hippocrass

Hippocras sometimes spelled hipocras or hypocras, is a drink made from wine mixed with sugar and spices, usually including cinnamon, and possibly heated. After steeping the spices in the sweetened wine for a day, the spices are strained out through a conical cloth filter bag called a manicum hippocraticum or Hippocratic sleeve (originally devised by the 5th century BC Greek physician Hippocrates to filter water), from which the name of the drink is derived.

==History== Spiced wine was popular in the Roman Empire, as recorded in the writings of Pliny the Elder and Apicius. In the 12th century, a spiced wine named "pimen" or "piment" was mentioned by Chrétien de Troyes. During the 13th century, the city of Montpellier had a reputation for trading spiced wines with England. The first recipes for spiced wine appeared at the end of the 13th century (recipes for red wine and piment found in the Tractatus de Modo) or at the beginning of the 14th century (recipe for piment in the Regimen sanitatis (Regiment de Sanitat) of Arnaldus de Villa Nova). Piment is also mentioned in ''The Miller's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer. Since 1390, recipes for piment have also been called ipocras or ypocras (Forme of Cury in England, Ménagier de Paris or Viandier de Taillevent in France), probably with reference and tribute to Hippocrates. In the Catalan cookbook Llibre del Coch (1520) the recipe is given as pimentes de clareya. A honey sweetened variant of hippocras was known as clarry (Anglo-Norman: clarré, claré) and is mentioned in The Customs of London (16th c.) by Richard Arnold.