018 dollars,[15] depending on the method of calculation. Cordials were not cheap. In London, in 1609, the year Plat published this particular recipe book, a barrel[16] of the best ale was sold for 3 shillings and 8 pence, and a barrel of the best beer[17] was sold for 4 shillings. This works out to 3 to 3.5 pennies per gallon.[18] Cordials were too expensive to be consumed as a social beverage.

Ingredient Breakdown:

R Mithridate, or Royal Mithridate. This is a all purpose remedy made up of 70 ingredients. It was reported to have been concocted by Mithridates VI in the 1st century BC.  In the Middle Ages, and into the Renaissance, mithridate was used as a cure-all for all sorts of plague, and was proscribed, in London, up the 18th century. According to Simon Kellwaye (1593), one should “take a great Onyon, make a hole in the myddle of him, then fill the place with Mitridat or Triacle, and some leaues of Rue”.[19]

Aulus Cornelius Celsus details one version of the antidote in De Medicina (ca. AD 30). A recent translation is as follows: “But the most famous antidote is that of Mithridates, which that king is said to have taken daily and by it to have rendered his body safe against danger from poison”. It contained:

• costmary, 1–66 grams
• sweet flag, 20 grams
• hypericum, 8 grams
• Natural gum, 8 grams
• sagapenum, 8 grams
• acacia juice, 8 grams
• Illyrian iris (probably I. germanica), 8 grams
• cardamom, 8 grams
• anise, 12 grams
• Gallic nard (Valeriana italica), 16 grams
• gentian root, 16 grams
• dried rose leaves, 16 grams
• poppy-tears (Papaver rhoeas, a wild poppy with low opiate content), 17 grams
• parsley, 17 grams
• casia, 20–66 grams
• saxifrage, 20–66 grams
• darnel, 20–66 grams
• long pepper, 20–66 grams
• storax, 21 grams
• castoreum, 24 grams
• frankincense, 24 grams
• hypocistis juice, 24 grams
• myrrh, 24 grams
• opopanax, 24 grams
• malabathrum leaves, 24 grams
• flower of round rush, 24–66 grams
• turpentine-resin, 24–66 grams
• galbanum, 24–66 grams
• Cretan carrot seeds, 24–66 grams
• nard, 25 grams
• opobalsam, 25 grams
• shepherd’s purse, 25 grams
• rhubarb root, 28 grams
• saffron, 29 grams
• ginger, 29 grams
• cinnamon, 29 grams

The ingredients are then “pounded and taken up in honey. Against poisoning, a piece the size of an almond is given in wine. In other affections an amount corresponding in size to an Egyptian bean is sufficient.” Of these ingredients, Illyrian iris, darnel, and rhubarb were not commonly found in other versions of the antidote. However, Celsus’ formulation, written 100 years after the death of Mithridates, was one of the first published. Galen called the antidote “theriac” and presented versions by Aelius (used by Julius Caesar), Andromachus (physician to Nero), Antipater, Nicostratus, and Damocratis. The Andromachus formulation closely resembles that of Celsus. The manufacture of antidotes called mithridate or theriac (English “treacle”) continued into the nineteenth century. Ephraim Chambers, in his 1728 Cyclopaedia, says “Mithridate is one of the capital Medicines in the Apothecaries Shops, being composed of a vast Number of Drugs, as Opium, Myrrh, Agaric, Saffron, Ginger, Cinnamon, Spikenard, Frankincense, Castor, Pepper, Gentian, &c”. It is accounted a Cordial, Opiate, Sudorific, and Alexipharmic”. Petrus Andreas Matthiolus considered it more effectual against poisons than Venice treacle, and easier to make. Late versions of the antidote incorporated dried blood or the dried flesh of lizards or vipers or Malabathrum.[20]

 

Virginia Snake-Root. Found in eastern USA, but was imported from the Virginia Colony. It has been shown to stimulate poor appetites, reduce fever, and has some use in neutralizing snake venom. In large doses it can cause vomiting, diarrhea, and miscarriages.

Contrayerva, is a rhizome from Central and South America, used as a stimulant, and sweat enhancer, and as a snake bite cure. It can also cause arrhythmia in the heart and increase the chance of infant death if taken by breast-feeding women.

Zedoary, a relative of turmeric, also found in India.  Used to treat indigestion, gas, and bloating.

Winters-Bark, Drimys winteri or canelo. Native to Argentina and Chile. Brought to England by Sir Francis Drake in 1579. The bark is loaded with Vitamin C and was used as a remedy for Scurvy. Also used for toothaches and colic in babies.

Cinnamon, no variety is mentioned. Was used for pretty much as a cure-all for infections and colds, even though it does not have much provable medicinal benefits.

Bay-berries, Also known as Myrica, candleberry, sweet gale, and wax-myrtle. Native to South America. Used as a flavoring for beer and other alcoholic beverages, much as is hops. Used in traditional medicine for high blood pressure, ulcers, and diarrhea. Modern research shows that there is no evidence for any medicinal benefits.

Mace, from the far east. Used as a spice and to treat gum inflammation and bleeding.

