Was honey in ancient times different than now?
I am trying to reproduce a recipe found in the Roman "cookbook" Apicius, Conditum paradoxum: it is a spiced wine that calls for honey as an ingredient, but it uses a lot (30 % of the volume of the wine).
This means – adapting the recipe, that originally is for 14 11 liters of wine – that for a bottle of wine I should add 230 ml of honey (340 g if considering a density of 1,45 kg/l).
I was wondering if the honey produced in ancient times could be perhaps "lighter" than the honey we know; this could, at least a little, allow me to reduce the sweetness.
Best Answer
It's not honey that's changed since ancient times, it's wine! Wine makers in ancient Rome lacked the knowledge and equipment to prevent oxidation and unwanted bacterial colonies, so their product was pretty awful by modern standards, being both sour and bitter with all sorts of off flavors. Honey and spices were added to try and make it palatable.
So you can't re-create the roman recipe without roman style wine, which you won't find in any store because nobody would want to buy it! If you add the same amount of honey to wine of today it will be overwhelmingly sweet, my suggestion would be to add a little bit of honey to it and work your way up. I would also suggest you not follow the recipe to the letter:
- Don't let it sit like the recipe suggests, add the spices in and let it steep, then strain and add more wine
- Don't filter it through charcoal: the reason they did that was because wine makers added all sorts of awful stuff to preserve the wine, modern wines don't have those issues. If it has particulates try using a coffee filter instead.
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How was honey used in ancient times?
Almost all Egyptian medicines contained honey together with wine and milk. The ancient Egyptians offered honey to their deities as a sacrifice (36). They also used honey for embalming the dead. Honey was utilized for its antibacterial properties that helped heal infected wounds.Did they have honey in the Old World?
Once you start looking, you realize that honey and bees and beekeeping are everywhere in the Old World\u2014in ancient Europe and Eurasia and Africa and in the ancient Middle East. Honeybees are an Old World group of species. Honey was considered an almost magical substance in the ancient Near East.Was there honey in the Stone Age?
There is evidence that mankind was gathering honey in the late Paleolithic times, ten to fifteen thousand years ago. An 8,000-year-old rock painting discovered at Arana Cave near Valencia, Spain, depicts a person climbing a ladder to gather honey from a hive on a cliff face.Was edible honey found in the pyramids?
While excavating ancient tombs in Egypt's pyramids, archaeologists found pots of honey. This ancient honey dates back to almost 3,000 years ago.More answers regarding was honey in ancient times different than now?
Answer 2
Possibly the wine is supposed to be diluted with water once you've finished spicing and sweetening it? The text doesn't mention it, but adding a lot of water with your wine was the norm so the author may have assumed that you'd know to do that bit.
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