Richard's English Hous-wife Ipocras
From EastKingdomWiki
| Full Recipe Name | ||||||
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| Ipocras | ||||||
| Recipe Source | ||||||
| The English Hous-wife | ||||||
| Brewer | ||||||
| Richard Heyworth | ||||||
| Panel Information | ||||||
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| Beverage Information | ||||||
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Brewing Details
- Brewer: Richard Heyworth
- Recipe Source: The English Hous-wife (1623)
Original Recipe
To make Ipocras, take a pottell of wine: two ounces of good Cinamon, halfe an ounce of ginger, nine cloves, and sixe pepper cornes, and a nutmet, and bruise them and put them into the wine with some rosemary flowers, and so let them steepe all night, and then put in sugar a pound at leasts and when it is well settled, let it runne through a woolen bag made for that purpose: thus if your wine be clarret, the Ipocras will be red; if white, then of that color also
Redaction
To make Hippocras, take a half gallon of wine, two ounces of cinnamon, half an ounce of ginger, nine cloves, six peppercorns, and a nutmeg. Bruise them all and place them into the wine with some rosemary flowers, then let them steep all night. Add at least a pound of sugar, and once the sugar has settled, strain it through a woolen bag. If the wine is claret, the Hippocras will be red; if it is white, it will be white.
Ingredients
- 1/2 gallon (2.5 bottles) of Chateau Guichot Bordeaux Clairet 2020
- 2 oz cinnamon sticks
- 1/2 oz ginger root, sliced
- 9 cloves
- 6 peppercorns
- 1 nutmeg, bruised
- Rosemary Flowers (handful)
- 1 lb Akenton Natural Raw Cane Sugar (Unprocessed, Unbleached, Unrefined)
Most of this recipe was fairly straightforward, but I had four things to work out. First, it takes a "pottell" of wine. This is Middle English way to refer to a half-gallon. Second, there was no information on how many rosemary flowers to use, so I used a handful. My rosemary plant stubbornly refused to bloom, so I had Mistress Amy Webbe mail me some. The recipe calls for Claret (or "clarret"), but the Claret of 1623 was very different than the Claret of today - a sweeter, pinkish wine more similar to a Rose'. I found Chateau Guichot's Bordeaux Clairet, which "similar to the light wine of the Middle Ages that was exported to England." Finally, the original recipe just calls for sugar. But what kind of sugar? Some research suggested that sugar prices had come down greatly by 1623, due to Spanish plantations on the island of Cuba, meaning sugar didn’t have to come to Europe exclusively from Madeira, the Canary Islands, and trade with the East. Much modern sugar comes from beet-sugar, which is a process developed in the 1750s. Therefore, I found a sugar that was verified to be cane sugar and that contained no modern processing, so it would be as close as possible to that of 1623.
Process and Notes
I placed the wine and ingredients (picture of ingredients in appendix) into a ceramic half gallon jug and then steeped overnight (picture of the jug in appendix). The next day, I added a pound of the raw sugar (picture in appendix), and while the sugar was settling, I took a square piece of wool, folded it in half, and backstitched it into a Hippocras sleeve, which I wrapped around an embroidery hoop to give the structure seen in the historical pictures of such a sleeve (pictures in appendix). Once I had finished, the sugar had settled, and I poured the wine out of the jug, through the bag, and into standard glass wine bottles. Traditionally, this Ipocras would have been served almost immediately after it was ready; I used the wine bottles to keep it between the gap in time between the rosemary flowers blooming and the opportunity to panel.
The jug I poured from for the panel was a small ceramic jug such that you might use at a Renaissance table for a beverage meant to be consumed in small quantities, such as this rich Ipocras.
References
- The English Hous-wife. 1623. Markham, Gervase. Page 112.
- "Potel and Potelle." Middle English Compendium. Found at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED34173
- "Bordeaux Wine: Claret." Wikipedia. Found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bordeaux_wine#%22Claret%22_term
- "Clairet." Wikipedia. Found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clairet
- "A Brief History of Sugar." Tastes of History. Found at: https://www.tastesofhistory.co.uk/post/a-brief-history-of-foods-sugar
Panel Results
- Documentation:
- Authenticity:
- Complexity:
- Exploration:
- Aesthetics:
- Workmanship:
- Final Score: 85