Cloves, varieties are found from North Africa, through out the Middle East, all the way to India and China. Used as a spice for food and beverage, as well as a numbing agent. Fairly effective as a tooth plaque remover and is still used in natural cough drops.

Nutmeg, from the Spice Islands of Indonesia. In Scarborough’s time, Nutmeg was thought that it could cure everything. It couldn’t, but it tastes good.

Cardamom, found in the Middle East. Was recommended for heartburn, IBS, and other digestive issues. Was also used as a relief for sore throats. No mention as to which variety of Cardamom: black, green or white. White cardamom is found in China and doesn’t have much of a taste, but imparts a wonderful aroma to dishes and to incense. I would assume that Scarborough would have used black or green cardamom.

Juniper-Berries, found through out Northern Europe. Was used to treat joint inflammation, kidney stones, and heartburn.

Jamaica Pepper. Known today as Allspice. Like nutmeg, was claimed to cure everything. It does have some minor effect as an antiseptic, due to its high levels of eugenol.

Ginger, from the far east, but was imported to Europe from the time of the Ancient Greeks. Actually useful for nausea and morning sickness, reducing painful menstrual pain, and joint pain, both through ingestion and by external application.

Saffron, from North Africa, Middle East, and Southern Spain. Used to treat depression, PMS, and asthma.

Cochineel, or Cochineal. An insect best known as a source for carmine dye, from Central and South America. I was unable to find any medicinal benefits for Cochineal. Large doses in modern foods have been shown to cause allergies ranging from mild cases of hives to atrial fibrillation and anaphylactic shock. I don’t know why this was included since I could find no period sources describing any health benefits. It would have dyed the mother liquid red, but I am unsure if the end product would have any trace of the red dye, after the distillation process.

Lemon and Orange peel. I think these were added to the mix to provide better flavor. Lemon and Orange oils do distill well.  No mention is given as to these are fresh or dried peels. Or if the pith should be removed or not. I would hazard to guess that it these are being added strictly to add flavor, than the piths would be removed to reduce the bitterness. Although, there are other bitter ingredients in this potion.

Rue. Found all over Europe and Asia. One of the bitter herbs mentioned in Exodus. Was used for a multitude of reasons: heart palpations, breathing issues, headache, arthritis, cramps, fever, intestinal worms, bad breath, and to induce miscarriages. Large doses can lead to stomach, kidney, and liver damage.

Rosemary. Another common herb that was given a multiple of medicinal properties: heartburn, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, memory loss, sunburn treatment, hair loss, toothache, eczema, muscle aches. As well as a wound cleaner and a poison antidote. It tastes nice.

Bawin. Looking at the original text, I do not think the writer actually wrote B A W I N, since bawin isn’t listed anywhere else in the period’s herbals: only in this book. Nor is it to be found in herbals from later centuries. I think that the printer actually used the word Bawm and the font used made it look like Bawin. 

The 19th century A Dictionary of English Plant-names: Part 1, does have a listing for “Bawme (or Bawm), which is listed as Melissa officianlis. Bawm was formerly in great repute in Cumb. as a medicinal plant and Bawm-tea is still a cottager’s antidote to feverish colds.”[21] Melissa officinalis is known by it’s modern, English name, lemon balm, which is native to central Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Lemon balm also has some effect in treating upset stomachs, insomnia, and colic.

Mint. Found almost everywhere. Used for heartburn, toothache, bad breath, bleeding gums, morning sickness, sore throats, coughs, and peppermint oil has been used, in period, for muscle and joint pain. And was used in Classical Roman and Greek times for dry and itchy skin. Scarborough does not say what type of mint to use, though.

Peniroyal, or pennyroyal, a common European herb. Was used to regulate menstrual cycles, treat mouth sores, gout, insect bites, and as an insect repellent. Pennyroyal was also used to induce abortions, although the doses required can cause permanent kidney and liver damage.

Sage, another common herb. Was used for a laundry list of treatments: digestive problems, including loss of appetite, flatulence, stomach pain, gout, diarrhea, bloating, heartburn, excess sweating, sore throats, cold sores, gum disease, clogged nasal passages, depression, driving off demons, reducing menstrual pain, hot flashes, and to help with milk flow while breast feeding. The inhalation of burning sage smoke is still used as a treatment for asthma in places where modern inhalers, nebulizers, and medications are not available.

Savory, another common herb. Used for sore throats, mouth sores, insect bites, and has been shown to slow blood clotting and was used in bleeding to allow more of the “bad humors” to escape the body.

Mother of Thyme, or common thyme, yet another common herb. Was used as a cough remedy, fever, and in reducing lung mucus in sick people. Was used in tooth cleaning recipes, as it contains Thymol which is an anti bacterial agent that is effective against gingivitis. It was also used as a anti-fungal agent for stinky feet.

Lavender-Flowers. Used for treatment of migraines, joint pains, hair loss, and as a insect repellent.

