Saturday, January 29, 2011

Scrupull and other weights a gardiner ought to understand

A Scrupull of Barly-cornes

A Graine weights a Barly-corne.
A Scrupull is 20 Graines.
Obolus is 10 graines.
A Dram is 13 Oboluis.
An Ounce (no further explanation here).
A Pound is 12 Ounces of physical ingredients;
16 of other things.
A manuple is a good hand-full.
A pugill is a small hand-full, or as much as
you can take up with the tops of you fingers.
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And I thought it was a bit inconvenient to convert between grams and pounds, Celsius and Fahrenheit... How wrong I was. I could actually have been stuck with scrupulls, oboluis and drams, too. Well, to celebrate that the weekend is almost here, I just had a pugill of dark chocolate raisins. Cheers!
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From 'Directions for the Gardiner and other Horticultural Advice' by John Evelyn (1620-1707), edited by Maggie Campbell-Culver and published in 2009. This books is fantastic reading with practical gardening advice from the 17th century. It contains detailed instructions for cultivating and tending perennials, annuals, root vegetables and trees, and explainations of horticultural terminology, advice on tools and many other delicious things for real garden people. Highly recommended!
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1 comment:

Safi Crafts said...

Hi Liisa,
I sent you an email but incase it doesn't work my address is jean@patchworkplanet.com. It is already all over the internet, I assume, as I am not careful at all. I just have a good spam filter.
I love this post about measurements. My kids are always disapproving of my sloppy measuring style when I cook.
-Jean