Syrups: two syrups based on the sekanjabin
receipt enclosed after the list of herbs appendix. There are also receipts
for such syrups in the European household books of the 16th
century, although such syrups appear to have been intended for medicinal
use rather than simple gustatory pleasure. The syrup of Vinegar in the
Hess transcription is intended to treat a fever; this is also a suggested
use of sekunjabin in the period Andalusian recipe translated by D.
Friedman (see attached).
Both syrups were made on the same day and as experiments.
I’d tasted mint sekunjebin in the past, and had liked it, but thought to
experiment and find something even more appealing to my taste. I first
tried substituting two cups of brown sugar for two of the cups of white
sugar in the standard sekunjabin recipe. Well, that was pleasant enough,
but the brown sugar flavor was really powerful—I had to add more mint than
the receipt called for because the brown sugar was unexpectedly strong.
I’d had something lighter in mind. For the second batch, I did not mess
with the proportions of the basic ingredient list, but instead used
different herbs: lemon balm and lemon verbena leaves. Lemon balm is
certainly in use as a culinary or medicinal herb in period; lemon verbena,
as a New World herb, may have been known in period, as the Spanish
colonists loved it and brought it back to Spain, but I have not yet found
definitive evidence that lemon verbena was known in period. However, I
didn’t have quite enough lemon balm to get the flavor I wanted, so I added
the verbena. Interestingly, I also noted that the candied lemon verbena
leaves made a tasty snack!
Thus, in both syrups, I put water, distilled white
vinegar, and sugar in a pan. I heated these ingredients until the sugar
was melted, and then I added the herbs. I let the herbs cook in the syrup
mixture until they turned, oh, kind of crispy is the best way to describe
it, and then I removed and discarded (or ate!) them.
I intend to make more syrups in this way, experimenting
with different wine vinegars, maybe honey instead of sugar, and a variety
of herbs. The Hess transcription has an amazing variety of syrups, and I’d
like to try them all and more.
Sweet Bags: two bags of potpourri. Hess’s
transcription includes a number of receipts for potpourri, perfumes, and
"sweet bags." I did not have the needed ingredients to exactly replicate
the receipts as presented in the Hess transcription. Therefore, I used
what I had that was period and followed the directions to the best of my
ability! Two of the receipts from Hess follow:
#314. To make a perfume to stand in the room. Take 2 or 3
quarts of rose buds or the leaves of a damask roses, and put them in a pot
with bay salt, three or four grains of musk, and as much of ambergris,
twenty or thirty drops of oil of rodium, and a little benjamin, and
storeax together in a chiney pot, or any other that is handsome and keep
it always close covered. But when you have a mind to have your room sweet,
you may take off the cover.
#316. To make moss powder for a sweet bag. Take two pounds
of the moss of the sweet apple tree, gathered between the two Lady days,
and infuse it in a quart of damask rose water, 24 hours, then take it out
and dry it in an oven on sive bottoms. Then beat it into powder, and put
into one ounce of lignum aloes beaten and searced, two ounces of orriss, a
dram of musk, half a dram of ambergris, a quarter of a dram of civit. Put
all these into a hot mortar and beat them together with a hot pestle. Then
searce them through a coarse hare searce. After, put into a bag and lay it
amongst your (linens ?). {transcription unclear}
I based two mixtures upon these receipts. In reading them,
I came to understand that I needed several herbal ingredients to act as
perfumes, fixatives, and carriers of essential oils. I gathered my
ingredients from my storage area and tossed them into a bowl, blended them
up, and covered them. I then put them aside to allow the scents to blend
and age for a bit. The rose mixture smells pretty much the same now as it
did when made, as it is primarily rose based, but the second mix, the
spicier mix, at first smelled very strongly of cloves but has now blended
nicely into a spicy scent with a strong tone of patchouli.