Angelica, native to northern Europe, Asia, and North America. Used to stop bleeding, treat heartburn, running noses, insomnia, joint pain, skin rashes, and was generally thought of as a cure for the Black Death in and of itself. [22]

Now, please take most of these claims with a huge grain of salt as modern medicine has not gathered sufficient evidence of the medical benefits that people have claimed. Although, some of these claims do bare out as true in double-blind trials. Peppermint is still the number one flavoring in toothpaste because of the benefits of peppermint oil on the gums and in reducing bad breath. Mace, cloves, and cardamom can still be found in cough drops as they are effective in reducing scratchy throats and dry coughs.

Looking through this list of ingredients, about half of them were thought to be able to reduce fever and/or inflammation. Others were seen as treatments of heartburn and other digestive problems. While not a panacea for the plague, it is possible that this concoction could ease some minor aches and pains. As well as making one’s dying breath minty fresh.

Spirit of wine. This would be brandy.

White wine. Early in the text, Scarborough waxes on about French wine: “The Wines of Provence and Languedoc, are most commonly Red, and not inferior to Burgundy; but the most excellent Wines for Strength and Flavour, are the Red and White St. Laurence, a Town between Toulon and Nice; and the Frontiniac of Vic, Mirabel, and Frontiniac, Three Towns near the Sea, in Languedoc, where this Wine is made.”[23] Other text discussing distilling wine into brandy call for the best wine, which I will not use, because I am on a budget for this project, and I am reasonably certain that modern wine is far superior to 17th century wine.[24]

 Some of the ingredients I will not be using:

Royal Mithridate: For several reasons. There doesn’t appear to be a set ingredient list: Scarborough doesn’t give one in his works, nor do any of his peers seem to agree on what to use for this miracle spice mix.  The 1746 London Pharamacopoeia lists: myrrh, saffron, agaric, ginger, cinnamon, spikenard, frankincense, treacle, mustard seed,  hartwort seed, balsam, camels’ hay, French lavender flowers, costos root, galbanum, Cyprus turpentine, long pepper, castor juice, hypocistis, storax, opoponax, Indian leaves, cassia lignea, mountain poly, white pepper, scordium leaves, Cretan carrot seeds, carpobabamum, troches of cyperus, bdellium, Celtic spikenard, gum arabic, Macedonian parsley seed, opium, lesser cardamom seed, fenel seed, gentian root, red roses, dittany of Crete aniseed, asarabacca, sweet flag, wild valerian root, fagapenum, spignel root, acacia, skinks’ bellies, and St. Johns wort seed.[25] Harward’s 1732 Electyary lists mostly different ingredients.[26] Culpeper’s 1649 Dispensatory lists 44 different ingredients.[27] They appear to agree on Myrrh, cinnamon, spikenard, frankincense, and opium, but differ on most other ingredients and amounts.

At the final stage {of Galene} the prescribed quantities of 55 herbs previously prepared by various processes, along with the prescribed quantity of squill and viper flesh powder (48 drachms), were added to hedychium, long pepper and poppy juice (all at 24 drachms); eight herbs including cinnamon and opobalsam (all at 12 drachms); 18 herbs including myrrh, black and white pepper and turpentine resin (at 6 drachms); 22 others and then Lemnian earth and roasted copper (at 4 drachms each); bitumen and castoreum (the secretion of beaver); 150 drachms of honey and 80 drachms of vetch meal. Mithridatium was similar but contained fewer ingredients and no viper, but did contain lizard! The other differences were that the opium content of Andromachus’ theriac was higher than that of Mithridatum, which also differed in containing no Lemnian earth, copper or bitumen and 14 fewer herbal ingredients.[28]

 Since there is not a single source for what is in Mithridate, and the fact that some of the ingredients are poisonous,[29] I will not be using it or creating a substitute. I do not think that I need a third reason to skip this ingredient.

Virginia Snakeroot. Well, short of traveling to the East coast of Virginia or the Carolinas and harvesting it myself, I am unable to get any Virginia Snakeroot, which is not in the same family as Tai Snakeroot or Chilean Snakeroot; just similar names. I was only able to find Virginia Snakeroot in herbal tea mixes and in homeopathic “medicine."[30]

Zedoary: At $40 an ounce, this is outside of my budget, unless I want to grow my own. Since it is a close cousin of turmeric, grows in the same parts of the world, and is used as a substitute in regional cuisine, I am going to substitute plain old turmeric from my local grocery store.

Cochineel. I am able to purchase cochineel powder from the Internet, but I will be avoiding it due to it’s reputation as an allergen, even in small doses.

Contrayerva, just the fact that it can cause heart arrhythmia and that it can seriously interfere with heart and blood pressure medication, I will not be using it.

Winters-Bark. I have questions as to what part of the tree to use. The bark is loaded with vitamin C; the leaves have a peppery taste and some antiseptic properties; the flowers have a good deal of nectar; and it produces berries that can be dried and used as a pepper substitute. Also, I am unable to actually purchase any product of Drimys winteri from a reliable source, and for a decent price. I can, however, purchase a whole sapling, but planting one in a greenhouse and waiting six to seven years for it to grow and start flowering would be a little too much work for this project.

