Ypocras (Hippocras)

Herbs and spices have always been of great importance in the preparation of alcoholic beverages. The most important reason for adding herbs and spices to alcoholic drinks was for the benefit of their medicinal properties. Wine was considered an excellent vehicle for administering a herbal drug, since it was found to dissolve more of the active principles than a simple water infusion or decoction. Helleborated wine for epilepsy, wine of squills for evacuating 'evil humours' and zedeory wine for strengthening the stomach and heart, were all official medicaments in the pharmacopoeias of the seventeenth century.

Beverages with less dramatic medicinal qualities than those mentioned above, were also popular. Nothing more was claimed for some brews than an ability to excite appetite and aid digestion. Drinks of this type, half medicine, half inebriant, were the forerunners of our modern digestives. One of the most ancient was wormwood wine , a bitter tonic prepared by steeping a handful of wormwood (Arteinisia absinthium L.) in a gallon of wine. This medicinal wine was thought to stimulate the digestive juices, expell flatulence and to prevent colic. Over the years it has evolved into what we now call vermouth (German for wormwood), though the modern version contains very little of the original herb.

Perhaps the most interesting of all the old digestive drinks was a cordial wine known as hippocras, made by digesting a mixture of spices in red or white wine sweetened with sugar or honey. Many forms of this name occur in early recipes, the most common being ypocras, vpocrate, ipocras, ipocrist, hipocras, ippocras, hvpocras, hvppocras, hypocrace, hvpocraze and ippocrass. This strange word has an interesting etymology - it is derived from the Old French name for the Greek physician Hippocrates ypocrate. In Middle English this was ipocras.

Its Latin name was Vinum Hippocraticum - wine of Hippocrates. Though spiced wines were popular in classical times, Hippocrates was certainly not the inventor of hippocras, which dates from the early rnediaeval period. It was known by this name because it was strained through a filter bag familiar to most vintners and apothecaries as a manicum Hippocraticum - the sleeve of Hippocrates. This was a conical bag used to strain the particles of spice out of the wine. In order to do this effectively, most vintners passed the prepared hippocras through the bag at least three times, or hung three bags one above the other and let the liquid slowly drip into a vessel below. Others preferred to pour milk into the hippocras and then carefully decant the mixture into the filter bag. The milk curdled on contact with the acidic wine, and the curds slowly precipitated to the bottom of the vessel, carrying the gritty spice particles with them. If red wine was used, this filtering process tended to remove a certain amount of the pigment, so a plant dye known as turnsole was often added to restore its original claret colour.

The spice mixture was known as hippocras 'gyle', and though recipes vary, it usually contained cinnamon, cardamoms, grains of paradise and long pepper. The various ingredients of the gyle were bruised in a mortar and left to steep in the wine, usually for a day and a night. The wines most commonly used, were claret for red hippocras and white Spanish and Portugese wines for white.

At this time most oriental spices were so expensive, that only the aristocracy and nobility were able to afford to drink hippocras. Taken at the end a meal with wafers and comfits as a digestive, it was most usually brought to table cold. Hippocras had almost a mythical reputation for being able to heal. As a consequence, hippocras was accepted as being able to maintain good health in general, with doctors recommending it at the end of the meal to aid digestion. Throughout Europe it was an important item in the court table ritual known as the void or issue de table.

Later, when spices were more readily available, it became a popular drink at wedding and christening feasts. During the evolution of the banquet course during the Tudor and Jacobean course it was gradually displaced by stronger distilled and infused cordial waters, the ancestors of modern liqueurs. Because of its associations with rich living, hippocras was the favourite celebration tipple at most important occasions.

The hippocras of Mediaeval and Elizabethan times was a rather syrupy drink, most usually sweetened with sugar, though honey was occasionally used. Sometimes it was scented with musk and ambergris, and fortified by adding brandy - usually in the proportion of a quarter of a pint to one gallon of wine. By the eighteenth century, it was considered an old-fashioned drink in England, though recipes lingered on in French confectionery books until the time of the Revolution, including one for teetotalers called hippocras sans vin.

Potus Ypocras
from http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/goderec.htm, James Matterer's collection of medieval recipes

PERIOD: England, 14th century | SOURCE: Goud Kokery
DESCRIPTION: Wine mulled with honey and spices

ORIGINAL RECEIPT:

5. Potus ypocras. Take a half lb. of canel tried; of gyngyuer tried, a half lb.; of greynes, iii unce; of longe peper, iii unce; of clowis, ii unce; of notemugges, ii unce & a half; of carewey, ii unce; of spikenard, a half unce; of galyngale, ii unce; of sugir, ii lb. Si deficiat sugir, take a potel of honey.

- Hieatt, Constance B. and Sharon Butler. Curye on Inglish: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth-Century (Including the Forme of Cury). London: For the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1985.

GODE COOKERY TRANSLATION:

Hipocras Drink. Take a half lb. of cinnamon; of ginger, a half lb.; of grains of paradise, 2 ounces; of long pepper, 3 ounces; of cloves, 2 ounces; of nutmeg, 2 ounces and a half; of caraway, 2 ounces; of spikenard, a half ounce; of galingale, 2 ounces; of sugar, 2 lb. If there is no sugar, use 2 quarts of honey.

