Le Menagier de Paris c.1393
Beverages for the Sick - Another Bochet Kept Four Years
Original
ANOTHER BOUCHET KEPT FOUR YEARS, and perhaps you could make a whole batch more or less at one time if you wished. Combine three parts water and one part honey, boil and skim until it reduces to a tenth, and then throw in a vessel: then refill your pot and do the same again, until you have enough; then let it cool and complete your batch: your bouchet will emit something like must which works. If you can, keep it continually full so that it can emit, and after six weeks or a month you must draw off the bouchet as far as the lees and put it in a copper tub or other container, then stave in the vessel where it stands, remove the lees, scald, wash, replace the staves, and fill it with what you have left, and keep; and do not warm it up if it broached. And then have four and a half ounces of finely powdered cinnamon and an ounce and a half of cloves and one of grains beaten and placed in a cloth bag and hung by a cord from the stopper. Note that the scum which is removed, for each pot of it take twelve pots of water, and boil together, and this will make a nice bouchet for the servants. Any skimming from honey can be used in the same proportions. |
Redaction
I would probably actually put the spices in at the same time as the year to impart more flavour into the brew as I have noticed that my brews ferment quickly in Adelaide and to wait a month it would have almost stopped fermenting. |
Notes:
1oz = 28.3 gm
1oz = 28.3 gm