I'm Dagonell the Juggler, mundanely David Salley, one of the cooks mentioned in this article. I'd like to correct a few errors in this article. I spoke with Mr. Bario on the phone for almost an hour. He's a journalism student. I pointed him toward several other SCA cooks, including David Friedman, known as Cariadoc of the Bow. One of the questions he asked me, was "What was the worst result you ever got from re-creating a recipe?" I told him about my attempt to 'Cock-Ale' from The Closet Opened by Sir Kenelme Digbie (pg. 147 if you're curious). I made about 1/8th of the quantity in the recipe, about a gallon. I poured off a shotglass worth, tasted it, spit it into the sink and poured the rest down the drain. It was not rancid, merely incredibly unpalatable. I told him this explicitly. This is what he wrote:

"A Buffalo, N.Y., computer scientist named David Salley nearly poisoned himself by drinking beer that he had boiled a chicken in for a medieval recipe he found on the Internet."

I DID NOT NEARLY POISON MYSELF!!! I tasted a shotglass worth! And spit it out. And I did not get the recipe off the Internet, I got it from Cariadoc's cookbook collection.

I suspect there are other errors in the article as well. I'd like to know who's making swan sauce when they're a protected species. Please read this article with a very large grain of salt!