Fermentum Ultrajectinum
Fermentum Ultrajectinum
Fermented honey beverage.
Ingredients: linden flower and linden ‘flea’ honey; Small-leaved linden tree sap (Tilia cordata); Dutch linden flowers (Tilia vulgaris x europoea); Wood avens (Geum urbanum); Yeast starter culture (Saccharomyces cerevisiae and other microbes).
HONEY harvested by Utrecht beekeepers Elbert Hoogendoorn and Mark Koren; TREE SAP harvested under supervision of Wim Horst park coordinator Zochergroen; WOOD AVENS harvested from Mulderstraat; LINDEN FLOWER Harvested from trees aligning Nieuwekade; YEAST CULTURE courtesy of Zeleke Zurfu, Pauwstraat.
Fermentum Ultrajectinum is a curative alcoholic beverage that taps into the energy and nutrient flows between Utrecht’s trees, bees, lice, plants, people and microbes. It is a simple recipe inspired by old pharmacist’s manuals and domestic know-how that draws on a complex trajectory of life worlds, histories and knowledges encountered in Utrecht.
In preparing the recipe of fermented honey, sap, roots and yeast we met with Utrecht-based ecologists, brewers, gardeners, tree experts and beekeepers who shared with us their understanding of Utrecht’s invisible food chains.
Fermentum Ultrajectinum is a curative alcoholic beverage that taps into the energy and nutrient flows between Utrecht’s trees, bees, lice, plants, people and microbes. It is a simple recipe inspired by old pharmacist’s manuals and domestic know-how that draws on a complex trajectory of life worlds, histories and knowledges encountered in Utrecht. In preparing the recipe of fermented honey, sap, roots and yeast we met with Utrecht-based ecologists, brewers, gardeners, tree experts and beekeepers who shared with us their understanding of Utrecht’s invisible food chains.
The Roman name of Utrecht was Ultrajectum, coming from ultra trajectum, meaning the ford used to cross to ‘the other side’ of the river. We like here the idea of a city being a traject, a movement across a border rather than a fixed and contained geography. Whereas ‘Fermentum’ was in Latin the agent turning dough into bread and grape juice into wine. The microscopic process of fermentation is crucial for us to understand some of the metabolic flows of the city.
Our interest in the relation between local ecology and the pharmaceutical history also led us along some of Utrecht’s historical, economic and cultural trajectories: from the religious institution as precursor of medical knowledge to the university’s pharmacy faculties and Utrecht’s pharmacy gilds, and, most recently, the regime of biotech companies and university spin-offs researching and producing new forms of genetically manipulated medicines. Yet, parallel to Utrecht’s rise of professional medicine lies a backstory of home pharmacy and popular medicine, especially the household was a realm of women’s knowledge about plants and healing remedies. Fermentum Ultrajectinum is a recipe and a curative alliance between domestic knowledge and forms of urban life. It is a a toast to the unexplored digestive tracts of Utrecht and an inoculation against the alienating and dominating modes of a pharmaceutical plutarchy.