Rue and Pennyroyal: While both of these ingredients can be harmful to pregnant women, it is only in large doses that risk occurs. Since only 2 drams of each will be used, I do not think that there will be a health risk when sampling this project. I am only listing them here to show that I did consider not including them in this project. Various health related websites do say that the risk to pregnancy is very low when consumed in small quantities, such as herbs in a stuffing or a soup.

So, my ingredient list will be:

 6 drams (23.3 grams) of:

• Fresh Tumeric
• Cinnamon
• Dried Bay-berries

 3 drams (11.7 grams) of:

• Mace
• Cloves
• Nutmeg
• Greater (black) Cardamom [31]
• Dried Juniper Berries
• Allspice
• Fresh Ginger

 2 drams (7.8 grams) of:

• Dried Lemon Peel
• Dried Orange Peel

 A heavy pinch (1 gram) of:

• Saffron threads[32]
• Dried Rue
• Dried Rosemary
• Dried Lemon balm
• Fresh Mint
• Dried Pennyroyal
• Fresh Sage
• Fresh Savory
• Fresh Thyme
• Dried Lavender flowers
• Dried Angelica flowers

 

Three pints (1.75 liters) of:

• Brandy

 Four pints (2.25 liters) of:

• White wine

The recipe does not tell us what dram to use. Yes, there are varieties of drams of differing weights and volumes. I am going to assume that Scarborough would have been using Apothecaries’ drams. The OED and the Encyclopaedia Britannica tells us that eight Apothecaries’ drams equaled 1 ounce of weight. But not modern ounces. An Apothecaries’ ounce is 1/12th of a pound, a modern ounce is 1/16th. I did find a converter, online, that let me convert Apothecaries’ drams to easy to use grams. I decided to use 1 gram as a universal mass for the items that require a heavy pinch.[33]

The volumes for the alcohol are probably in Imperial pints, which are about 20% larger than US pints. But at this point, I don’t care. Booze is sold in metric volumes. 1.75 liters of brandy is 3.7 US pints but only a little over 3 Imperial pints, so I don’t have to do any fancy conversions.

I will assume that Scarborough would have used dried ingredients: The spices from the other side of the planet would most certainly be dried to survive the long travel time. The herbs from Scarborough’s figurative back yard would most likely also be dried so that they would be available year round. Also, no mention is made of using fresh ingredients, which is often the case in cordial recipes, if fresh herbs are required. However, in our modern world, I can get some fresh herbs year round. The ones I could not find in my local grocery store’s produce section, I picked up dried varieties. I could have used fresh orange and lemon peel, but I had dried varieties in the house.

For the mint, savory, sage, and thyme, I used fresh leaves. The turmeric was also fresh, but was from Jamaica and not India. I cut up the grub like things into chunks small enough to fit into the neck of a bottle. I did the same with the ginger, which was fresh, as well.  I broke the cinnamon into similar small chunks. The nutmeg and cardamom pods I smashed with a ball-peen hammer, so that the inners would be exposed to the brandy, for their soak. I was unable to get my hands on whole mace, so I used powered for convenience.

I did purchase a bottle of brandy from my local liquor store. I could have made or purchased wine and distilled it into brandy, but, from experience, it would have taken 4.5 to 5 gallons of wine to produce 3 Imperial pints of brandy using my hardware. Purchasing brandy was an easy solution. I was unable to find “white” brandy, or un-aged brandy. For some reason, the liquor stores that I frequent no longer carry such things. Nor did I want to use un-aged, flavored brandy. I could have used ginger flavored brandy, but I wanted to control what went into this project and I did not want to use anything labeled, “flavored with ginger and other flavors.” Since I was on a budget, I picked the cheapest, 1.75L bottle of brandy I could find: Odessa brand from Ukraine. Even though it was on the cheap side, it is still labeled as VSOP,[34] which means it had been aged in oak for 4 years. Because of this aging, the brandy has picked up some color and some vanilla flavor from the interaction between the alcohol and the oak. I do not know how much of this vanilla flavor will carry through after I distill it.

I could have made my own white wine, but I did not have the time to let it ferment and age. So, I, again, was forced to purchase wine from my local liquor store. While Scarborough only tells us to use white wine, I knew of his pleasure of French wine, as I mentioned earlier. For this project I will be using 2.25L of a 2018 Pinot Grigio from a winery that dates back to 1480, per the label. And, while reading the label to type up this paragraph, I noticed that I had actually purchased Italian wine from the Cavaliere d’Oro winery in Tuscany. In my defense, it was in the French wine section.[35] I can only say that I was distracted by the knight on the label. Am I going to go back and get French wine? No. I have good wine right here. Am I going to re-write this paragraph so that no one will know that I can’t tell the difference between French and Italian? No. But I will say that while Scarborough talked up French wine, I would guess that he would not turn up his nose at Italian wine. In addition, I highly doubt that anyone will be able to tell the difference once the potion gets distilled.

