candy-msg – 2/17/08
Period candy. recipes. Comfits. Candied fruit peels. Sugared nuts.
NOTE: See also the files: chocolate-msg, comfits-msg, gingerbread-msg, sugar-msg, honey-msg, Sugarplums-art, Roses-a-Sugar-art, desserts-msg, sugar-paste-msg, sotelties-msg, candied-peels-msg, sugar-sources-msg.
KEYWORDS: sugar candy period candied fruit comfits banquet honey
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From: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy at abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 09:51:59 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: SC - Re: That candy stuff
I asked Mistress Johanna about that "taffy stuff", and this is an edited
version of her reply.
Tibor
Pennydes (or something very close to that--it has been a couple of years
since my last big batch).
There are descriptions of pennydes and of assaying the different "heights"
of sugar in Curye on Inglysch. A similar recipe is found in Cariadoc's
al-Baghdadi--but I can't remember the middle eastern name of the sweetmeat.
If you compare the recipe for basic taffy in Joy of Cooking with the
originals, there are many great similarities. The modern recipe calls for
vinegar and that does seem to make the results much more predictable, so I
do add it. If the humidity isn't right, the whole mess turns powdery and
chalk-like, this can also happen when you store it.
I have been on a quest for period nougat recipes for many years. There are
some late period Italian mentions of sweets that might be nougat in banquet
rolls. I haven't found a period recipe.
From: Emily Epstein <epsteine at spot.Colorado.EDU>
Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 14:48:25 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: SC - taffy-like candy
Greetings from Alix Mont de Fer.
A short while back, someone (I forget who) asked about a period taffy-like
candy. While rummaging through my files for something else, I found this
recipe. I don't know if it's what you had in mind, but it's very tasty.
I served this at a feast in Spinning Winds some years ago, where I
discovered the property listed in the notes at the end that make it not
very suitable for feasts.
PAYN RAGOUN (Curye on Inglysch, p.113)
1/3 c. sugar
1/3 c. honey
1 c. pine nuts
2 t. ground ginger
Bring sugar and honey to a boil, stirring constantly. When it reaches the
point that a drop in cold water holds together, remove from heat. Stir in
ginger and pine nuts, and stir until it starts to harden. Turn out on a
wet surface. When cool enough to handle, form into a log. Slice and serve.
NOTES:
Neither the sugar nor the honey required clarification, nor did my
granulated sugar require grinding, as loaf sugar would have.
Ground ginger works best. Fresh ginger, even in large quantities lacks
that nice ginger bite.
I tested the mixture with a wooden spoon. My fingers still have live nerve
endings & I'd like to keep them.
Because of the honey, the mixture crystallizes differently than plain
sugar syrup, and it won't do what a candy thermometer would indicate.
260 degrees (hard ball on a thermometer) is about right.
If you accidentally overcook the mixture, it can be salvaged. Pull it like
taffy and cut it in small pieces. It's tasty but extremely chewy, kind
of like Bit-O-Honey.
The honey makes this react more to humidity than other candy. It becomes a
sticky mess in hot, moist rooms (like kitchens).
Keep it cool, but not cold. It's hard (or impossible) to cut if worked
cold.
Never, ever wrap this in aluminum foil, unless you like bits of metal in
your food.
If anybody finds a way to make this stuff a little more manageable,
please let me know. Enjoy!
Alix Mont de Fer (m.k.a. Emily Epstein)
Shire of Caer Galen, Outlands
epsteine at spot.colorado.edu
From: Stephen Bloch <sbloch at adl15.adelphi.edu>
Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 21:52:13 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: SC - taffy-like candy
Alix Mont de Fer writes:
> PAYN RAGOUN (Curye on Inglysch, p.113)
>
> 1/3 c. sugar
> 1/3 c. honey
> 1 c. pine nuts
> 2 t. ground ginger
>
> Bring sugar and honey to a boil, stirring constantly. When it reaches the
> point that a drop in cold water holds together, remove from heat. Stir in
> ginger and pine nuts, and stir until it starts to harden. Turn out on a
> wet surface. When cool enough to handle, form into a log. Slice and serve.
We used the following proportions and directions:
2 C sugar
1 C honey
1 T powdered ginger
1 C pine nuts
Heat sugar and honey to firm ball stage (c. 250 degrees). Remove from fire;
stir in pine nuts and ginger and stir until mixture thickens. Pour into
greased 8" x 8" pan and let cool.
The first time we tried to serve it, it was at a potluck meeting in
wintertime, and we found that on the way to the meeting the stuff had
reached approximately carborundum hardness. As it warmed to room
temperature, it gradually softened enough for us to hack off a few
gobbets, which were quite tasty.
mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
Stephen Bloch
sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 21:18:06 -0700
From: atripp at sfu.ca (Allyson Tripp Rozell)
Subject: SC - honey taffy
I don't recall who first brought it up, but here is the recipe I have for
honey taffy.
2 cups honey
1 cup sugar
1 cup cream
Cook over medium heat until it reaches a hard ball stage. Pour onto a
buttered platter. When cool, pull until it is a golden color. Cut into
bite-sized pieces.
As I mentioned before, good results can be obtained using only honey.
I don't know anything about honey taffy in period.
