People have them. Until one of my children was diagnosed with them, however, I was pretty.... callous about the issue. Can't eat nuts? Tough. Next issue?
Then I read the Livre de Sent Sovi. This is a cook book dealing with food in 14th Century Iberia. And damn near every recipe in the book starts with something like 'take almond milk made with chicken broth'. I'll talk about chicken broth later, let's try to stay on target here. It's difficult to make a lot of these recipes unless you've got almond milk or a reasonable substitute
My initial thought was that rice milk would fit the bill. Probably. Maybe. But I couldn't find a single reference to rice milk in any documents from the Middle Ages. Or the Roman era. Which is not to say there aren't references, but I haven't found any. I'll be honest, that wouldn't prevent me from trying it and, if it was moderately useful, using it. There are recipes for barley water, of course, but if you've tasted barely water it doesn't taste the same as almond milk and it lacks the fatty mouth-feel almond milk gets from the almond oil.
In researching this issue, however, I came across horchata. You know horchata, right? It's the yummy Mexican rice milk heavily flavored with cinnamon and sugar. And sugar. But rice wasn't an original ingredient (sugar was, though). In Iberia, where the drink was 'invented' the original ingredient was the chufa nut. (Which leaves aside the fact that barely water, oat water, and other concoctions pre-date horchata/orxata/llet de xufes/leche de chufas by quite a bit.)
The chufa nut has been cultivated for thousands of years and can be found in the Egyptian record and archaeological finds. We know it was used in 14th Century Iberia because it appears in a contemporary herbal. It appears to have been used as a vegetable or dried and ground into a flour for use in sweets. The Spanish popularly claim that the drink originated in the 13th Century. As they tell the tale, James I of Aragon was offered a drink by a little girl as he was passing by and exclaimed "Aco es or, xata!" That's gold, darling. (Alternative translation: That's money, honey.)
That sounds ridiculous, of course, and it's probably completely untrue but I'm not going to argue with the chufa mafia or the dozens of bloggers who cut and paste the unsubstantiated work of other bloggers. I did manage to find a Spanish reference which makes reference to documents found in 18th Century municipal records which indicate horchata vendors were in business at that time. Another source claims that llet de xufes can be documented in 13th Century al-Andalus, but it fails to document this claim. This claim is repeated by several sources, including one that moves the date to the 10th Century but, the lack of documentation is also repeated. One of the physicians of James II of Aragon is alleged to have prescribed eating the roots of "xufles" to treat hemorrhoids. This in the late 13th Century. There is a prescription for leche de chufas from 1824 as well. In the 1607 "Libro de Cozina" written by Domingo Hernández de Maceras there is apparently a recipe for Torrija (french toast - more properly bread soaked and then fried) which apparently makes reference to using horchata de chufas. But I haven't been able to confirm that.
For me the presence of the chufa in medieval Spain, the fact that it was known to and used by them (in medicine, note, not food, but the line there is not as clearly drawn as it is today) is enough to make it plausible. And, frankly, the convenience of being able to substitute a non-allergenic ingredient that's pretty close to the allergenic ingredient is just too tempting to ignore. I feel comfortable using these as a substitute for almonds in recipes. I would not feel comfortable presenting horchata as a documented beverage at a medieval event. That said, I'll probably have it on hand to drink because I enjoy it. But where to get chufas?
After searching specialty food stores, importers, and just about every other source I could think of I finally found a source for chufa nuts: the local hunting store. It turns out chufa nuts are used to create bait patches to lure turkey. You can buy chufa nuts by the 5 pound bag. And, according to those who've tried it, horchata made with chufa nuts tastes very similar to horchata made with almonds.
I said I'd talk about chicken broth. The Livre de Sent Sovi uses two kinds of almond milk. One is the familiar sweetened almond milk we know and tolerate. The other is a savory almond milk made using chicken broth instead of water. That's a subject for an entirely different post, however.
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