Word Detective

A long time ago before the days of local shops and hypermarkets selling everything catering to our every need, and long before children were sent to school to learn conformity, there were books.

We’re not going quite so far back in time as you might imagine. I’m speaking about 1834. The place England.

You might ask why I’ve chosen this year and country. Well it’s really quite simple.

A few years ago my last remaining uncle died and whilst clearing his rather cluttered up house I came across books that led me on a journey into my family history and an epoch that I'd never really considered/given much thought to.

After spending a few years pouring over the content, translating old English into modern day English and sometimes even French, and carefully spending hours trying to uncover the meanings of obscure words I felt it was time to share my discoveries.

I felt and still feel like an etymological archaeologist or detective. Delving into texts long forgotten that hold hidden treasures and nuggets of knowledge of another epoch. This my Cadfael's of the corpus, is where we're going to start our adventure together. We're going on a journey into the past. And no ordinary journey either. One where you'll find astonishing and sometimes even humorous recipes, techniques and even mindsets.

Each week I'll share and dig up old words, with their new equivalents. Sometimes I'll post words that I was unable to understand and we'll go on a 'word detective' hunt.

"Take some good sweet wort, before it is hopped, put it into a jar, add a little yeast when it becomes milk-warm, and cover in the sun, and it will be fit for use in three or four months or much sooner, if it be fermented with sour yeast and mixed with an equal quantity of sour ale"

Ok, my word detectives, get your grey cells working. We're going to work out what Alegar is! To begin with, we need to understand Sweet Wort (which I mistakenly thought was a plant!)

Sweet wort is in fact: the liquid extracted from grains (usually barley) during brewing, before fermentation.

At this stage, it is sweet (because it contains natural sugars), non-alcoholic, rich and malty.

Grains are soaked in hot water, Starches turn into sugars

The liquid which is drained is called "wort"

Before yeast is added, it’s sweet wort and after the yeast and fermentation period it becomes "Alegar"! Sounds something akin to "Worcester sauce" to me? Could this have been its origin I ask myself?

And what may you ask, was it served with? Very good question!