Alchermes
Encyclopedia
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
liqueur
Liqueur
A liqueur is an alcoholic beverage that has been flavored with fruit, herbs, nuts, spices, flowers, or cream and bottled with added sugar. Liqueurs are typically quite sweet; they are usually not aged for long but may have resting periods during their production to allow flavors to marry.The...
prepared by infusing neutral spirits with sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
, cinnamon
Cinnamon
Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several trees from the genus Cinnamomum that is used in both sweet and savoury foods...
, cloves, nutmeg
Nutmeg
The nutmeg tree is any of several species of trees in genus Myristica. The most important commercial species is Myristica fragrans, an evergreen tree indigenous to the Banda Islands in the Moluccas of Indonesia...
and vanilla
Vanilla
Vanilla is a flavoring derived from orchids of the genus Vanilla, primarily from the Mexican species, Flat-leaved Vanilla . The word vanilla derives from the Spanish word "", little pod...
, and other herbs and flavoring agents. Its most striking characteristic is its scarlet
Scarlet (color)
Scarlet is a bright red color with a hue that is somewhat toward the orange. It is redder than vermilion. It is a pure chroma on the color wheel one-fourth of the way between red and orange. Scarlet is sometimes used as the color of flame...
color, obtained by the addition of Kermes, a small parasitic insect from which the drink derives its name. The drink fell out of favor around the turn of the 20th century because people discovered that its colour came from insects. Several proprietary variants are commercially available, with alcoholic contents ranging from 21 to 32%. Its chief use is in coloring pastry
Pastry
Pastry is the name given to various kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder and/or eggs. Small cakes, tarts and other sweet baked products are called "pastries."...
, although a quick dessert is sometimes made by adding it to mascarpone
Mascarpone
Mascarpone |denaturation]], whey is removed without pressing or aging. One can manufacture mascarpone by using cream and tartaric acid, citric acid, or even lemon juice....
and sugar.
Alkermes was a modification of an 8th century tonic confectio alchermes. The tonic included raw silk
Raw Silk
Raw Silk was an American dance band, originated in New York. Raw Silk is best known for their garage-boogie song "Do It to the Music". The group is consisted of two Crown Heights Affair members, Ron Dean Miller and Bert Reid, and three female vocalists Jessica Cleaves, Sybil Thomas, Tenita Jordan...
, apple juice
Apple juice
Apple juice is a fruit juice manufactured by the maceration and pressing of apples. The resulting expelled juice may be further treated by enzymatic and centrifugal clarification to remove the starch and pectin, which holds fine particulate in suspension, and then pasteurized for packaging in...
, ground pearls, musk
Musk
Musk is a class of aromatic substances commonly used as base notes in perfumery. They include glandular secretions from animals such as the musk deer, numerous plants emitting similar fragrances, and artificial substances with similar odors. Musk was a name originally given to a substance with a...
, ambergris
Ambergris
Ambergris is a solid, waxy, flammable substance of a dull gray or blackish color produced in the digestive system of and regurgitated or secreted by sperm whales....
, gold leaf
Gold leaf
right|thumb|250px|[[Burnishing]] gold leaf with an [[agate]] stone tool, during the water gilding processGold leaf is gold that has been hammered into extremely thin sheets and is often used for gilding. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of karats and shades...
, rose water, cinnamon, sugar and honey
Honey
Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
. In pre-modern medicine, it was ranked among the best cardiacs, and was frequently used for the palpitation
Palpitation
A palpitation is an abnormality of heartbeat that causes a conscious awareness of its beating, whether it is too slow, too fast, irregular, or at its normal frequency. The word may also refer to this sensation itself...
of the heart, or syncope
Syncope
In phonology, syncope is the loss of one or more sounds from the interior of a word; especially, the loss of an unstressed vowel. It is found bothin Synchronic analysis of languages and Diachronics .-Found synchronically:...
, sometimes for smallpox and measles and a general restorative.