Rosolio

Unlike the famous rum punches of the English American world beverages seem pretty sparse for the average French Canadian. Water and milk appear to be the staples but other beverages were consumed with regularity.
 Pehr kalm mentioned in the 1740’s that the Canadian habitants drank water and spruce beer and gives their recipe and methods for making it at home. He also mentions that they have wine but that it was “quite dear”.
Brandy was included in the military ration and was a staple to the habitant and was usually eaten with bread and onion soup in the morning, sometimes it was simply eaten by dipping bread in it.
Other beverages available to the habituant were coffee and chocolate but these would have been more expensive luxury items and probably didn’t factor in a large way into the average habituant’s diet.
Although certainly a luxury item spices would likely not have been unknown to your typical Canadian farmer.
Refined cane sugar from the Caribbean would have had to be imported and would have been almost exclusively consumed by the upper class. Maple sugar was produced locally by Indigenous people since time immemorial and Canadians since the 17th century.
I mention these things because my wife recently found a wonderful Parks Canada reference to rosolio!
To say I was excited is an understatement. It is difficult enough to find mixed drinks in an English context (though they are there if you dig into it) but seemed hopeless to me to find any in a French context as I do not read French let alone the archaic French of the 18th century.
Rosolio was a refreshing sweetened and spiced brandy drink. I’m assuming it was meant to be drunk at room temperature but I see no reason it couldn’t be chilled or heated depending on your needs and tastes at the time.
The recipe developed by historians,Yvon Desloges and Marc Lafrance, is quite a simple. It mixes maple sugar, cloves, peppercorns, coriander seed, cinnamon, and anise seeds. The spices and sugar is mixed with brandy, allowed to infuse into the liquor for some time, strained and then it is ready to drink! 
I followed their recipe pretty closely. I only omitted the anise seeds. In addition to their instructions I covered the bowl to keep out dust and cat hair and stirred it a few times over the course of four hours to make sure the sugar dissolved completely.
The result was great! The maple sugar darkened the brandy, the spices ,which I thought wouldn’t be enough, really infused into the drink well.
Rosolio is quite sweet, and very spicy. It’s akin to a mulled cider but straight liquor so be careful! I did water some down with cool water, I’ve read that was a common practice with brandy and it mellowed the drink out considerably. 
The first link below is the Parks Canada recipe, try it out! 
https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/culture/gourmand-gourmet/recette-recipe93
Other work cited:
Desloges, Yvon. “Daily Life Foodways.” Virtual Museum of New France. Canadian Museum of History. Accessed April 30, 2020. https://www.historymuseum.ca/virtual-museum-of-new-france/daily-life/foodways

La tondre

 First off, I need to acknowledge the amazing work done by Jeff Pavlik on the subject of 18th century New France. Do check out his tinder fungus article and his entire site at colonialbaker.net. 

http://www.colonialbaker.net/tinderfungus.html

Tinder fungus, hoof fungus, cows hoof, bear crap, amondu  are all fun names for Fomes fomentarius. A gray striated fungus that grows on trees. Charles Boninnin tells us from the 1750’s that “ Maple trees usually have large growths on them, which are cut and dried in the sun, making a sort of touchwood which the Canadians call tondre."  So for the purposes of this blog post  I’ll use any of these terms to refer to the fungus.

Pehr Kalm tells us in 1749 "Tree fungi are used very frequently instead of tinder. Those which are taken from the sugar maple are reckoned the best; those of the red maple are next in quality; and next to them, those of the sugar birch. For want of these they make use of those which grow on the aspen tree.”

In my area of northern New York I have only found it growing on the base of live birches or anywhere on dead ones. I usually find them in clumps growing outward or up in more or less a straight line. Generally there are more smaller ones than larger ones. Often they have mold or large holes from insects. I would encourage anyone foraging to try to learn more about the fungus and when where and why you should harvest it in the most responsible way.

In the past I’ve harvested tinder fungus but never did much with it. This year I’ve gathered the fresh ones and scraped the hard outer layer down to the “amondu” when cut as thin as you can in the largest pice you can you get a velvety felt like substance. It is a complex orange-ish color and especially at the ends it’s fibrous layered nature give it striations which play tricks in the sun light like a tigers eye stone. The inner area which is apparently not the part one needs to catch a spark is also fibrous but the fibers are bigger and fused together like a melted plastic hair brush. When gathered fresh and un molested by bugs it is quite wet especially in that inner layer. 

 There are a few 18th century references to its use among Canadianas and Indiginous people, none of these sources mention what they did to it once they gathered it from the forest other than letting it dry in the sun. There are a seemingly immeasurable videos on YouTube explains how to use it as a quick spark catching tinder. 

The majority of these explain that the tinder must be soaked in some kind of chemical such as lye in the form of hardwood ashes mixed in water or ammonia in the form of urine (this choice I only heard about I have no record of someone reproducing this method which was reportedly used by the Vikings) or charring the material by burning it in a controlled manner to reduce its make up to carbon. 

Since treating the tondre was never mentioned from any source I’ve seen on the subject i cut the mushrooms apart and left it to dry in the sun. I first simply cut away the outer layer and attempted to throw sparks onto it with flint and steel. There was no spark catch. So with the idea that I could gather this using only my boucheron knife and byscase axe and not treating the mushroom chemically I have been pounding, slicing, and flexing this amondu felt in an attempt for it to catch and hold a flint and steel spark but to no avail. Yet. 

