![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Back to Sage document
Dec. 28th, 2004 04:01 pmOk, so I'm supposed to be planning a period treatise on Sage (Salvia Officinalis).
I'm digging around in Hildegarde of Bingen's Physica (throop trans. p. 36-37).
Here's my thoughts.
Sage is both hot and dry, as all may see by bruising a leaf and placing it upon the tongue. Therefor do cooks and physicians use it in recipes to allay cold and wet ingredients and conditions. The learned abbess Hildegarde was moved by visions to write of it, that it is good to eat agains noxious humours. Those who are ill with a superfluity of harmful humors should pulverize sage and eat it with bread. Wine in which sage has been cooked the abbess suggests for those with too much phlegm, and for aches and pains in the bones that cause palsy, which she calls 'virgichtiget', water in which sage has been boiled will decrease the pain and the palsy.
"Someone who disdains eating should take sage, and a little less chervil, and a bit of garlic, and pound these together with vinegar, and so make a condiment, He should dip foods which he wishes to eat in it, and he will have an appetite for eating."
Compare this to the spicy green sauce from Tractatus de modo preparandi et condiendi omnia cibaria 394, translated in Redon et al.
"Here is how to make green sauce: take ginger, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, cloves, parsley, and sage. First grind the spices, then the herbs, and add a third of the sage and parsley, and, if you wish, three or two cloves of garlic. Moisten with vinegar or verjuice. Note that to every sauce and condiment salt is added, and crumb of bread to thicken it."
and
Forme of Cury, 1390
"Take persel, mynt, garlek, a litul serpell and sauge; a litul canel, gynger, piper, wyne, brede, vyneger; do thereto powdour of gynger and pepper, & the grece of the maulard. Salt it; boile it wel and serue it forth."
These are all recipes for green sauces but they add hot dry spices (pepper, cloves, ginger) etc. to combat the phlegmy (cold and wet) issues. WIthout more information about the green sauce it's hard to tell but the dryer hotter ingredients appear to be for an autumn or spring green sauce.
I'm digging around in Hildegarde of Bingen's Physica (throop trans. p. 36-37).
Here's my thoughts.
Sage is both hot and dry, as all may see by bruising a leaf and placing it upon the tongue. Therefor do cooks and physicians use it in recipes to allay cold and wet ingredients and conditions. The learned abbess Hildegarde was moved by visions to write of it, that it is good to eat agains noxious humours. Those who are ill with a superfluity of harmful humors should pulverize sage and eat it with bread. Wine in which sage has been cooked the abbess suggests for those with too much phlegm, and for aches and pains in the bones that cause palsy, which she calls 'virgichtiget', water in which sage has been boiled will decrease the pain and the palsy.
"Someone who disdains eating should take sage, and a little less chervil, and a bit of garlic, and pound these together with vinegar, and so make a condiment, He should dip foods which he wishes to eat in it, and he will have an appetite for eating."
Compare this to the spicy green sauce from Tractatus de modo preparandi et condiendi omnia cibaria 394, translated in Redon et al.
"Here is how to make green sauce: take ginger, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, cloves, parsley, and sage. First grind the spices, then the herbs, and add a third of the sage and parsley, and, if you wish, three or two cloves of garlic. Moisten with vinegar or verjuice. Note that to every sauce and condiment salt is added, and crumb of bread to thicken it."
and
Forme of Cury, 1390
"Take persel, mynt, garlek, a litul serpell and sauge; a litul canel, gynger, piper, wyne, brede, vyneger; do thereto powdour of gynger and pepper, & the grece of the maulard. Salt it; boile it wel and serue it forth."
These are all recipes for green sauces but they add hot dry spices (pepper, cloves, ginger) etc. to combat the phlegmy (cold and wet) issues. WIthout more information about the green sauce it's hard to tell but the dryer hotter ingredients appear to be for an autumn or spring green sauce.
