Clareyt: a balanced medieval wine

Balance was an important concept for the medieval cook, because medieval medical theory held that different foods increased the production of different humors within the body.  Thus, eating the right foods was essential to keeping your humors properly balanced.  Balancing your humors would help you recover from disease and, ideally, avoid disease in the first place, so eating a balanced diet was essential.

Medieval dietetics was a complex subject (see this link for a nice overview).  If you could afford it, you could get a physician to prescribe an individualized diet designed to help you achieve an optimal balance of humours.  In general, cooks tried to balance dishes according to the properties the ingredients were perceived to have: hot, cold, dry, and moist.

This clareyt recipe from the Netherlands is very similar to the hyppocras I made previously, but using white wine instead of red.  The term clareyt or clareit usually, though not always, meant a spiced white wine*, which had been strained through a cloth to remove any sediment.

It conforms well to medieval ideas of balance.  In this recipe white wine, considered cold and moist according to Hippocrates, is balanced with spices which were considered hot and dry.  According to medieval medical theory the ideal balance for humours should be slightly warm and slightly moist, i.e. slightly sanguine, so a wine which has these characteristics is obviously a healthy drink that will promote a good balance of humors.

Om goeden finen witten clareyt te maken

Om goeden finen witten clareyt te maken.  Neemt twee vierendeel ende een half pinte witten wijn of petau Dan neemt van dien wijn een lettel ende maecten werm in dien wijn doet bruyn suycker ende rueret so lange tot [28] dat dit suicker al wel ghesmolten es in dien wermen wijn Dan mingelt daer in een once ende een half once van de[30]sen na volghende poeder wel ende seer Dan suldijt ghie ten duer den sack acht oft neghe weruen ende clarify ceret Dyts dat poedere Neempt wt ghelesen caneel witten ghimber/ greyne lanck peper/ galigaen calini aromatici coriander asi. Maect hier af poedere ende laet al met duer loopen

To make good fine white clareyt

To make good fine white clareyt. Take two vierendeel [approx. 1.3 litres or 2 pints each] and a half pint of white wine or [wine of] Poitou. Then take a little of this wine and make it warm; into this wine put brown sugar and stir it as long until the sugar is all well melted in the warm wine.  Then thoroughly mix into it an ounce and a half of this following powder. Then you shall pour it through the sack eight or nine times and clarify it. This is the powder. Take fine cinnamon white ginger, grains of paradise, long pepper, galingale, sweet flag [Acorus calamus], coriander in equal parts. Make powder of this and let it all run through [the sack] together.

From Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen, English translation by Christina van Tets.


The original recipe makes 2.6 liters, while my modernized recipe is optimized to make one 0.75 liter bottle of clareyt.

Long pepper, grains of paradise, and galangal can be hard for a 21st century cook to obtain.  It’s worth trying your Indian grocer or an online supplier, and I've provided what I think are reasonable substitutions.  The original recipe also calls for sweet flag, a plant used in traditional medicine to aid digestion.  It probably features in the recipe because of its perceived medicinal benefits.  However there are few clinical studies on its effects “due to concerns of toxicity”.  I have omitted sweet flag from my recipe and I suggest you do too.


Ingredients 

1 bottle white wine
Brown sugar, to taste
½ teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon grains of paradise (substitute with a mix of black pepper and cardamom)
½ teaspoon long pepper (substitute with black pepper, nutmeg, and cardamom)
½ teaspoon galangal (substitute with more ginger)
½ teaspoon coriander

Instructions

Heat a small quantity of the wine, and add the spice powder and half a teaspoon or so of brown sugar.  Stir until the sugar dissolves, then add the rest of the wine then strain it all through a cloth to get the sediment out.

These kids of recipes were intended to be made with sweet wine so I used moscato to make my clareyt, and if I make it again I'll consider leaving the sugar out entirely.  I don't think it's really necessary, but maybe 16th century Netherlanders had more of a sweet tooth than I do.

Unlike mulled wine today, clareyt was served cold (presumably cellar temperature, not fridge temperature), and a similar recipe in the same book recommends the clareyt is better if it's allowed to sit for a day before drinking, so I let it sit for a day before trying it.

