phillies wrote:The Romans had a boiled wine dish. The wine was boiled in a lead container to accent the sweet taste. Readers should understand that eating this dish is a very bad idea.
I have now found what Phillies was talking about; however it is not wine, but unfermented grapes that were subject to this process:
Lead Poisoning and RomeRather than encrusted lead pipes, the probable cause of chronic lead poisoning (plumbism or "saturnism" because its symptoms seemed indicative of the god's melancholic and sullen character) was the consumption of defrutum and sapa. The elder Cato, Columella, and Pliny all describe how unfermented grape juice (mustum, must) was boiled to concentrate its natural sugars. "A product of art, not of nature," the must was reduced to one half (defrutum) or even one third its volume (sapa) (Pliny, XIV.80), although the terms are not always consistent. Columella identifies defrutum as "must of the sweetest possible flavour" that has been boiled down to a third of its volume (XXI.1). Isidore of Seville, writing in the seventh century AD, says that it is sapa that has been reduced by a third and imagines that defrutum was so called because it has been cheated or defrauded (defrudare) (Etymologies, XX.3.15). Varro reverses Pliny's proportions altogether (quoted in Nonius Marcellus, De Conpendiosa Doctrina, XVIII.551M).
The thickened syrup was used to sweeten and preserve wine and fruit that otherwise was sour or would spoil. Cato recommends that quinces and pears be preserved in boiled must (On Agriculture, VII.3) as does Varro (On Agriculture, I.59.3). Columella insists that defrutum always be boiled with quinces or some other flavoring (XII.20.2). Apicius offers directions for preserving quinces in defrutum and honey (De Re Coquinaria, I.21) and added the rich syrup to almost a fifth of his sauces to enhance the color and flavor of almost every dish. (That color was added indicates that red, rather than white, wine was used in the reduction.)
Defrutum and sapa were dangerous not in themselves but in their preparation. In De Agricultura, the earliest example of Latin prose (c.160 BC), Cato gives directions for reducing must in "a copper or lead vessel" over a slow fire, "stirring constantly to prevent scorching; continue the boiling, until you have boiled off a half" (CVII). Writing in the first century AD, Columella elaborates on the process.
"Some people put the must in leaden vessels and by boiling reduce it by a quarter, others by a third. There is no doubt that anyone who boiled it down to one-half would be likely to make a better thick form of must and therefore more profitable for use....But, before the must is poured into the boiling-vessels, it will be well that those which are made of lead should be coated inside with good oil and be well-rubbed, and that then the must should be put in....The vessels themselves in which the thickened and boiled-down must is boiled should be of lead rather than of brass; for, in the boiling, brazen vessels throw off copper rust, and spoil the flavour of the preservative" (XII.19.1, 19.6, 20.1).
Pliny, too, recommends that the must be prepared in lead vessels.
"Also boiled-down must and must of new wine should be boiled when there is no moon, which means at the conjunction of that planet, and not on any other day; and moreover leaden and not copper jars should be used, and some walnuts should be thrown into the liquor, for those are said to absorb the smoke" (XIV.136).
It would seem therefore that must was boiled in lead cauldrons. But Scarborough is reluctant to weaken his case, insisting that "one needs to read these texts carefully which mention a 'preference' for lead over bronze to realize that the Romans most often used bronze cauldrons (copper and tin in alloy), not those of lead" and that the short boiling time would not have contaminated the juice in any event. But copper and bronze are suspect as well. Not only, says Pliny, was the best bronze alloyed with 10% lead and tin (XXXIV.95) but "When copper vessels are coated with stagnum [a lead alloy], the contents have a more agreeable taste and the formation of destructive verdigris is prevented" (XXXIV.160).
The verdigris about which Pliny complains is copper acetate, a bitter salt first described by Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle, in De Re Metallica (IX), that is formed when acetic acid (the component that gives vinegar its sour taste and pungent smell) reacts with copper oxide. Commercially, it was manufactured by exposing copper plates to strong vinegar or the soured grape skins and lees of wine dregs (Dioscorides, Materia Medica, V.91). Acetic acid also reacts with lead oxide (litharge) to create another metallic salt: lead acetate or sugar of lead. Although as sweet as sugar (which was unknown to the Romans), it actually added very little to the sweetness of the defrutum, which derived from the concentrated glucose and fructose of the grapes themselves. What it did import was an onerous burden of lead.
