- Joined
- Feb 23, 1999
- Messages
- 4,848
Apparently kykeon contained barley, cheese, honey, and wine. Below a historian cooks raw barley like oatmeal to make a recreation, which he can’t choke down.
Several grain based drinks around the world use a parched flour as the base. Consider the pinole made by the Tarahumara from parched corn flour, or the similar atole from the Southwest. Then there is the Tsampa of the Tibetan plateau, made with parched barley flour, mixed with salted butter tea to the consistency favored by the individual traveler. I’ve not tried the gruel made of raw flour the historian above tried to choke down, but can testify that a thin Tsampa made from parched barley flour is quite palatable
In the thousands of years of tsampa use, I can’t help but wonder if a bored husband ever put some chang and honey into the tea churn and created or recreated the drink of the Greek heroes. Perhaps over some hard yak cheese.
BTW- When Machaon was wounded in battle at Troy by Paris’ arrow, he was healed after drinking kykeon. Thus kykeon is a fitting discussion topic for the sharp object obsessed patrons of the Cantina. Kykeon seems to have also played an important role in the Eleusian mysteries, and many historians think a hallucinogenic additive was involved in that use.
Several grain based drinks around the world use a parched flour as the base. Consider the pinole made by the Tarahumara from parched corn flour, or the similar atole from the Southwest. Then there is the Tsampa of the Tibetan plateau, made with parched barley flour, mixed with salted butter tea to the consistency favored by the individual traveler. I’ve not tried the gruel made of raw flour the historian above tried to choke down, but can testify that a thin Tsampa made from parched barley flour is quite palatable
In the thousands of years of tsampa use, I can’t help but wonder if a bored husband ever put some chang and honey into the tea churn and created or recreated the drink of the Greek heroes. Perhaps over some hard yak cheese.
BTW- When Machaon was wounded in battle at Troy by Paris’ arrow, he was healed after drinking kykeon. Thus kykeon is a fitting discussion topic for the sharp object obsessed patrons of the Cantina. Kykeon seems to have also played an important role in the Eleusian mysteries, and many historians think a hallucinogenic additive was involved in that use.