Mixing the Kykeon

Prepared Kykeon last night. It's a drink described by Homer with some evidence that it comes from the Late Bronze Age. Main ingredients are red wine, barley flour ("roasted and crushed barley groats") and goat cheese ("grated with a brazen rasp.") Honey likely also features, and that's the recipe I tried for my first attempt; a California Merlot, Spanish goat cheese, locally-made honey, and a little water.

Next time, more water. Otherwise that's a whole glass of wine and that's a lot for me. Spices are referred to but without much detail. Two names did come up; pennyroyal, and rue. Neither will be find at the typical grocery store, as they are not used in any of the common cuisines here: both are described with cautions like "use at intervals to allow the body to recover" and "may cause gastric discomfort." I suspect tree moss and oak gall are similarly hard to source. However, oregano and thyme are also possible for the mix; I'd like to try those.

How is it? Well, basically it's a thickened, sweet wine. Goat cheese does not melt, so it remains lumpy even after being stirred in. So a bit like a thin chowder. It was a bit of a Paddington Brown experience mixing it; under a low simmer it thickens surprisingly, and I kept having to cut it back. It should be thin enough to drink from a cup -- Nestor drank a cup of it. Yes, "that" Nestor's Cup.



On the other hand, my plans for a bronze sword, a trip to the Aegean, etc., are on hold while I build up my finances. I've given in. The weaver is going to be in the book. I need to shape it to allow her.

The big questions I have at the moment, then, is how far to go along the heroic axis. On the one end, the characters are relentlessly ordinary, exemplars of their time and class. On the other, they are demigods in all but name; people with the ridiculous luck and physical prowess of action movie stars. I want to aim for something between these extremes, but I don't know which end to favor.

I also don't know if gods figure in. Or if magic is real. I'm tempted to reverse myself and go with deniable magic; that the scholar has chants from ancient books but he also has herbs from the same books and the latter might have been what actually healed the wound. And so forth.

And I'm not exactly certain what the date is, either. Some of the sources I've been reading claim the widespread destruction in the Mycenaean Empire took place decades before the wave of invasions along the Anatolian coast and into the heart of the Hittite Empire. Heck, even the "Trojan War" is hardly a fixed point -- Wilusa had been attacked more than once, in both legend and archaeological evidence.

I'm not even sure of form. I seem to be looking again at three "books," each in the 30-40K range -- too short to be independent, just awkwardly long enough not to stick between a single pair of covers.



Found a source for Pennyroyal and Rue. The mistake was looking at spice shops. What I wanted was an herb shop.