Saturday 4 October 2008

First item of the persona challenge

I have a persona challenge to learn things that 16th century housewives in Germany/Augsburg would have known.

Right now I'm making an apple drink from a recipe from The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened. It is 17th century but I'm hoping the food habits didn't change too much from the 16th century nor between English food and German food. It feels like such a basic recipe I'm hoping it will be ok.

The recipe is: APPLE DRINK WITH SUGAR, HONEY, &c
A very pleasant drink is made of Apples, thus; Boil sliced Apples in water, to make the water strong of Apples, as when you make to drink it for coolness and pleasure. Sweeten it with Sugar to your tast, such a quantity of sliced Apples, as would make so much water strong enough of Apples; and then bottle it up close for three or four months. There will come a thick mother at the top, which being taken off, all the rest will be very clear, and quick and pleasant to the taste, beyond any Cider. It will be the better to most taste, if you put a very little Rosemary into the liquor, when you boil it, and a little Limon-peel into each bottle, when you bottle it up.

So what I'm doing is coring apples, slicing them thinly, boiling them with water and two twigs of rosemary. Once it's cooled down a bit I'm going to remove the worst of the apple peels and add some water. I'll taste it with some honey and see how much honey I should add. Then I'll pour in the yeast. I'm using a Wyeast Cider 4766 that my husband have bought for me. Once it seems to have fermented enough I'll add some lemon peel and let it steep before I bottle it.

I'll return in a few months and let you know how it tasted.
I tested this recipe on some apple juice without fermenting it and that was very tasty so I'm hoping it will be the same when fermented.

I'm counting this as part of my persona challenge for the A&S50 challenge since I figure something like this would probably have been made by 16th century housewives in germany. :)

3 comments:

Sara L. Uckelman said...

Apple and rosemary, it's not a combination that would ever have occurred to me, but the recipe sounds great. I definitely want to hear how it turns out!

Malin said...

It's really yummy unfermented. :)
The appleslurry smelled very nicely but tasted a bit weak.
I am a bit worried that the apple taste won't kick though once it's finished, so I might add some apple juice without preservatives later on.
We'll have to see what happens. Right now I'm waiting for the yeast to get going.

Malin said...

Alas it was nasty once it started to ferment. I think the mixture got too weak so the lack of alcohol made it go bad.
I will try it again just using apple juice.