MODERN RECIPE:

Bring the wine and sugar or honey to a boil; if using honey, skim off the scum as it rises. Taste for sweetness; add honey or sugar as necessary. Remove from heat, stir in spices, and allow to sit covered for 24 hours. After sitting, the spices will create a thick residue which will settle to the bottom. Using a ladle, pass the wine into another container through a strainer lined with 2 or 3 layers of cheesecloth to remove the spices, being careful to leave as much of the spice residue in the pot as possible. Bottle. Make at least 1 month before serving. The older it is, the better.

Other Recipes for Hippocras

Ipocras out of an old booke

Take a pottole of white or redd wyne and take a pynt of clarified honye: and mixe well the wyne and honye together in a clean pan, and you take 3 ozs of ginger, of pepper a quarter of an ounce, of good cynnimone 1 oz., saffron 1 oz., Spikenard of Spayn 1 oz., gallingale 1 oz., and make :all into pouder, and put it into the wyne and honye and medell them together, and you colour it with tumsole, and make it as red as you will: and pour it into a bagg and strain it through the bagg often tymes till it be clere, and so serve it forth.

From an early seventeenth century manuscript (Mss. Sloane 3690, ff 26b.).

"Hippocras" from Le Menagier de Paris [The Goodman of Paris], c. 1393 Translation by Power and Colton

HIPPOCRAS. To make powdered hippocras, take a quarter-ounce of very fine cinnamon, hand-picked by tasting it, an ounce of very fine meche ginger and an ounce of grains of paradise, a sixth of an ounce of nutmeg and galingale together, and pound it all together. And when you want to make hippocras, take a good half-ounce or more of this powder and two quarter-ounces of sugar, and mix them together, and a quart of wine as measured in Paris. And note that the powder and the sugar mixed together make "duke's powder".

To make a quart or a quarter-ounce of hippocras by the measure used in Besiers, Carcassonne, or Montpelier, take five drams of fine select clean cinnamon, select peeled white ginger, three drams: of clove, grains, mace, galingale, nutmeg, nard, altogether one and a fourth drams: more of the first, and of the others less and less of each as you go down the list. Grind to powder, and with this put a pound and half a quarter-ounce, by the heavier measure, of ground rock sugar, and mix with the aforesaid spices; and have wine and the sugar melted on a dish on the fire, and add the powder, and mix: then put in the straining-bag, and strain until it comes out a clear red. Note that the cinnamon and the sugar should dominate.

Hippocras
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Spiced wine was popular in the Roman Empire, as seen in the writings of Pliny the Elder and Apicius. In the 12th century, a spiced wine named "pimen" or "piment" was mentioned by Chrétien de Troyes. During the 13th century, the city of Montpellier had a reputation for trading spiced wines with England. The first recipes for spiced wine appeared at the end of the 13th century (recipes for claret and piment found in the Tractatus de Modo) or at the beginning of the 14th century (recipe for piment in the Regiment de Sanitat of Arnaldus de Villa Nova). Since 1390, the recipes for piment have been called ipocras or ypocras (Forme of Cury in England, Ménagier de Paris or Viandier de Taillevent in France), probably with reference and tribute to Hippocrates.

Apparently, the recipe for hippocras was brought back to Europe from the Orient, following the crusades. The drink became extremely popular and was regarded as having various medicinal or even aphrodisiac properties.

Since the 16th century, the word has been generally spelled hippocras or hipocras in English and hypocras in French. Original recipes for hippocras were made until the 19th century, when it fell out of favor. This wine is made with sugar and spices. Sugar then was considered to be medicine and the spices varied according to the recipes. The main spices are: cinnamon, ginger, clove, grains of paradise and long pepper. An English text specifies that sugar was uniquely for the lords and honey was for the people. Since the 17th century, spiced wines, in France, have been generally prepared with fruits (apples, oranges, almonds) and musk or ambergris. In England, in 1723, there was a recipe for red hippocras containing milk and brandy. The drink was well liked during medieval and Elizabethan times. Moreover, doctors prescribed it to aid digestion. It was served at most banquets all over Europe.

The drink was highly prized during the high and late Middle Ages. In France, it has been noted as the favorite drink of notorious baron Gilles de Rais, who reportedly drank several bottles every day and had his victims drink it prior to assault. Later, King Louis XIV of France was also known to enjoy it. In those times, the drink was a highly valued gift item, in the same vein as jam and fruit preserves. Hippocras fell out of fashion and was forgotten during the 18th century.

In France, ypocras is still produced in the Ariège and Haute Loire areas, though in very small quantities. It may be used either for drinking, when it is served chilled before meals, or it as an ingredient in sauces. It is also served in numerous medieval feasts all over Europe.

Since 1996 the population of Basel celebrate on New Year's morning the so-called "Aadringgede" (a drinking cheer). The "Dreizack"-fountain in the "Freiestrasse" will be filled with hippocras, or spelled in the Swiss German of Basel, hypokras. In Basel it is a tradition in winter to drink hypokras and eat the famous Basler läggerli with it.

The drink eventually inspired the Spaniards in their creation of sangria. While sweeter than hippocras, sangria was originally made with spices, including cinnamon, ginger, and pepper.