Clearly, this would be an expensive cordial, whether it worked or not. Mint and sage might have been a penny for a year’s supply, but spices from the far East and the New World would not be cheap. In 1617 prices were set for nutmeg in India; English traders could purchase 1 pound of nutmeg for 4d (4 Pennies) and could sell them in London for 70 to 90 Shillings a pound (840 to 1080 Pennies or 3.5 to 4.5 Pounds). [36] At a time when the average London laborer was making 20 to 30 Pennies a week, this was a luxury item. The cost for just the amount of nutmeg used, in this potion, would be around 24 pennies, or a week’s salary for an average laborer.[37] This “cure” clearly was intended for the richest people of London. Even so, this project has cost me around $100 in supplies. Now, I am only going to use a small amount of the herbs, so I will have plenty for future projects, but we should take this into perspective. $100 of modern money for herbs, spices, brandy and wine is a good chunk of change, and this was only $100, even though some of the items came from places from around the world. Imagine how expensive these items would have been in Scarborough’s time. He would not have been buying three drams of allspice; he would have purchased it by the cask since he was a professional apothecary. I purchased 5.4 drams (21 grams) just for this project.[38]

Method redaction:

Take all of the ingredients and prepare them as needed. “Bruse what are to be brusied” implies that leaves are not ground into powder, but just bruised to open them up for extraction. No mention is given to if the harder spices, the cinnamon and nutmeg, were ground into powder. Personally, I feel that since Scarborough did not mention grinding the ingredients into a powder, he did not intend them to be ground into a power. Two reasons: 1) The goal was to extract the oils of the ingredients, it was not to integrate them into a sauce. 2) From experience with cordials, the larger the pieces, the easier it is to clean, and the less time it takes for the sediment to settle. With clean hands, I rubbed the herbs between them to open them up and prepare them for their brandy soak. The cinnamon, as I mentioned, I broke up into smaller pieces. I used a ball-peen hammer to break open the nutmeg and cardamom pods and to crack the allspice. Since I wasn’t interested in making powder, I used the hammer instead of a mortar and pastille. I was intending on putting everything into a clean, gallon-sized bottle I had left over from a previous cordial project, but I was having difficulties pouring everything into the neck of the bottle. In the end, I decided to use a large Rubbermaid container. The food grade plastic should be fine for the two week soak; and with an air-tight lid, I wasn’t concerned with anything getting in or out.

Into the container went the 1.75L of brandy. Spirit of wine is brandy, not vodka. The flavors are very different. The recipe calls for a two week soak. The brandy will extract alcohol and water soluble oils and flavors. After the two weeks, I poured the brandy, herbs and spices into my still and added my white wine. The herbs and spices must be added to the still so that they can be cooked while the alcohol is distilled. Skipping this step will mean that the final beverage will not be all that it can be. This is actually an issue that mock-cordials have. Soaking herbs and spices in a neutral spirit, such as vodka, then straining the particulate matter out, cannot compare with cooking the oils, flavors, ethers, and other things, and letting those particulates be distilled along with the alcohol. The taste differences between an actual distilled cordial and herbs infused in a spirit are like the differences between night and day.

An alembick, or alembic,  is a style of still and the refrigeratory is cooling tube to assist in the condensation of the alcohol vapor. I do not know what style of workshop Scarborough had. I will assume that he had more than an single still. Perhaps he had a set up similar to the 16th century alchemy lab found in a tunnel under a street in Prague, Czech Republic.

My still is nothing more than a ceramic lined cast iron stock pot with a lid. Inside of the pot I have a half of a brick with a ceramic bowl atop of it. With the lid on, and bags of ice on top of the lid, vapor will rise from the liquid, condense on the inner surface, and drip into the bowl, which is insulated from the heat of the stove. The distilled liquid is then siphoned off with a turkey baster into a waiting container. Not the most efficient method of distillation, but one which works for alcohol, essential oils, and rose water.

The following diagram was given in F. B. Wright’s Distillation of Alcohol And De-Naturing. He lists his source as a 17th century book, but does not list the title. Wright lists the following components

V a wooden vat having a tight fitting cover a, through the center of which a hole has been cut. The wide end of a goose neck of copper pipe g is securely fitted over this aperture, the smaller end of this pipe passes through the cover of the retort R extending nearly to the bottom; wis the steam supply pipe from boiler; M the rectifier consisting of a cylindrical copper vessel containing a number of small vertical pipes surrounded by a cold water jacket; o the inlet for the cold water which circulates around these small pipes, discharging at n; the pipes in M have a common connection to a pipe p, which connects the rectifier with coil in cooler C; s is a pipe to the receptacle for receiving the distillate; u cold water supply pipe to cooler, and W discharge for warmed-up water, k discharge for refuse wash in vat V. The operation is as follows: The vat Vis nearly filled with fermented mash and retort R with weak distillate from a previous operation. Steam is then turned into the pipe; discharging near the bottom of the vat V and working up through the mash. This heats up the mash and the vapors escape up g over into R where they warm up the weak distillate. The vapors thus enriched rise into M, where a good percentage of the water vapor is distilled, that is, condensed by the cold water surrounding the small pipes. The vapor then passes over through C into the coil, where it is liquified and from whence it passes by pipe s into the receiver. The cold water for cooling both M and C can be turned on as soon as the apparatus has become thoroughly heated up.