Allyson
atripp at sfu.ca
Date: Sat, 27 Sep 1997 00:38:13 -0400
From: Aine of Wyvernwood <sybella at gte.net>
Subject: SC - killer candy recipe.
although this may or may not be period...of any wants to win
a dessert contest this should do it...sweet, rich, and to
die for.....
the name is deceptive...it is in truth homemade
caramels...with pecans...
OKLAHOMA BROWN CANDY.
2 cups sugar into heavy skillet [that means a cast iron frying pan]
4 cups sugar + 2 cups milk in deep heavy kettle
cook sugar in skillet over low heat, stiring with wooden spoon as it melts
slowly becoming the color of brown sugar. Don;t smoke or turn dark brown
[tastes nasty if you do].
When sugar in skillet starts melting, set kettle with sugar
and milk mizture over low heat and simmer as you continue melting sugar.
When melted, pour in fine stream into kettle, stirring all the time to blend.
[if it does not blend perfectly, but becomes a lump, it is okay it will melt].
Cook and stir until the mixture reaches firm ball stage, 244-248 degrees.
Remove from heat and add 1 stick of butter [butter NOT
margarine] and stir, then add 1.2 teaspoon of soda and stir
vigourously [it will bubble up, that is
okay] Set aside and add 2 or 3 teaspoons of vanilla and
beat until the candy becomes thick and dull.
Fold in 4 cups [I use 5 to 8 cupps] of broken nuts [I use
pecans] and pour into a buttered pans....a large cookie tin
with sides is perfect and will nearly fill the
whole tin.
ps... I use 1/2 cup canned [evaporated] milk and 1/.2 cup regular whole milk.
this candy is rich, creamy and to die for.....it is very
easy to make, even tho it sounds complicated and makes up in
less than an hour, the problem is in waiting for the candy
to cool to eat....let it get sorta hard then cut into squares.
warning it is rich, and very sweet, after it is carmelized
sugar...it should be
sorta soft...like real caramels...the ones from the store...
my mom makes it for me without the nuts...as I dislike nuts of any sort...
but it is still marvelous with the nuts...I think pecans are
best, have tried all the others and most people tell me that
they prefer pecans, besides it is soooooo
southern [is there any other way to be, southern that is...grins]
Aine
Date: Sat, 27 Sep 1997 07:39:09 -0500 (CDT)
From: alysk at ix.netcom.com (Elise Fleming )
Subject: SC - Re: Pulled Sugar
Greetings! Murkial asked about pulled sugar. I believe it might be
marginally in period for Italy. I've seen a reference (Yeah, right!
Where it it now???) for it. However, since I have some stuff that goes
to the mid-1600s it might be that late. My "educated" guess is that it
would not be appropriate for England and probably not France. The
Italians seemed to be ahead of "us all" when it came to elaborate sugar
works, but then, they were the middle men for sugar and had at least
one refinery in Italy, if memory serves.
Alys Katharine
Date: Sat, 27 Sep 1997 22:20:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: Uduido at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Re: Pulled Sugar
<< Greetings! Murkial asked about pulled sugar. I believe it might be
marginally in period for Italy. >>
There are also numerous recipes for taffy like confections in the Baghdad
Cookery Book.
Lord Ras
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 17:11:09 -0400
From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow)
Subject: Re: SC - candied ginger
> Is candied ginger a period food?
>
> If so does any one has a period (or not) recipe, documented (or not)?
>
> Lord Robert de QuelQuePart
Hello! Yes, I think it is. I have a recipe in Take 1000 Eggs for "pickled
ginger" :
Harleian MS. 4016
97 Peris in compost.... And then pare clene rasinges of ginger, & temper
hem ij. or iij. daies, in wyne, And after, ley hem in clarefied hony colde,
all a day or a night; And [th]en take the rasons oute of the hony,...
Cindy/Sincgiefu
Date: Sat, 1 Nov 1997 12:22:32 -0600 (CST)
From: alysk at ix.netcom.com (Elise Fleming )
Subject: SC - Candied Ginger
Greetings! Was it on this list or the Madrone list where someone asked
about candied ginger? I found a few things. There is probably more
out there but this is what came to hand quickly.
Candied ginger "should" be within period. It is listed as one of the
"thinges necessary for a banquet" (the dessert course) by Thomas
Dawson, 1596, in _The Good Huswifes Jewell_. I am "assuming" that this
is in candied form since the other items all have candied variations.
There is a slightly OOP recipe in _The Ladies Cabinet_, 1655. It is
#43, "To candy Ginger."
"Take very fair and large Ginger, and pare it, and then lay it in water
a day and a night; then take your double refined sugar, and boile it to
the height of sugar again: then when your sugar beginneth to be cold,
take your ginger, and stir it well about till your sugar is hard to the
pan; then take it out race by race, and lay it by the fire four hours,
then tak a pot and warm it, and put the Ginger in it, then tie it very
clsoe, and every second morning stir it about roundly, and it will be
rock-candied in a very short space."
In this recipe the root (race) is not sliced into thin pieces to be
candied.
