Re[2]: self-documenting cordials

["Chuck Graves" <Chuck_Graves@mmacmail>]

Poster: "Chuck Graves" <Chuck_Graves@mmacmail>

Greetings,

I prefer not to argue the point of periodicity when it comes to Digby.  My 
personal considerations go as follows:

        a. I prefer 1603 to 1600 because I can't find any reasonable way 
to arbitrarily ignore the last three years of Queen Elizabeth's life and 
any attendant contributions of her subjects.

        b. Digby recorded some 140 or so recipes for mead, wine, cordials, 
etc.; however, he did not create them all from whole cloth.  You simply 
have to review the recipe names to see the truth of this.

        c. Many of Digby's attributions are to the nobility of age whose 
births and ages I cannot even begin to guess.  I believe that some portion 
of those nobles were his seniors.  If that is true by so much as three 
years or the recipes were themselves handed down, the recipe is period.  I 
simply haven't had the time to determine what portion of his recipes this 
is true for--frankly, I don't know if it's possible to determine this one 
way or the other.

        d. I personally do not believe that Digby completely reinvented 
brewing for all of England before he died.

These assertions are admittedly excuses for why I continue to use and to 
recommend the use of Digby as a source.  But I believe them to be 
reasonable.  I believe there are period elements in his work; I simply 
can't document them to satisfy the more rigorous historians.

>Information gleaned from Digby would not be terribly insightful into period 
>brewing.

I also have to disagree when I compare Digby with Platt.  Their works are 
very consistent and I don't think anyone will argue that Platt is not period. 
I believe there is far too much in Digby to have it discounted out-of-hand, 
which seems to happen quite readily.

Just my thoughts,
Tadhg

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