"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

#AdventCalendar Day 8: Jely Hippocras

Allegedly a favourite drink of Henry VIII (a man for which I have zero sympathies, as you might imagine), a recipe of this jelly can be found in A Book of Cookrye Very Necessary for All Such as Delight Therin, compiled around 1591 by one A.W. You can also find a modern version in Peter Brears’ Cooking & Dining in Tudor & Early Stuart England. You can read something about the dish over here. Someone also made a miniature jelly for a doll house, and it’s the most delightful thing ever.

Ingredients:

  • 1 liter claret (red wine);
  • 300 grams sugar;
  • 5 pieces of root ginger;
  • 5 sticks of cinnamon;
  • half of a crushed nutmeg;
  • a handful of cloves;
  • a teaspoon of coriander seeds;
  • a pinch of salt;
  • 5 leaves of gelatin;
  • a handful of flower petals of your choice (just make sure they’re clean and edible).

Recipe:

Crumble the cinnamon sticks, crush the nutmeg and grate the ginger root, add cloves and coriander, all into 1 l of hot water, and simmer it (without boiling it) for around 10 minutes.

Pour the claret into a pan, put the gelatine foils in to revive them and leave them there for another 10 minutes. This is what you usually do with cold water, only this time you’re doing it with wine. Just because you can. Strain the spiced water through a cloth, a coffee filter or a very fine strainer, stir in the sugar into the mixture and heat white stirring, until the gelatin foils will have fully melted into the wine.

Put the flower petals at the bottom of a fancy-shaped bowl, pour the gelatine on top of it, making sure not to mess up the arrangement, and leave it in the fridge for a couple of hours.

What’s Hippocras?

It’s the name for a wine mixed with sugar and spices, usually heated, and the name comes from the special cone originally used to filter the spices. It’s the one you see in the illustration above.

In her book All the King’s Fools: Disability and the Tudors, Philippa Vincent-Connolly brings forward the argument that lack of exercise from his jousting incident and an awful diet played a big part in the King’s descent into physical decay.

His doctors repeatedly urged him to reduce his tremendous consumption of meat and wine, as he had a penchant for high cholesterol foodstuffs as was documented in the Ordinances of Eltham. […] His diet consisted of over five thousand calories a day, which makes his obesity no surprise. He would drink ale, red wine with sugar instead of water and copious amounts of white bread.

Phillipa Vincent Connolly, Disability and the Tudors: All the King’s Fools

Not drinking water is a good call, water in Tudor England sucked. Still, maybe ale was a much healthier option.

A variant

Hippocras Christmas pudding is a variant of this jelly. You can see a video of the recipe here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=-CwRSqSCwPE

architecture, engineering and construction

From Labyrinths to Trees: How Narrative Shapes Our Idea of Data

Introduction: Stories We Tell About Data Before we ever store, query, or analyze it, we tell stories about data. Not with words, necessarily, but with structures. With paths, branches, and webs. With ontologies and classification systems. With expeditions and search parties. Data — raw, abstract,

Read More »
Pride Month

Pride Month 2025 – It’s a Wrap

We Were Always Here: on Memory, Erasure, and the Persistence of Queer History All month long, we have journeyed through scroll and scripture, painting and poetry, ruin and reliquary, gathering voices, gestures, glances that once defied the world to say: we have always loved differently.

Read More »
Pride Month

Pride Month 2025 – Words of the Day

Letters in Exile: Rumi’s Longing for Shams al-Din Tabrizi “Since Shams appeared,my heart has been a hundred thousand burning lamps.The world is a candle, and I am the wick:I am consumed in the flame of love.”— Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, 13th century, Persia Among the most

Read More »
Share on LinkedIn
Throw on Reddit
Roll on Tumblr
Mail it
No Comments

Post A Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

RELATED POSTS

From Labyrinths to Trees: How Narrative Shapes Our Idea of Data

Introduction: Stories We Tell About Data Before we ever store, query, or analyze it, we tell stories about data. Not with words, necessarily, but with structures. With paths, branches, and webs. With ontologies and classification systems. With expeditions and search parties. Data — raw, abstract,

Read More

Pride Month 2025 – It’s a Wrap

We Were Always Here: on Memory, Erasure, and the Persistence of Queer History All month long, we have journeyed through scroll and scripture, painting and poetry, ruin and reliquary, gathering voices, gestures, glances that once defied the world to say: we have always loved differently.

Read More

Pride Month 2025 – Words of the Day

Letters in Exile: Rumi’s Longing for Shams al-Din Tabrizi “Since Shams appeared,my heart has been a hundred thousand burning lamps.The world is a candle, and I am the wick:I am consumed in the flame of love.”— Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, 13th century, Persia Among the most

Read More