Alys Katharine
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 17:08:59 +1100 (EST)
From: Charles McCN <charlesn at sunrise.srl.rmit.edu.au>
Subject: SC -Anise (was cndied ginger)
Anise seed and sugar are good - a texture not unlike small garlic buds
roasted, and a taste a little like licorice, a little like pepper, and a
little like sugar - I can't think of a better description at the moment,
but I use it as a snack all the time - kind of mouth-freshener.
Indian restaurants around do a similar thing, but they put more stuff in
with it.
Charles
Date: Thu, 06 Nov 1997 23:09:48 EST
From: kathe1 at juno.com (Kathleen M Everitt)
Subject: SC - Re: candied ginger)
> Hummmmmm, there should be some recipes in late period books, but I was
>basicly thinking of cooking them in a bit of syrup until it was at
>hard-crack, draining them and coating them with sugar. Or, more simply,
>wetting the seeds with beaten egg white and rolling in sugar. The real
>problem is figuring out how to get all the seeds separate afterwards. You
>would have to do it before they completely dried or they'd never come apart.
>And there's the difficulty in keeping the coating on them while separtating
>them............................
> Any ideas out there? What do the period recipes suggest?
>
>Ldy Diana
I don't know specifically about comfits, but the recipe for candied peel
says spread them out to dry. Also, rolling them in sugar keeps them from
sticking, not make them stick together. I always roll my peel in sugar if
I'm in a hurry or it's really humid. I would imagine it would work the
same way for candied seeds. Roll them in sugar, spread them on cookie
sheets and let them dry, turning with a spatula occasionally to keep
them from sticking to the pan. Try putting them in the oven after you
turn it off from baking something. You don't want to bake them, but the
residual heat will help them dry out.
Julleran
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 1997 11:01:56 -0500 (EST)
From: Robin Carrollmann <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Re: Worm Recipe (plus a "new" book)
On Tue, 23 Dec 1997, Elise Fleming wrote:
> A comment on the recipe for a confection from pine-nut kernels: There
> is a painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art from the Renaissance which
> has, I am convinced, a picture of this confection. I had been on the
> prowl for art work with confections and spotted this in an alcove. I
> sketched the candy which is somewhat cube-shaped with white ovals in
> it. Only after I read this recipe did the picture and the recipe come
> together. Now I need to find pine nuts and try it out.
>
> Alys Katharine
No doubt you know (but I'll mention it for anyone who doesn't) that
sugared pine-nuts are mentioned in Platina. I'm at work, and don't
have my copy handy, but ISTR that he says to shape them into little rolls.
They are served at the beginning of a meal (to stimulate the appetite, I
think).
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain of Tethba
harper at idt.net
mka Robin Carroll-Mann, who made sugared walnuts for Xmas gifts this
year
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 1997 08:39:06 -0600 (CST)
From: alysk at ix.netcom.com (Elise Fleming)
Subject: SC - Pine-nut Confection
Greetings. Here is the recipe from the Nostradamus book.
Alys Katharine - Recipe follows
"How to Make a Confection from Pine-Nut Kernels".
"Take as many well-cleaned and carefully shelled pine-nut kernels as
you will, dry them or toast them a little. Or take them whole with
their skins and shells and put them in a basket. Hang this over the
hearth near the fire and leave it there for three days. Tus the heat
from the fire will slowly penetrate them and dry them. Then take them
out and clean them thoroughly. Next take two and a half pounds of
nuts, being careful to keep them close at hand. Then take some of the
most beautiful and best Madeira sugar, dissolve sufficient of it in
rose-water and boil it until it attains the consistency of a jelly. If
it is winter or a time when there is a lot of moisture in the air, boil
it a bit longer, but if it is summer, then let it just simmer. this is
when it does not boil over or bubble when it boils, which is a sign
that the moisture had been evaporated; but to be brief, when it has
boiled to the consistency of a jelly, as I have said, thake the
preserving pan off th efire and put it somewhere where th eliquid can
dry off and become firm. Then give it a good stir with a piece of wood
and beat it continuously until it turns white. When it begins to cool
down a little, add the white of a whole or half an egg and beat it well
again. Next place it over the coals, in order to allow the moisture
from the egg-white to stiffen, and when you see that it is properly
white and like the first lot you boiled, take the dried, well-cleaned
pine-nut kernels and put them into the sugar. Stir them with the wood
so that they are thoroughly mixed with the sugar - this should still be
done over the coal fire, so that the mixture does not cool too quickly.
Then take a wide wooden knife, like the ones used by the shoemakers,
and cut the mixture into pieces, each weighing about ana ounce and a
half, but not more than two, which would not be good, and spread them
carefully on to some paper until they have properly cooked, at which
stage put a little gold leaf on to them and your confection is ready.
If, however, it is not possible to obtain pine-nut kernels anywhere,
use peeled almonds instead, dividing them either into two parts or
three and mixing them with the sugar to make this confection. And if
there are too few pine-nut kernels, you can replace them with pieces of
almonds, for the latter are not dissimilar to the former in taste and
potency. You can also use fennel which is flowering or in seed, which
is kept in houses and used during the wine harvest. When your sugar
has almost completely boiled and is hot and white with everything mixed
in it or scattered over it, it looks like manna or or snow and is so
beautiful and lovely."
