=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EDline Vol. 8, no. 84 (8 September 2003) Editorial mailing list (digest version) Published by the Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: Q & A [2ym] Root and ginger beer (and shandy) [Offshoot of [2yk] Keeping a text's local flavor] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---[2]-- Q & A -------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Sept 2003 From: Jane Ornauer, jreditor@aol.com Esther Shchory wrote: > I didn't realise root beer was sarsaparilla. Root beer is related to sarsaparilla. They are not exactly the same. Different flavors! My daughter fell in love with shandy as a teenager on a visit to Britain. Haven't seen it in years. ---------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Sept 2003 From: Susan Bramson, slbramson@aol.com And, to confuse things even further - during Prohibition, there was a product called "near beer," which had, I think, a very small amount of alcohol. I wasn't around at the time, but have heard people talk about it. ----------------------- Date: Tues, 2 Sept 2003 From: Mark Levinson, nosnivel@netvision.net.il Judy Stein wrote: > Since sassafras was declared to be carcinogenic, an artificial > flavoring was developed that is now commonly used in most root > beer." And as far as I'm concerned, they might as well have just stopped calling it root beer. "Wintergreen wasser" might be a better name... ----------------------- Date: Tues, 2 Sept 2003 From: Judyth Mermelstein, espresso@e-scape.net David Ibbetson wrote > ... Canadian cider is non-alcoholic, but is often sold with > "naturally occurring" yeasts present. It improves with age. But David is in Ontario, I think, and booze is a provincial rather than federal matter in Canada. Here in Quebec, one of the real cider-producing regions, it's not easy to find the non-alcoholic kind ('sweet cider" to Americans) but the other ("hard cider") comes in many varieties: sparkling ("pe/tillant"), foaming ("mousseux") and still, from sweet to very dry, and with an alcohol content ranging from 3.25% (like regular bottled beer) to about 15% (like strong wine). Since the stuff is made in Quebec, you can find it not only in the SAQ (Quebec Liquor Board) stores but also in supermarkets and little corner stores. There is even one company that distills cider into a local equivalent of calvados -- tasty but not for the faint-hearted. Meanwhile, anyone who would like to try making their own cider can buy jugs of farm-pressed, unfiltered apple juice at the farmers' markets in Montreal. Ginger beer is easy to find in neighbourhoods with lots of West or East Indians, but it's usually Golden Cockerel in tins, imported from Jamaica. Unlike Canadian ginger ale, which is pale. with very little ginger in it and bubbles produced by artificial carbonation, ginger beer tastes strong and bubbles much more aggressively... and is a much better cure for queasiness. American-style root beer is more widely available (bottles or tins, and very occasionally "draft") but it's rather insipid these days -- perhaps due to the removal of sassafras, it certainly doesn't have the spiciness it had in my youth and I doubt it's much use medicinally in its present state. A slightly different drink which still has some of the root-beer zip is bottled and sold under the name "Dr. Pepper" and is the drink of choice in parts of the American South; as you can tell from the name, it was originally meant as an herbal tonic. Ironically, what is really hard to find is the real native drink, spruce beer. One occasionally finds it in bottles but there's only one little greasy-spoon restaurant which still makes its own. Maybe it's not surprising since most people absolutely hate the taste of spruce, but it's a traditional tonic: the Iroquois brewed a sort of spruce tea for medicinal purposes which contains a lot of vitamin C and the colonists merely added sugar and fermented it a bit for the bubbles to make it more palatable. It's one of the oddities of modern life that most of these drinks were originally meant to be medicinal but have degenerated into coloured and carbonated sugar-water with some flavourings and are now a major contribution to dietary deficiencies and other health problems. It's doubly ironic that more and more people are turning back to the herbs these tonics originally contained. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Sept 2003 From: Drusilla Calvert, d.calvert@macrex.com Judy Stein wrote: > "In addition to sassafras flavor, root beer often has other > flavorings, including anise, burdock, I've always been intrigued by the drink "dandelion and burdock" (available in UK supermarkets). The first hit on Google says its ingredients are "carbonated water, sugar/glucose - fructose, caramel color, natural & artificial flavours, citric acid, sodium benzoate" which doesn't sound very distinctive. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Sept 2003 From: Ruth Barlow, ruth.barlow@btinternet.com I was brought up (in Lancashire in the 60s) on Vimto cordial and dandelion & burdock pop. In my (admittedly fairly limited) experience, there are no finer drinks to be had. The 'nutritional content' of foodstuffs was less strictly controlled in those days than it is now, and I've no doubt that even then D&B contained many chemicals but, despite the fact that its list of ingredients looks very much like that of many other fizzy drinks, dandelion & burdock has a very distinctive taste quite unlike anything else I've come across. Delicious! ---------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Sept 2003 From: Dene Bebbington, d_bebbington@onetel.net.uk A friend once described D&B as "Bottled Childhood". I know what he means because the taste of it always reminds me of being a kid, when we got it from the "Alpine man". =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= END OF EDline 8.84 E-mail address for posting messages or replies: < edline-digest@electriceditors.net > Admin page: < http://www.electriceditors.net/edline/admin.htm > ** The views expressed in this mailing list are strictly those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the moderators or of the Electric Editors. ** Articles (c) 2003, by individual contributors Design (c) 1996--2003 Iain Brown Compilation (c) 2003 Iain Brown / The Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=