My still is as different from Wright’s description as possible. As I have already described, my “still” is a low pressure one, unlike the one described by Wright. With the lid placed on the pot, the internal pressure does increase, but not by much, as there is no mechanism to enclose the pressure: hot air can still escape from around the lid. However, the slight increase of internal pressure does serve to allow the alcohol vapor to boil off faster and be retained long enough to condense against the cold lid. I do not think that using different hardware is going to make much of a difference: I am only interesting in the end product and not in reproducing the exact alchemical hardware Scarborough used. The non-reactive ceramic pot would not add or detract from the distillation process. Nor would using an electric stove as opposed to an wood burning fire. Since I would not be able to see the distillate drip out of the still, a method used to determine the temperature of the mother liquid, I will be using a digital thermometer to accurately determine the temperature to insure that I do not bring the solution up to a full boil.

Before I go any further, I must set the matter straight: distillation of alcohol, for human consumption, is illegal within the USA, and before I started this project I examined the law carefully. Article 10, Section 153 of the Special Provisions Relating To Illicit Alcoholic Beverages And Stills states the following:

Any person who shall manufacture any illicit alcoholic beverage or who, not being duly licensed as a distiller under the provisions of the alcoholic beverage control law, shall own, operate, possesses or have under his control any still or distilling apparatus is guilty of a felony. “Still” or “distilling apparatus shall mean any apparatus designed, intended, actually used, or capable of being used for or in connection with the separating of alcoholic or spirituous vapors, or alcohol or spirituous solutions, or alcohol or spirits, from alcohol or spirituous solutions or mixtures, but shall not include stills used for laboratory purposes or stills used for distilling water, oil, alcoholic or nonalcoholic materials where the cubic capacity of such stills is one gallon or less.

 As I would only be distilling about 3 liters of wine and brandy in a non-pressurized stock pot, that is not dedicated for that purpose, and that I would not be selling the product nor transporting it across state lines, I feel that this is a safe project.

Continuing with the redaction: With the three pints of brandy, herbs and spices, and two quarts of white wine in the still (seven Imperial pints of liquid, total), distill three pints of spirits in one container. In a separate container, distill an additional quart of spirits.

This does not make sense to me: too much liquid is being distilled. Also, the next steps are to add sugar to the extra quart and then reduce it down to a syrup. That is a lot of liquid to reduce and a lot of sugar: more sugar than alcohol.

I had to find a second copy of a period printing to double check the text. Two different books to show that a quart is distilled after three pints are distilled. That is five pints of liquid out of a starting volume of seven pints. The average ABV of modern wine is 11.6%; the wine I used is labeled at 12% ABV. There is no reason to assume that 17th century, unfortified wine was any different. If this is the correct amount of distilled product, then that would indicate that the mother liquid was being brought to a boil and water vapor was being removed and distilled in addition to the water that the alcohol molecules had latched onto. Most of the water was being removed along with the alcohol. Even if the starting brandy had an ABV of 40%, the end result of the distillation would be mostly water. Of the initial 7 Imperial pints of brandy and wine, only 1.68 Imperial pints are alcohol.[39]

I think that the recipe should had read “draw off a pint more” which also makes more sense grammatically: “draw off three pints.... then a pint more.” The end result would still be around 55 to 60% water, at best, if we use Scarborough’s equipment and methods. So, I would complete the text as follows:

With the three pints of brandy, herbs and spices, and two quarts of white wine in the still (seven pints of liquid, total), distill three pints of spirits in one container. In a separate container, distill an additional pint of spirits. Mix the single pint of spirit with an equal volume of the whitest sugar and cook it down to a syrup. Mix the syrup into the first three pints of spirit and let sit until any particulate material has settled.

The text does not tell us how much sugar to use, only to use triple refined sugar, which would be white sugar, similar to modern refined sugar.[40] Another expensive ingredient: at this time, sugar was selling for about 18d a pound in London. I think that we are to take an equal volume of spirit and sugar to make a simple syrup. We are not told to cook it down into a thick syrup or to cook it for a given amount of time. Since we will be mixing it, right away, with three pints of liquid, I feel that a simple syrup would be best. Many similar cordial and medicinal syrup recipes don’t explain how to make a syrup, just to do so. The 1854 A Universal Formulary tells us to only make small amounts of syrup so that it doesn’t go bad (“the best is to prepare them only in such quantities as will be used within a short time.”).[41] The 1909 National Standard Dispensatory gives us the following instruction for Aromatic Syrup of Rhubarb, “Digest and evaporate till the liquor is reduced to half a pint; strain, and add one pound of sugar[42], and half a pint of diluted alcohol; then boil a little to form a syrup.”[43] Modern simple syrup recipes call for an equal volume of liquid and sugar.