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998 20:45:45 -0600
From: L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt <liontamr at ptd.net>
Subject: SC - Re: sesame candy
>HI Aoife:
> On the sesame candy.....the stuff that they made in Sierra Leone is
>not halwa (essentially a sesame based "peanut butter fudge". This was more
>like sesame seed brittle. I *really* wish that I had learned to make it.
>They must have caramelized sugar to some point & added lightly toasted
>sesame seeds. The candy was 95% sesame seeds. They pressed it to almost
>paper thinness & cut it in smallish rectangles. Overall, it was a bit
>sticky & almost flexible. I've had some hard candy from Korea that is
>similar in taste, but different in texture. I've tried making this, but the
>silly stuff tends to harden long before I can get it to press down thin
>enough to my liking. It would probably help to make this on a very hot
>humid day in summer....perhaps the extra heat in the atmosphere would
>prevent the candy from hardening prematurely.
> Happy New Year, Antoine
>Dan Gillespie
>dangilsp at intrepid.net
I'm cc'ing to the list, 'cause they might find it interesting.
Pastelli (Sesame Candy, from Greece), from Middle Eastern Cooking, HP Books
ISBN0-89586-184-4 copyright 1982, Tucson Arizona
For thousands of years, this candy has been made in many Middle Eastern
countries*
1 (1-lb) jar honey (2 cups)
1 lb. hulled sesame seeds
Butter an 8-inch square pan. Set aside. heat honey in a medium saucepan over
medium heat until a candy thermometer registers 280degrees farenheit (140C).
At this temperature, syrup dropped into cold water will seperate into
threads which are hard but not brittle. Stir in sesame seeds. immediately
pour into prepared pan. Cool slightly. While still soft, cut into diagonal 2"
x 1" strips or diamond shapes. Do not remove from pan until candy is firm.
Makes about 3 pounds.
* This statment appears in the book, unsubstantiated.
Aoife
Date: Fri, 2 Jan 1998 10:41:09 -0800
From: David Friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Re: sesame candy
There is a late manuscript of the Mappae Clavicula that has a few culinary
recipes at the end (most of it is technical recipes, not culinary ones),
one of which is a sesame candy. As best I recall, the recipe itself does
not mention sesame, although the title does--I'm not sure if it is supposed
to be assumed.
David/Cariadoc
Subject: Re: ANST - previous threads ... keltoi / religion / holy-days
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 98 09:51:31 MST
From: Baronman at aol.com
To: ansteorra at Ansteorra.ORG
In a message dated 98-01-24 11:18:45 EST, Wolf writes:
>most importantly, being a order that prized knowledge, they brought
>back many foreign ideas from the middle east that directly
>threatened the "orthodoxy" of the church teachings.
Other things that the Templars bring to us even in todays society is a hardend
sugar that the Temple imported from the East into Europe called Kandish- now
called candy.
<snip>
Baron Bors of Lothian
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 1998 13:55:56 -0500 (EST)
From: Stephen Bloch <sbloch at adl15.adelphi.edu>
Subject: SC - Pine nut confection (was something about worms)
Alys Katherine wrote:
> By the bye, I received a copy of _The Elixirs of Nostradamus_ ...
> The second part of this book contains sweetmeats: preserved lemon
> peel, pumpkins, bitter oranges, walnuts, bitter cherries; a transparent
> jelly from bitter cherries and one from quinces (Who was looking for
> documentation for jelly??); ginger water; preserving roots of eryngos,
> welted thistle; preserving limes, quinces, unripe almonds; preserving
> the peel or rind of alkanet; candied sugar; pine-nut kernel confection;
> marzipan; and penide sugar.
>
> A comment on the recipe for a confection from pine-nut kernels: There
> is a painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art from the Renaissance which
> has, I am convinced, a picture of this confection. I had been on the
> prowl for art work with confections and spotted this in an alcove. I
> sketched the candy which is somewhat cube-shaped with white ovals in
> it. Only after I read this recipe did the picture and the recipe come
> together. Now I need to find pine nuts and try it out.
I don't know the painting in question, but that sounds EXACTLY like the
payn ragoun my wife and I worked out two years ago from _Forme of Cury_.
Once it cooled, we naturally cut it into cubes, which did indeed leave
the white ovals of bisected pine-nuts visible on the cut faces.
Payn Ragoun (FC 68)
Take hony and sugur cipre and clarifie ir togydre, and boile it with
esy fire, and kepe it wel fro brennyng. And whan it hath yboiled a
while, take vp a drope therof with thy fingur and do it in a litel
water, and loke if it hong togydre; and take it fro the fyre and do
therto pynes the thriddendele and powdour gyngeuer, and stere it
togyder til it bigynne to thik, and cast it on a wete table; lesh it
and serue it forth with fryed mete, on flessh dayes or on fysshe
dayes.
Our redaction:
2 C sugar
1 C honey
1 T powdered ginger
1 C pine nuts
Heat sugar and honey to firm ball stage (c. 250 degrees). Remove from
fire; stir in pine nuts and ginger and stir until mixture thickens.
Pour into greased 8" x 8" pan, cool, and cut into half-inch cubes (the
ginger is pretty strong, so a small morsel is plenty at once).
