Dawamesk
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| Kind | Sweet |
|---|---|
| Part of the plant | Flower Resin |
| Also called | dawamesc |
| Country | France |
|---|---|
| Recorded in | Le Club des Hachichins (Gautier 1846) |
| First recorded | 1846[1] |
| Still made | Not known |
Dawamesk, also spelled dawamesc, is a sweet paste of cannabis cooked in fat and mixed with sugar or honey, nuts and spices. It was the form in which a circle of writers in Paris, Théophile Gautier among them, ate hashish at the Hôtel Pimodan in the 1840s.[2]: 58–59 The poet Charles Baudelaire called it the most used of the confections in which, he wrote, the Arabs put the fatty extract of the plant.[3]: 168
Making dawamesk
In Baudelaire's account in Les Paradis artificiels, the fatty extract was made by boiling the tops of the fresh plant in butter with a little water. Once all the moisture had boiled off it was strained, leaving a yellowish-green ointment that smelt of hashish and rancid butter. Because of the smell the extract was made into confections. Dawamesk mixed it with sugar and aromatics such as vanilla, cinnamon, pistachios, almonds and musk, sometimes with a little cantharides. Baudelaire put the dose at 15 to 30 grams, taken in a wafer or in a cup of coffee.[3]: 168 In 1868 Gautier called it a decoction of Cannabis indica mixed with fat, honey and pistachios to give it the consistency of a paste or jam.[2]: 59
In 1950 R. J. Bouquet, writing on the illicit cannabis trade in the Bulletin on Narcotics, described a "dawamesk type" of electuary. Cannabis tops or hashish powder were simmered in butter, which was very often replaced by sweet almond or sesame oil. The mixture was strained and the fatty extract was flavoured with mace, cinnamon, cloves, musk or other essences. Aphrodisiacs such as nux vomica and cantharides were often added. Bouquet also reproduced A. Charnot's formula for "a Majoun-Dawamesk type electuary well known in Morocco" (see Majoun).[4]
The Hôtel Pimodan
Gautier's account of an evening at the Hôtel Pimodan, on the Île Saint-Louis, appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes in February 1846 under the title Le Club des Hachichins. Before dinner a doctor standing at a sideboard took pieces of a greenish paste, each about the size of a thumb, from a crystal vase with a spatula and set one beside a silver-gilt spoon on each of the small Japanese porcelain saucers laid out on a tray. When each guest had eaten his share, coffee was served without sugar, and the company sat down to dinner.[1] In 1868 Gautier wrote that the circle had met at the Hôtel Pimodan to take dawamesk, and that he gave up the drug after about ten trials.[2]: 58
In the same notice Gautier retold, from Les Paradis artificiels, how Honoré de Balzac was offered dawamesk at one of these evenings, smelt it and handed it back untouched. Gautier, who was present, added that Balzac said hashish would have no effect on his brain.[2]: 59
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Gautier, T. (1 February 1846). "Le Club des Hachichins". Revue des Deux Mondes (in français). 13: 520–535 – via Wikisource.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Gautier, T. (1868). "Charles Baudelaire". Les Fleurs du mal. Œuvres complètes de Charles Baudelaire (in français). Vol. I. Paris: Michel Lévy frères. pp. 1–75 – via Wikisource.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Baudelaire, C. (1869). "Le Poème du haschisch. II. Qu'est-ce que le haschisch ?". Petits poèmes en prose. Les Paradis artificiels. Œuvres complètes de Charles Baudelaire (in français). Vol. IV. Paris: Michel Lévy frères. pp. 165–170 – via Wikisource.
- ↑ Bouquet, R. J. (1950). "Cannabis". Bulletin on Narcotics (4). United Nations: 14–30.