So, with that in mind, for my redaction for this cordial, I would take one pint of the finest, ground, white sugar I had access to and add it into my one pint of reserved spirit, and bring it up to a boil only long enough to fully dissolve the sugar into the alcohol. Then I would pour the simple syrup, I just created, into the three pints of cordial, and then let it stand until any particulates settle to the bottom of the container. Now, technically, what we would end up with is a liqueur, since we added sugar to it. The sugar would counter-act the bitterness of the rue, snakeroot, winters-bark, and the bay berries. Our liqueur, if we were to actually make it in this fashion, would be extremely sweet, essentially one quarter sugar syrup. But, we are not expected to drink it. We are told to take a half to two spoonfuls at a time. Looking at the spoons of the time period, I would make an educated guess that we are talking about a modern tablespoon amount. And this is similar to other cordial recipes: “...and distyllet aghen ghyf ou wolte and vse at of euer[e]ch day a lytel spone-ful fastyng.”;[44] “...and if a man haue nede, late hym take er-of morn and euyn iiii sponful at onys.”;[45] “helps digestion if two or three or four ounces thereof be drunk, and the patient composes himself to rest.”[46]

My method:

Since my still was an inefficient, low-pressure apparatus, and that I would be strictly regulating the temperature of the liquid, I was not expecting to be able to distill 4 Imperial pints of spirit. Nor is it my intention to turn the entire cordial into a liqueur. My intention was to distill as much alcohol as I could, then divide it into two. Half of the cordial would be left alone for sampling. Of the remaining half, I was planning on taking a quarter of it, making a simple syrup out of that amount, with an equal volume of sugar, and them recombining it with what is left of the second half of cordial. This will give me two products: the cordial and the liqueur. Each can be sampled side by side.

On the day of distillation, I loaded my brick into the stock pot, then poured the infused brandy, along with the herbs and spices, into the pot. Then I added the wine, which brought the liquid up to the top of the brick. Then I put my ceramic bowl on top of the brick, clipped the probe to my thermometer to the edge so that the sensor was about a half an inch from the bottom of the pot. I set the alarm to 170F and placing the lid on the pot, and cranked up the heat. When the temperature hit 150F, I started to back off of the heat and put the first bag of ice on the lid. It took several hours, and several bags of ice, to distill a small amount of cordial.

I sampled the brandy before I poured into the stock pot. Mmmmm. Not good. The ingredients did not play with one another. It did not taste pleasant. Fortunately, the cloves numbed my taste buds, leaving only a ghost of an aftertaste.

Controlling the temperature of the brandy and wine “soup”, and changing the bags of ice often, I managed to distill around two US pints of cordial. I sampled the cordial before it had fully cooled. It was slightly oily, which I had expected: the alcohol had extracted the oils from the cloves, all spice, and other spices, then brought some of these oils along for the ride. As to the taste. I can only describe it as “medicinal”. I have made cordials that ended up somewhat pleasant: this clearly tastes like medicine. The oil from the cloves were very effective; my tongue was slightly numb for a good hour after sampling the warm cordial. If one had a sore throat, this would provide some relief. Allowing the cordial to cool completely, I sampled it a second time. Still tasted medicinal. But the third of a teaspoon of cordial, that I sampled, did reduce the cough that I’ve been dealing with for the last couple of weeks (allergies and weather). Fairly potent stuff. The initial taste of cloves was very overwhelming, before losing most of my sense of taste. It also had a peppery aftertaste, most likely due to the allspice. The hit of cloves was greater than the Water of Cloves that I made a couple of years ago, which was cloves, ginger, and rosemary leaves. This was far more intense of a flavor.

As I suspected, my still was unable to extract four Imperial pints of alcohol while maintaining a temperature of around 170F. After three hours, I had extracted 16 fluid ounces of cordial. After another two hours, I ended up with around 2 US pints, most likely due to the internal temperature rising above 170F and additional water vapor being extracted. In accordance with my plan, I separated 12 ounces of the cordial in a mason jar, then evacuated 3 ounces from that jar to a small pot. Adding in 3 ounces of sugar, by volume, I made a simple syrup, then added the syrup to the mason jar, thus creating a liqueur. This left me a cordial for sampling and the liqueur for more sampling. I used 12 fluid ounces because the mason jars I have hold 16 fluid ounces with a headspace. I wanted to use one mason jar for the liqueur and not have to go out and get a larger jar. I also wanted to use a mason jar because I reasoned that it would be easier to sample with a spoon, as it was intended in the recipe.

I did not want to use ultra refined sugar for this project, nor did I want to use raw sugar, which I use in other A&S projects: The recipe calls for triple refined white sugar. So I purchased a bag of organic, pure cane sugar that still has a bit of color to it. I think that this sugar would be as good as the best sugar Scarborough would have had access to, without being 100% pure sucrose and bleached of all color.