#1) Orange peels, rose petals, rosewater. All things just
added into a bowl and mixed, as described above. I did not choose to grind
the ingredients to a fine powder, because earlier experience with herbal
scent bags has taught me that whole herbs will retain scent longer and
will deliver a delightful increase in scent when I squeeze the bag in my
hand, even when the herbal mix seems to have no more scent to it. I put
the mixture, after letting it age a week or so, into a plastic bag,
primarily to protect the cloth of my little sweet bag, and then put the
plastic bag into the small bag. Orange peels work both as an additional
scent and a fixative.
#2) Patchouli EO, cinnamon, cloves, oranges, lemon balm.
Same procedure as above. I was a little hesitant about using the patchouli
EO, as patchouli, as a perfume plant, didn’t arrive in England until 1800
or so. However, patchouli was in use in the orient as a moth repellant and
scent during period; individuals purchasing cloth imported from the orient
would have been familiar with the scent because of its use in protecting
the cloth. As I love patchouli, I went ahead and used it, based on the
fact that I would have smelled it in my silk stores, even if I didn’t know
what it was!
Annotated
Bibliography
PRIMARY SOURCES
Borradaile, V. & R., translators. The Strasburg
Manuscript: A Medieval Painter’s Handbook. Alec Tiranti. London:1966.
Contains directions for making several sorts of "good soap" from
scratch.
Friedman, D. & E. Cook. Cariadoc's Miscellany:
Drinks http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/drinks.html. Source of redacted period recipes; Sikanjabîn is presented
both as a traditional recipe and a period receipt.
Gerard, J. Gerard’s Herbal: A History of Plants. M.
Woodward, ed. Senete. London:1994. Greatly shortened version of the
massive, late 16th c. herbal by John Gerard. While quite useful
in identifying plants and their lore, it was not as helpful as the
household books, see Hess, K., Platt, H., and Nostradamus, M.
Hess, K, transcriber. Martha Washington’s Booke of
Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats. Columbia UP. New York: 1995. Book of
Elizabethan and Jacobean receipts, including many herbal comforts and
treats, said to have been owned by Martha Washington.
Nostradamus, M. The Elixirs of Nostradamus. K.
Boeser, ed. Moyer Bell. Wakefield, RI: 1996. Collection of herbal,
cosmetic, and other receipts written by the French physician, Nostradamus,
and printed in 1552. I did not specifically redact any of these receipts;
however, there is much similarity between the receipts in this book and
the other 16th century books.
Platt, Hugh. Delights for Ladies. 1594. Compendium
of late Elizabethan household receipts, et cetera.
Smith, C. and J. Hawthorne. Mappe Clavicula: A Little
Key to the World of Medieval Techniques. American Philosophical
Society. Philadelphia:1974. Anonymous treatise of the 10th
century, containing a vast and varied number of receipts for making all
sorts of things. Contains instructions on making castile soap and a
suggestion for improving soap; that is, in receipt 288-D, writer instructs
that soap will be made better and reddish if poplar berries are added.
While this book contains a plethora of receipts, the number of household
receipts are limited and often randomly inserted, making them difficult to
find.
SECONDARY SOURCES
Kowalchik, C & W. Hylton, ed. Rodale's Illustrated
Encyclopedia of Herbs. Rodale Press. Emmaus, PA: 1987
Kruger, A. Herbs. Dragon’s World. London:1992.
Useful herbal, provides better drawings of the herbs than any of the other
herbals in this reference list, and as such, is indispensable when in the
field hunting down herbs for foraging. This would certainly be an instance
when a modern reference is a far sight better than a period reference.
Unfortunately, the range of herbs covered is not as extensive as Rodale or
Gerard.
Landsberg, S. The Medieval Garden. Thames &
Hudson. New York:1995. Useful, well illustrated book on medieval gardens,
including useful lists of plants mentioned as grown in a variety of period
sources not necessarily related to herbals.
Appendix 2
Herbs used in this entry, by common and
Latin name
Questions, comments, suggestions, thoughts? I welcome correspondence at
merouda (at) hotmail (dot) com.