I have however gotten a smoldering coal in less than 1 minute when simply cut up and burned with a glass magnifying burning lens. This makes make lighting a pipe especially easy. The mushroom, when lit burns evenly and slow and smokes more than I was expecting. It holds a hot coal in the same way incense does and throws similar kind of smoke. The smoke is not acrid but a lot of it will come from the mushroom quickly. 

I tried to put so many sparks to this felt when it was fresh and after it dried for a couple of weeks that I started using up too many gun flints before hunting season. This lead me to find some flint or chert like stones. That’s a story for a different post. I have found though that with just a small amount of char cloth and a small pice of tondre I can easily produced flames from a single flint and steel spark. 

The down side of this method is that I still rely on char cloth being available to make a fire.

The down side of the burning lens is that one needs enough sunlight to focus a beam. 

I hope to eventually be able to make a fire by only using flint, steel, and tondre but for now I think I’ve found my new favorite historically accurate fire starting material.

en ce qui concerne le tir, regarding shooting

 This year is the first year I’ve ever had a hunting license. I’ve never hunted any animal let alone big game like a deer to date. 

Demonstrating the proper loading, shooting and cleaning a flintlock is another requirement for the scout rank. That is one I won’t have trouble with. Shooting accurately is another matter. 

Shoring skills were essential to 18th century habitants for hunting. The ability to feed ones self and family off of the land was absolutely necessary to save their own cultivated animals from slaughter. Undoubtedly Canadian hunting techniques were borrowed from indigenous communities and both cultural groups have subsequently been renowned for their skills with a musket.

My choice of flintlock, just like the milice of the 18th century is the fusil de chase although, they had no choice in the 18th century. 

I’ve been an avid sport shooter most of my life and I’ve always especially loved to “live fire” flintlock muskets but I will certainly need to practice in order to meet the requirements for the ALRA and to cleanly kill a deer.

But before I can Offhand hit an 8"round steel gong 5 times at 25 yardsin 3 minutes. If using a patched ball, extend the range to 35 yards.

I’ll need to figure out my loads. For a round .575 ball with cut paper wadding I’ll experiment with the grain amount of the black powder. For target shooting I often use about 80 grains of twoF to conserve powder but 90-110 will probably aid the accuracy and for hunting will be instrumental to ensure a clean penetration. I may also experiment with patching material, leather, cloth and linen tow. I’ve yet to see a reference to what kind of wadding they were using in the time period so my preparation for the ALRA will hopefully lead to new questions and answers.

In order to prepare for deer hunting I also intend to do some squirrel hunting. A squirrel and a deer are hardly similar but I think that just the woods experience in a hunting mode, needing to observe, to carefully choose shots will be very valuable before attempting to take a deer.

qui va là!? Who goes there!?

Je suis Jean-Baptiste Roy

I, born in 1729, in the Parish of Montreal  am one of 5 surviving children. I was educated at home principally in farming. I was educated by the priests of the parish in Catholicism but never learned to read or write. From a young age all boys raised in the parish of Montreal fished and hunted whenever possible in order to supplement what we could cultivate. 

In 1749, June 1st in my 20th year I joined the charismatic Abbé Francois Piquet who began construction on Fort de La Présentation, also called La Galette, at the confluence of the Oswegachie and the St. Lawrence rivers. I was one of 25 Frenchmen who helped to build it. I have been sometimes a carpenter, sometimes farmer, sometimes voyageur, and sometimes soldier. 

Our population now rivals that of Montreal and God willing in these trying times, will continue to grow.

In 1752 during the course of my work in the fort I met Lulabelle Giroux who was employed as a clerk at the training post of the fort. With the approval of our parents we wed in the mission like so many other families there surrounded by our Canadian and native friends. We’ve gone on to have six children baptized, in all, four have survived.

A few short years after our wedding, the conflict between England and France finally reached us. I was called into militia service repeatedly over the next few years. 

In March 1756 I went with Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry and our warriors to burn Fort Bull.

In the summer we followed General Montcalm and Chevalier de Levis to Oswego. We trekked home after destroying what was left of the forts laden down with goods to bring to our families. 

August 2nd 1757 After our victory at fort William Henry, various indigenous nations decided to forgo the orders of Montcalm to let the prisoners pass or were uninformed of the arrangement. Many French officers were compelled to stop the plundering of the warriors. For our part we Canadians had much work to do dismantling the defenses and needed to go home for the harvest.

A year later we were called up to Fort Carllion on Lake Champlain. We held the abbetis on the lake side from nine in the morning until sundown that night. July 8 1758 was the bloodiest day I had witnessed.

After an all too brief respite in this year, 1759, Construction began of fort Lèvis in September under the Duc la Lèvis, around that time Abbé Piquet and most of our native inhabitants removed themselves to Montreal. Captain Pouchot, now commander of the fort, ordered the evacuation of  Fort de La Présentation including my wife, our parents and our children. I, along with 340 Canadians and regulars of the Compagnies franches de la marine, will row our way to Fort Lèvis to make a stand against Amherst, his ships, and his guns.

Once our preparations are done all we can do is pray and hope that once again The Lord will see fit to see us safely home.