It was quite tasty, but sticky, the first time we made it. The second
time we heated it a little higher, and it was quite tasty, but resembled
Jawbreakers in consistency. (At least, when we took it in sub-freezing
weather to a potluck; after half an hour in the house it was easier to
cut and eat.)
mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
Stephen Bloch
sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 11:23:32 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: SC - Dragiees: A Speculative Experiment - Long!
I thought people might find this interesting, especially the sugar
mavens out there. What follows is an account of my speculative attempt
to recreate a period candy. We have no real reason to assume the candy
existed in this exact form, but if I'm forgiven for working from such
secondary sources as Scully's "The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages",
I'd say there is a fair chance that it did.
In the course of working with the Terence Scully translation of
Chiquart's "Du Fait de Cuisine" (c. ~1420 C.E.), I ran across several
different references to an item known as a dragiee. A modern drageŽ is a
sugared almond, which are _also_ referred to in the text, but Chiquart
appears to be referring to a spice candy, used either as a garnish or as
a larger candy eaten out of hand in its own right. In its simplest form
this would be just a candied seed like the Anglo-Norman confit,
generally anise or caraway, classified as either red or white, and which
might or might not include artificial coloring. Roughly equivalent to
the candied fennel seeds one finds in an Indian restaurant. These would
likely be used as a garnish, but there appear to have been larger
dragiees, often found at the end of a great feast, generally served with
wafers, as a substitute for, or in addition to, hippocras, the spiced
wine cordial drunk after a large meal as a digestive aid. It occurred to
me that there ought to be a way to incorporate the spices used for
hippocras into a dragiee, the spice combination being more or less a
medical prescription. So, what would those spices be?
"To make powdered hippocras, take a quarter of very fine cinnamon
selected by tasting it, and half a quarter of fine flour of cinnamon, an
ounce of selected string ginger, fine and white, and an ounce of grain
of Paradise, a sixth of nutmegs and galingale together, and bray them
all together. And when you would make your hippocras, take a good half
ounce of this powder and two quarters of sugar and mix them with a quart
of wine, by Paris measure. And note that the powder and the sugar mixed
together is the Duke's powder."
Le Menagier de Paris, ÔThe Goodman of ParisÕ, c. ~
1393, trans. Eileen Powers, 1928.
The fractional measurements are probably parts of a pound, which would
make it pretty consistent with the proportions of other hippocras
recipes of the period. Which gives the following amounts:
4 oz stick cinnamon
2 oz powdered cinnamon
"A sixth" (probably of a pound - 2 2/3 ounces) of nutmegs and galingale
mixed together in equal parts
1 oz of ginger
1 oz of grains of paradise
'and bray them all together', giving us roughly 11 ounces of mixed
hippocras spice, just over three cups.
Now the trick is to figure out how to incorporate the spices into candy.
My biggest fear was that powdered spices stirred into sugar syrup cooked
to the hard-crack stage (300 degrees F.) would immediately burn, which
is why modern hard candy recipes use essential flavoring oils for this
job. Try finding an essential flavoring oil for galingale or grains of
paradise, though! I thought of various infusions, and experimented a bit
with them, but without much success. I pretty much concluded that the
only way to do the job would be to use the powdered spices, since whole
spices, which would burn less, would be candied whole spices, and not
candied hippocras. The trick was to let the syrup cool down to a
reasonable temperature before adding the spices, and hope that at that
temperature the syrup would still be liquid enough to stir the spices in
properly.
So, starting with proportions based on a couple of different
cinnamon-sugar recipes, and a hard candy recipe from "The Joy of
Cooking", I boiled one cup of water with three cups of sugar
(substituting the third cup of sugar for the 3/4 cup light corn syrup
called for in the recipe; 3/4 cup of corn syrup weighing in at around 8
ounces) to 300 degrees F. on a candy thermometer. Various period sugar
recipes indicate that even without a good thermometer, there were ways
for period people to tell when their sugar was done, such as the nature
of the thread it spun, or how it would stick to wet fingers, etc. The
names commonly used, such as soft or hard ball, hard crack, etc., were
developed before the thermometer came into common use in making candy:
now you know where the terms come from. I was expecting a bit of trouble
with the simple substitution of sugar for the corn syrup, since it was
probably included to make the candy easier to work without excess early
crystallization. I must try this again with sugar and honey as a
substitute for the corn syrup, and let you know the results.
I let the syrup cool down somewhat, just shaking the pan slightly, since
excessive stirring will cause the syrup to crystallize. I was able to
get the temperature down to around 237 degrees F. before it began to get
as thick as I wanted to try stirring powdered spices (evenly) into. My
written candy recipe suggested leaving the main portion of the syrup in
the pan, on the lowest possible heat, while working batches of candy, so
after stirring in about six tablespoons of my spice mixture (which
brought down the temperature a bit more), that's what I did. That kept
the syrup at more or less an even keel, without burning it or destroying
the flavor. The other advantage was that when individual portions of
candy became too cool and hard to work, they could be stirred back into
the syrup to melt. The temperature never got much higher than 240
degrees F., which was enough to melt the mistakes without burning the
spices.
