ABSTRACT
A century or two ago the consumption of intoxicants was practically universal, and water served mainly for bathing and cooking. Mead was common in Anglo-Saxon times and was made by fermenting a mixture of honey and water, continuing a practice inherited from the ancients. The marriage of Henry II with Eleanor of Aquitaine made a large part of southern France an English possession and led to extensive importation of a variety of French wines. The wines consumed in such enormous quantities were by no means always of a sort that would appeal to modern taste. Not infrequently they were crude and sharply acid and required softening to render them palatable. Hippocras, compounded of wine, red or white, ginger, cinnamon, “grains” of pomegranate, sugar and “turesole”, was thus prepared for people of high station. A favourite combination of food and drink was the wine sop, so prized by Chaucer’s Franklin.
