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Author Archives: mysteryofmead
Manuscripts and Spiced Small Mead
I spent last week in Syracuse, NY looking about 200 years in the past (ahh, modern history), helping the family genealogist (hi, Mom). While searching for a scrapbook mentioning my 3x great-grandfather, we found ledgers and other books containing household … Continue reading
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Occo Hydromel Compositum 1575
The last post was a plain mead or hydromel (honey and water only). Roughly 20% of the recipes I have cataloged to date are for plain mead. That does not mean they are devoid of interest, the proportions of honey, … Continue reading
Occo’s Hydromel
Our recipe this week goes back to basic hydromel. The recipe comes from this text. Occo, Adolf. (1575). Pharmacopoeia seu Medicamentarium pro Republica Augustana. Willerus: Johann Georg Werdenstein. Retrieved from Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=YEA6AAAAcAAJ .See p.282 of the book for our … Continue reading
Mede of Poles, Muscovites, and Englishmen
Charles Estienne, also known as Carolus Stephanus was born in 1504 and died in 1564. As a physician, he is credited with discovering the spinal canal and wrote about human anatomy. He was involved in printing in Paris. Relative to … Continue reading
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The fifth and final recipe from UPenn Ms. Codex 252, known as the Maddison Family Receipt Book, is for something I do not consider mead, but which is called mead in the text, and which serves as a good mechanism … Continue reading
UPenn Manuscript Mead III
The fourth recipe from UPenn Ms. Codex 252, known as the Maddison Family Receipt Book, is for ‘meade’. Transcription of manuscripts requires some practice. While printing typefaces for English language books of the 17th century are relatively easy for the … Continue reading
UPenn Mead from Digby
The third recipe from UPenn Ms. Codex 252, known as the Maddison Family Receipt Book, is for ‘white metheglin’. Among its 17 named flavor additions is musk, which is derived from a gland of the male musk deer (by killing … Continue reading
Lemon Rosemary Mead UPenn MS
The second recipe from UPenn Ms. Codex 252, known as the Maddison Family Receipt Book, is for lemon rosemary mead. This manuscript is typical in containing both medical and culinary recipes. While some manuscripts are almost completely medical, or almost … Continue reading
Maddison Family Receipt Book 1
The recipes for the next five weeks all come from a single source, a manuscript held by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. UPenn Ms. Codex 252 Is also known as the Maddison Family Receipt Book. According to the catalog entry, … Continue reading
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Palladius’ Pomegranate c.1420
Last week I presented the recipe for Palladius’ Pomegranate mead, dated to about 400 CE. This week presents the same recipe, from a Middle English manuscript of about 1420. But this version has been intentionally or unintentionally changed. A reminder, … Continue reading
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