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At the weekend I was browsing page 298 of Clarke’s The crafte of Lymming etc.. published by the Early English Text Society a few years ago and found this interesting recipe.

From BL MS Add 12195, f126, it has to be quoted in full.

Forto make a water wyche as sadelers gylden with. Take a pownde of vetriol and than grynd hym smal on a marbyl ston, and then put in an erthene pot with a lydde as just as thu canst with vclay and than bake it til it be red as sangweyn tylle, and than take iii pyntes of venegre wel stylled in the secunde degre, and than grynd hem on a ston and labure hem wel togedere and sore, and than lete hem stondyn an owre or tweyn tyl the vetriol hath dronkyn the venegre, than distille yt, than distill yt ageyn; the furst colowre xal scheweyn whyth but reseyve not that but aftyre it schal apere yelwe, and reseve that and kete it clos in a glas. And towche what metal that thou wyl therwith, be yt swerd or] knyf: stryke ths watyr thereon, and it xal shewyn as gold.

The MS in question

https://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=detailsTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=IAMS032-002041909&indx=3&recIds=IAMS032-002041909&recIdxs=2&elementId=2&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&frbg=&&dscnt=0&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BL%29&mode=Basic&vid=IAMS_VU2&srt=rank&tab=local&vl(freeText0)=Add.%2012195&dum=true&dstmp=1644182583972

seems to be 15th century and has a treatise on wills, various sorts of testamentary documents, forms of notices of marriage banns, grammatical tracts, religious notes etc, and most importantly for us, medical receipts and charms. So once again it is not likely to have been written by a practising dyer/ painter or suchlike, much more likely to have been put together by a learned man who was interesting in various semi secret things. It would be interesting to see it in full context but the MS is not yet digitised.

The important thing here is that you are distilling an iron/ sulphuric acid-vinegar solution. Which is not dissimilar to possible readings of two alchemical recipes discussed here on my blog previously:

Making the oil of vitriol and why I’ve been using the wrong distillation equipment
Making the amazing red drops of John of Rupescissa

I am interested in this recipe as well because it suggests that the liquid is yellow and will make iron turn somewhat yellow. Is this because if you heat it high enough you will get sulphuric acid coming over with various complex acetate derivatives? i.e. combining the products of the two distillations I mentioned above.

Quintessence of vinegar iron solution
Sulphuric acid from vitriol

Or perhaps it is acting more like a layer of varnish; some of the old Egyptian craft recipes do the same thing by effectively varnishing silver to look like gold. Most likely though is that it is putting a layer of sulphides on the metal although that would surely be black.

Use of the word ‘stryke’ is odd to me though, is some violence involved? Or do you use a pen or other instrument to put it on it?

Either way it would be interesting to try. I am a sucker for recipes which appear to have definite practicality about them and do not appear at first glance to be badly copied out. In this case, mention of white stuff coming over first then yellow is very like what would be expected from this kind of distillation yet the application of the substance is not explained well, as if the copyist didn’t quite grasp it.

The next question the text raise is, is it automatically assumed when doing distillations that you should always be raising the heat? It does feel like it in this and other recipes, keep heating it until something important happens, but there is often not proper instruction that you should heat it hotter. But if it was just an aide memoire then maybe you would not care, then it gets copied out by someone who doesn’t know better and the specific technical nuances are not known.

So back again to the limits of recipes and the hidden experiences and knowledge which people had and never recorded.