I tried forming the dragiees in various ways; most methods involved
pouring small amounts of candy onto a lightly oiled marble slab. I tried
spooning drops the size of a penny, which came out too flat. I also
tried larger puddles, roughly an inch across, give or take a bit, which
could be left to cool for a few minutes, peeled, while still soft, off
the slab, and rolled into a ball 1/2 inch in diameter. The problem was
that this was extremely slow unless I dropped several puddles at a time,
and usually half of them cooled until brittle before I could get to
them. Finally I found that the best way to do it was to drop 2-3
tablespoons in an oblong ribbon about 1 inch by four, carefully lifting
the cooled long leading edge with an oiled knife blade, and folding it
over on itself repeatedly, until I had a rough six-inch-long cylinder
about 1/2 inch in diameter. I was then able to cut off pillow-shaped
chunks, a few at a time, which could be left as is or rolled into balls.
Enlisting a friendly native six-year-old, we were able to get a
reasonably good production line going, except perfect spheres were low
in proportion to egg-shapes, what with the kid hands and all. I'd
strongly advise you try several methods of forming yourself, before
allowing anybody whose hands can't take much contact with hot stuff to
participate. My hands are pretty well calloused, and don't burn easily,
and it was only when I felt that the rolled cylinder method produced
relatively cool chunks of candy that I allowed my son to hold them in
his hands. We stored our proto-dragiees in an airtight plastic box,
covered with lots of powdered sugar, another non-period convenience,
which we'll shake off in a sieve when we want to serve them. Rice flour
is probably what would have been used in period to keep them separate,
but since that too would have to be removed if used in any quantity, I
felt it made little difference. We got about 160 small bullets, roughly
3-8 to 5/8 inch, from our 1 1/2 pounds of sugar, and they're a bit like
cinnamon hard candies, except they taste, well, like hippocras.
Obviously this is a rather speculative approach. As far as I know, we
have no recipes for spice dragiees. We do have a few confit recipes from
period sources, but they're mostly for whole spices, which would make
the hippocras mixture difficult or impossible to achieve in a single
bite of candy. We are reasonably sure that hard candies, made from syrup
boiled to the hard crack stage, existed, so this is just one way they
might have been flavored and made.
Adamantius
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 14:12:38 -0400
From: Margritte <margritt at mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: SC - rose sotelties
>> << I am currently working on a solteltie dessert board for our
>> upcoming Red Rose Ball (if we get the event bid :) ) >>
>>
>I don't know if this will help, but I ran across a recipe for crystallized
>rose petals in my local Safeway, of all places. I don't know if it is
>period - can anyone tell me if such things were used?
Aha! I knew I had it here somewhere. Sorry it's taken me so long to dig
them out, but here are period recipes for rose petals. If any of the
characters come out looking strange, they're probably a long "S".
I've made candied rose petals and mint leaves. The mint leaves made a much
bigger hit.
- -Margritte
***
How to pre erve whole Ro es, Gilliflowers, Marigolds, &c.
Dip a Ro e that is neyther in the bud nor ouerblowne, in a irrup,
con i ting of ugar double refined, and Ro ewater boiled to his true
height, then open the leaues one by one, with a fine mooth bodkin either
of bone or wood, and pre ently if it be a hot unnie day, and while t the
unne is in ome good height, lay them on papers in the unne, or el e drie
them with ome gentle heate in a clo e roome, heating up the roome before
you et them in, or in an ouen vpon papers, in pewter di hes, and then put
them vp in gla es and keep them in drie cupbords neere the fire. You mu t
take out the eedes if you meane to eat them. You may prooue this,
pre eruing with ugar candie, in tead of ugar if you plea e.
(Delightes for Ladies, by Sir Hugh Plat, 1609).
***
How to candy Rosemary flowers, Rose leaves, Roses, Marigolds, &c. With
preservation of color Dissolve refined, or double refined sugar, or sugar
candy itself in a little Rosewater, boile it to a reasonable height, put in
your rootes or flowers when your sirup is either fully colde, or almost
colde, let them rest therein till the sirup have pearced them sufficiently,
then take out your flowers with a skimmer, suffering the loose sirup to run
from them so long as it will, boile that sirup a little more and put in
more flowers as before, divide them also, then boyle all the sirup which
remaineth and is not drunke up in the flowers, to the height of manus
Christi, putting in more sugar if you see cause, but no more Rosewater, put
your flowers therein when your sirup is cold or almost cold, and let them
stand till they candie.
(from Hugh Plat's Delightes for Ladies, printed by Humphrey Lownes, 1609,
as quoted in Dining with William Shakespeare, by Madge Lorwin)
***
To candy any Roots, Fruits, or Flowers Dissolve sugar, or sugar-candy in
Rose-water. Boile it to an height. Put in your roots, fruits or flowers,
the sirrop being cold. Then rest a little; after take them out, and boyl
the sirrop again. Then put in more roots, etc. Then boyl the sirrop the
third time to an hardness, putting in more Sugar, but not Rose-water. Put
in the roots, etc. The sirrop being cold, and let them stand till they
candy.
(from Gervase Markham's The English Hous-wife, printed by J.B.., For R.
Jackson, 1615, part 2 of Countrey Contentments, as quoted in To the Queen's
Taste, by Lorna J. Sass)
Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 15:18:15 -0700
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Seeking period recipes & sources...