In a small pot, I added 3 fluid ounces of my cordial and the same volume of sugar, then brought them up to a boil and cut the heat, stirring consonantly until all of the sugar grains were dissolved. Then I let the solution cool before adding back into the mason jar. I do not know why Scarborough called for the sugar to be dissolved into the cordial; he must have known that some of the alcohol would have been cooked off while the sugar dissolved. He could have just as easily recommended that the sugar be dissolved into water or wine. But, I cannot fault him for adding sugar; the resulting liqueur tasted much better than the cordial. The medicinal taste was cut down a lot, and the sugar really reduced the overwhelming flavor of the cloves. The end result was very much like a liquid, “all natural” cough drop. It did ease my scratchy throat and reduce the cough I’ve had for the past couple of weeks. It would not have cured the plague, but it would have provided some relief for sick people. Perhaps, the ingredients I did not use would have provided a more beneficial cure-all. Or they could have caused some serious medical complications if they interfered with the medication that I take.

In summary.

This is the most complicated cordial project that I have undertaken, and I have a profound respect for those men and women who made this practice their life’s work. The ingredients, that I purchased, were pricey, but not so expensive that they broke the bank. They would have been far more expensive in Scarborough’s time, and he most likely charged an arm and a leg for the end product. I had thought that I would have been able to reuse the herbs and spices for a second batch, like I would reuse barley after making a batch of beer, but that was not possible. When Scarborough said “digest all together for a Fortnight” he wasn’t fooling around. The herbs and spices were quite mushy after their soak, and after cooking, they resembled cow cud. Completely unusable for anything other than compost. Still, I am happy with this project. Not only did I get two different beverages out of it, but I had fun with the research.

As to my assumption that the original text calling for a quart being turned into a sugar syrup and then mixed with the first three pints of cordial, I think that I was correct in assuming that Scarborough actually meant pint and not quart. 3 ounces of cordial mixed with 3 ounces of sugar and then turned into a simple syrup sweetened 8 ounces of bitter, clovey cordial so much that the entire flavor was changed. If I had taken a quart of cordial, mixed it with a quart of sugar, turned it into a simple syrup, then diluted with three pints of cordial, all you taste would be sugar syrup. And, if we were expected to take a quart of cordial and a quart of sugar and cook it down into a thick syrup, we would end up with candy of some sort. No, I think a 1/4 mix of simple syrup to cordial is correct. Still liquid, so that it can be easily poured into another container, and not sticky.

 

[1] Ronsen
[2] Scarborough, p21
[3] A flavored non-distilled alcohol is hippocras
[4] 1517 and 1676 respectively
[5] Frisinger
[6] Anonymous
[7] Hannum, pp. 62
[8] A cordial that has been sweetened with sugar.
[9] Michael Salernus, in the 12th century, called his distilled wine (brandywine) aqua ardens, which means “burning water”, because the distilled wine could be easily set aflame.
[10] They couldn’t.
[11] Guthriestewart
[12] OED: A small handful, or a large pinch, of something.
[13] Scarborough, p30.
[14] Plat DfL, page E3
[15] Whether we convert based on the fixed prices of standard goods and services (food, shelter, clothing) or the wages of the average laborer.
[16] 36 gallons
[17] Beer was ale made with hops.
[18] Stow. p363
[19] Kellwaye, no page number. North, p55
[20] Wikipedia, just so that I did not have to track down, and type in, the original source of this list of ingredients.
[21] p28
[22] Descriptions came from a variety of sources
[23] Scarborough, p7
[24] The proof of my statement would be a lengthy research paper in and of itself.
[25] Haigh, p2044
[26] Sonnedecker p36
[27] Griffin
[28] Griffin
[29] Caster seeds, myrrh spikenard, opium. Nope.
[30] Distilled water waved near a picture of Snakeroot.
[31] Scarborough did not specify what kind of Cardamom to use. I have Greater (black) and Lesser (green) Cardamom pods in the house, so I flipped a coin to determine which one to use.
[32] This was supposed to be 2 drams, per the recipe, but I only had just under 2 grams of saffron in the house and did not want to go out and spend a lot of money on an additional 5 or 6 grams. What I had was the remainder of a gift from friends of the family who lived in Kuwait for several years and brought back a half kilo of top quality saffron for friends and family.
[33] Oh nose! I have too much Thyme on my hands.
[34] Very Superior Old Pale
[35] And on sale.
[36] Fisher, p297
[37] Various
[38] That was the smallest container of allspice available.
[39] Assuming that Scarborough’s brandy and wine were as alcoholic as mine - 40% and 12% ABV.
[40] Most likely not as refined or uniform in crystal size.
[41] p520
[42] A pint’s a pound, the world ‘round.
[43] no page number
[44] “...and distill again if you like, and take a little spoonful every day while fasting.” Johnstone Manuscript: 1400-1450, Henslow, p73
[45] “...and if a man have need, let him take 4 spoonfuls at once, morning and evening.” Sloane Manuscript 521: 1490-1500 Henslow, p142
[46] French, no page number listed

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Strange Things Found in Medieval Manuscripts

 Who? Me?

This is a manuscript image of  St. Matthew writing his Gospel. From a 9th or 10th century bible: Bodleian Library, MS. Auct. D. 2. 16, fol. 28v. It's clear that not every scribe, in the middle ages, was an artistic genius. While my free-hand skills aren't anything to write home about, I think I could do a better job than this.  It's clear proof that medieval scribes, and manuscripts, came in different skill levels.

Or, is it something more sinister?