For a modern wine drinker, clareyt has a strange taste.  It's sweet and a little syrupy, like a dessert wine, but it has clear notes of pepper and ginger with a warm, peppery after taste.  It tastes more like some kind of cordial than a wine, or maybe a wine-based cocktail.  Presumably that's how it's supposed to be, but it's so hard to know how these things tasted in period.

I want to try this recipe with other types of white wine like Riesling or chardonnay, because I think the results could be interesting.  And from a modern perspective, treating it like a cocktail opens up interesting possibilities.  What if it was served over ice, with a garnish of lime and sliced ginger?  There are a lot of summer drink possibilities here.


The Historical Food Fortnightly challenge: Balance.

The receipt/recipe: White clareyt from Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen.

The date/year and region: 16th century, from the Netherlands, but these recipes were popular all over medieval Europe.

How did you make it: See above.

Time to complete: 20 minutes, plus a day's waiting time.

Total cost: $9.50 for a bottle of Banrock Station moscato.

How successful was it?  On the whole I prefer hyppocras, but that's just because I'm more of a red wine drinker.  It's a very pleasant drink, and if you enjoy sweet wines you'll probably like it a lot.

How accurate is it?  I'm not sure how moscato compares to the kind of wines that would have been used, so it's hard to tell.

*  The term claret came to refer to French red wine around the beginning of the 17th century. 

St Birgitta's cap

In the later medieval period, caps were an everyday clothing item for both men and women.  They kept people's hair clean and out of the way, stopped people's heads from getting sunburnt, and gave women something to pin their veils onto.  Like other utilitarian objects they don’t usually survive, but there is a 14^th century cap which has been preserved as a relic, because it’s said to have belonged to St Birgitta of Sweden.  It’s an interesting item, made from two halves joined together with knotwork and finished with an embroidered band.

YouTuber Morgan Donner has put together two excellent videos on how to make this cap.  She has a video specifically about how to do the knotwork:

...and a longer video, which takes you through the entire process of making the cap.

Thanks to Morgan's videos, I was able to replicate the cap.  There is also a very good tutorial from Cathrin Åhlén at Katafalk, complete with a pattern, which I found really useful.

My knotwork is made from 6 linen threads, each of which should be about 5 times the length of the knotwork.  I started at the back of the cap and left half of each thread as a tail while I did the herringbone rows.  Then I used the tails to weave around the herringbone stitches and thus complete the knot.  It’s annoying if one of the tails isn’t long enough, but not a huge problem because you can darn in another length of thread.  Small mistakes in the weaving aren’t obvious either.

I'm 98% sure this photo shows the place where I had to darn in another length of thread.

And this is the back of the cap showing where the knotwork starts.

I found that a strip of thermal-backed curtain fabric works really well as a backing to stabilize the two halves of the cap while you complete the knotwork.  However, you’ll need to be very careful that whatever you use to draw the grid on your curtain fabric isn’t going to rub off onto your cap, or use a washable fabric pen that won't matter if it rubs off.  I used a biro, and was not very happy to discover that even when dry it transferred itself to my cap.  Fortunately, Sard Wonder Soap lives up to its name.

In the comments on Morgan's video about making the cap, someone suggested it might have originally been made for a child, with the knotwork added later so it would fit an adult.  I also wonder whether it might have been a regional style.  The images of caps which don't appear to have embroidery come from other parts of Europe, and the design feels very Scandinavian to me.  It reminds me of the wire posements found at Birka and other places, and it's based on the number 6, which is a recurring pattern with ancient Scandinavian textiles.



HSM details

The Challenge:  Everyday.  Caps like this were part of the 14th century European woman's everyday wardrobe, although they weren't always embroidered.

Material: Part of a pillowcase that I'm reasonably certain is linen.

Pattern: Cathrin Åhlén's pattern, which is available on her blog.

Year:  14th century.

Notions:  Linen thread.

How historically accurate is it?  It's made from linen like the original, in the same way as the original, so far as I can tell.  While it's not an exact copy, I like to think it's pretty close.

Hours to complete:  Around 10.

First worn: around the house after photographing.

Total cost: Probably a dollar or so.  I got the pillowcase, along with another pillowcase and a sheet, for $6 at the Sallies.