At 4:49 PM -0400 5/2/98, Kallyr wrote:
>I am seeking period recipes, documentation and sources for the following:
<snip>
>A Honey Pine Nut candy
"They are often eaten with raisins and are thought to arouse hidden
passions; and they have the same virtue when candied in sugar. Noble and
rich persons often have this as a first or last course. Sugar is melted,
and pine kernels, covered with it, are put into a pan and moulded in the
shape of a roll. To make the confection even more magnificent and
delightful, it is often covered with thin gold leaf." from Platina, 15th c
Italian; worked-out version in the Miscellany. This is a sugar candy; our
experience with honey candies is that they come out sticky whatever you do.
Also:
Payn ragoun
Curye on Inglysch p. 113 (Forme of Cury no. 68)
Take hony and sugur cipre and clarifie it togydre, and boile it with esy
fyre, and kepe it wel fro brennyng. And whan it hath yboiled a while, take
vp a drope erof with fyngur and do it in a litel water, and loke if it
hong togydre; and take it fro the fyre and do therto pynes the triddendele
& powdour gyngeuer, and stere it togydre til it bigynne to thik, and cast
it on a wete table; lesh it and serue it forth with fryed mete, on flessh
dayes or on fysshe dayes. [end of original; I've substuted th's for
thorns.]
>~~MinnaGantz <KALLYR at aol.com>
Elizabeth/Betty Cook
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 14:29:17 +1000 (EST)
From: The Cheshire Cat <sianan at geocities.com>
Subject: SC - Candied Almonds
Lea wrote:
>I'm new here! =0)...I was wondering...does anyone have a good period
>recipe for candied almonds?
What I do to make candied/sugared almonds is reletively simple. I have
documentation around somewhere. I will dig it out for you if you want.
Get a whole load of blanched almonds. Toast them slightly and let them cool.
When they are cool, dip them in egg white and roll them in Raw sugar. Then
set then aside to dry. The raw sugar and egg white makes and attractive
and cruchy coating to the almonds. Keep them in an airtight tin until
ready to serve.
The people in my Barony love them. To the point that I can't set them on a
table anwhere in view without a significant portion of them going
walkabout. The process of coating them in the egg white can be a little
messy, but it's fun.
Failing that I go to the candy store around the corner. They sell huge
boxes of sugared almonds for a reletively cheap price. I sometimes get
boxed of gold and silver ones. They look really speccy strewn around a
buffet table or in a dish in a pool of candlelight. Lovely and shiny.
(Yeah, I cheat every now and them, but sometimes on has to have an artists
eye when laying out the food on a buffet table or something similar =)
- -Sianan
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 22:29:33 -0400
From: Marilyn Traber <margali at 99main.com>
Subject: Re: SC - candied almonds
LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> No. You let them sit until they dry. Egg white washes are very nice for
> holding things on to stuff (e.g. Sugared almonds). It is a great glue! :-) And
> it dries very quickly. And has no taste of it's own.
>
> Ras
And if you are worried about salmonella, you can buy commercially available
dehydrated merengue powder that is sweetened egg whites warrented salmonella free.
IIRC, it is 1 tbsp mix, 1 tsp water = 1 egg white, and at 5.00 for the container, making something on the order of 3 dozen eggs worth of goo, thats a lot of almonds! You can also goo the almonds, then wrap in gold and silver culinary leaf!
margali
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 22:10:24 -0400
From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow)
Subject: Re: SC - Honey Molasses
>During the week I tried to pop a mead on but completely stuffed it.
>Rather than ending up with a mead, I've got a couple of liters of a
>very thick, rich caramelised honey. It's little use for brewing but I
>thought it might have a culinary purpose (it reminds me of Dibs a bit
>in taste). Questions: How and what can I cook this in,
> Is there any precident for this pre-1600.
>
>I tastes like predominately like liquid caramel with a honey
>backtaste.
>
>Drake Morgan.
Hello! Did you forget to add the water? Or, like me, get distracted & let
the water boil off? You may be able to turn your honey to candy with a
little careful cooking & stirring. For documentation, there is a spicy
honey taffy called "pynade" in the Harleian MSS (c.1430-1450); also a
'gyngerbrede' recipe with honey, spices, & breadcrumbs from the same
source. Let me know if you're interested & I'll try to find them.
Cindy/Sincgiefu
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 17:56:45 -0800
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Honey Molasses
At 9:13 AM +1000 9/11/98, Craig Jones. wrote:
>During the week I tried to pop a mead on but completely stuffed it.
>Rather than ending up with a mead, I've got a couple of liters of a
>very thick, rich caramelised honey. It's little use for brewing but I
>thought it might have a culinary purpose (it reminds me of Dibs a bit
>in taste). Questions: How and what can I cook this in,
> Is there any precident for this pre-1600.
>
>I tastes like predominately like liquid caramel with a honey
>backtaste.
Take a look at candy recipes--the period Islamic cookbooks have lots of
them. You could try turning it into Hulwa, for example. I assume, if you
are familiar with Dibs, that you have the relevant sources--al Baghdadi,
Ibn al Mubarad, and Manusrito Anonimo (the Andalusian).
