Re: requesting aethelbrose recipe

[Tom Brady <tabrady@mindspring.com>]

Poster: Tom Brady <tabrady@mindspring.com>

On a lovely winter's day, Her Grace, Duchess Lorna did ask:
>Does anyone have a good aethelbrose, athelbrose, ethelbrose, I'm not sure how
>to spell it, but it requires that one soak oatmeal in I believe heavy cream,
>there is some honey involved and some kind of liquor.

Your Grace, I not only have a delicious recipe, I have made it and will
vouch for it. I kept this on file from The Rialto, where it originally
appeared on 24 April, 1995, written by the estimable Lothar (Roslyn Rice).
Here is the pertinent text of the post (all typos mine, since Dejanews' 1995
archive is currently unavailable):

AEthelbross
-----------
Ingredients:
        2-3 cups rolled oats
        2-3 cups water
        1-1 1/2 cups more water

        4 cups Scotch (the better the quality the better the brew)
        1 cup honey
        1 cup cream or half-n-half

Equipment needed:
        Two large bowls
        measuring cup
        spoon
        cheese cloth

Makes 1/2 gallon

Instructions:
1. In a large bowl, mix oats and water, stir, and let the mixture sit until
the water is totally absorbed (overnight).
2. Add 1-1 1/2 cups more water to the mixture; let it sit 2 hours.
3. Strain oat/water mixture through 2-3 layers of cheesecloth into a large
bowl by squeezing and wringing globs of oatmeal through the cloth until the
oats are nearly free of water. This is messy and requires a lot of effort!
Reserve pressed oats for oat cakes [see recipe below].
4. Add scotch, honey, and cream to oat-water. Mix until ingredients are blended.
5. Serve at room temperature or chilled. Best served cold.

Oat Cakes
---------
Ingredients:
        Oats
        Water
        Butter
        (optionally sugar)

Equipment:
        Mixing bowl
        Griddle or skillet
        Pancake turner

Makes approximately 20? cakes

Instructions:
1. Take oats reserved from AEthelbross, and mix with a bit of water, butter,
and possibly sugar until you have created a relatively dry mixture of
ingredients.
2. Make thin patties from the mixture and cook on a greased griddle or
skillet like pancakes until the oats on both sides are golden brown and the
patty is cooked through. This will require low heat and some patience.

The resulting cake is hard, sweet (especially if you add sugar), and dry.
They go along very nicely with AEthebross. The oat-stuff left after making
AEthelbross is basically waste; this is somethign useful to do with it. It
is essentially an oatmeal cookie fried in a pan.
---------
Duncan's comments: I've made the AEthelbross, but not the oat cakes. I used
a blended scotch (I think single malt is a bit much considering all the
other stuff being mixed in), clover honey bought in bulk from my local
health food store, and straight heavy whipping cream. The resulting drink is
thick, sweet, creamy, and potent enough to knock your socks off. I can
recommend it highly - in fact, I'll probably have some with me at Twelfth Night.

Slainte!
-Duncan, yr. inebriated cook
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Brady             tabrady@mindspring.com          SCA: Duncan MacKinnon
  See my web pages at http://www.technomancer.com/~duncan/ for pointers
       for the Society for Creative Anachronism and gay & lesbian links

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