David/Cariadoc
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 16:27:58 -0400
From: Nick Sasso <Njs at mccalla.com>
Subject: SC - RE: SC-Hulwa
Duke Cariadoc suggested to Drake to make Hulwa out of his "molasas honey". I just recently tasted Hulwa for the first time and it was quite good, if a bit pasty.
I have a question though. What excactly is hulwa? On the ingredients list for the candy it said tahini, hulwa....etc. Is it a flavoring? Does it come from a plant? Or am I missunderstanding/missremembering what I read?
Alys D.
********************************************************************************
Hulwa (or Halva as on the can I puchased) is a confection of sesame seed and sesame paste that is sweetened with honey and or sugars, then flavored however desired. I have tried vanilla and chocolate. It is rich, sweet, and quite uniquely textureful. Can't eat more than a tablespoon or two of it. It is a Middle Eastern confection that can be had near the tahini or sometimes near the cheeses in farmers' markets.
niccolo difrancesco
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 23:40:18 -0400
From: Phil & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Hulwa
Kiriel & Chris wrote:
> Weiszbrod, Barbara A wrote:
> > I have a question though. What excactly is hulwa? On the
> > ingredients list for the candy it said tahini, hulwa....etc. Is it a
> > flavoring? Does it come from a plant? Or am I
> > missunderstanding/missremembering what I read?
> >
> > Alys D.
>
> Hulwa (known sometimes as halva) here is really just a kind of solid
> sweet tahini! It is basically ground sesame seeds with honey. (I do
> love the sort that you can buy with chocolate swirls through it; not
> period of course but scrumptious)
>
> Kiriel
I believe hulwa, halvah, etc., is a generic term meaning "candy" , or solid
sweet, or some such. You can make hulwa out of a number of different
ingredients, the one commonly sold commercially is indeed made from ground
sesame and honey or other syrup, but there are versions calling for semolina,
nuts, and a bunch of other stuff, if I remember correctly.
I think there are several hulwa recipes in Al-Baghdadi. Or is it the
Kitab-al-thingummy? Or both.
Adamantius
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 20:33:41 -0800
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - RE: SC-Hulwa
At 4:27 PM -0400 9/11/98, Nick Sasso wrote:
> Duke Cariadoc suggested to Drake to make Hulwa out of his "molasas
>honey". I just recently tasted Hulwa for the first time and it was quite
>good, if a bit pasty.
>
> I have a question though. What excactly is hulwa? On the
>ingredients list for the candy it said tahini, hulwa....etc. Is it a
>flavoring? Does it come from a plant? Or am I
>missunderstanding/missremembering what I read?
> Alys D.
"Hulwa" means, roughly, "sweets." Hence Halvah and the Indian Hulawat,
which are entirely different, are etymologically the same.
The particular recipe I was thinking of, which is in the MIscellany, is a
period Islamic candy along the lines of divinity. The ingredients are
sugar, egg white, water, and whatever you are binding together (chopped
nuts, for example). There are also versions using honey and dibs (date
syrup).
David/Cariadoc
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1998 09:18:06 -0400
From: Phil & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - RE: SC-Hulwa
david friedman wrote:
> The particular recipe I was thinking of, which is in the MIscellany, is a
> period Islamic candy along the lines of divinity. The ingredients are
> sugar, egg white, water, and whatever you are binding together (chopped
> nuts, for example). There are also versions using honey and dibs (date
> syrup).
>From the fifteenth-century "Kitab al-Tibakhah", Charles Perry, trans. :
"Hulwa. Its varieties are very many. Among them are sweets (halawat) made of
natif. You put dibs [fruit syrup], honey, sugar or rubb [thick fruit syrup] in
the pot, then you put it on a gentle fire and stir until it takes consistency.
Then you beat eggwhites and put it with it and stir until it thickens and
becomes natif. After that, if you want almond candy (halawah lauziyyah) you
put in toasted almonds and allaftahu: that is, you bind them. Jauziyyah,
walnuts; fustuqiyyah, pistacchios; bunduqiyyah, hazelnuts; qudamiyyah, toasted
chickpeas; simsimiyyah, sesame; tahinayyah, flour [tahin] . You beat in the
natif until it thickens. For duhniyyah you put in flour toasted with fat. As
for halawah ajamiyyah, toast flour with sesame oil until it becomes slack, and
boil dibs or another sweet ingredient and put it with it. As for khabis, take
dibs and put it on the fire until its scum rises, and skim it. Dissolve
cornstarch in water and put it with it."
I assume we needn't go into whether maize or wheat starch is meant here ; ).
As for the flour/tahin / tahiniyyah reference, I think ground (and possibly
defatted) sesame might be what is meant, based on the name of the candy. I
imagine the use of the beaten egg white would give the sweet a chewy or
rubbery texture, ranging from a taffy consistency to something like a
marshmallow, so that would probably be the most obvious difference between
tahinayyah and the modern sesame "halvah" we buy commercially.
Adamantius
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1998 10:39:16 -0500 (CDT)
From: alysk at ix.netcom.com (Elise Fleming)
Subject: SC - Re: Halvah
Greetings! This isn't the "Arabic" halvah with tahini, sesame, etc.,
but more closely resembles the one someone said was like a "nougat".
Here's a recipe to try...
>From _Candy_, Time-Life Books, 1981: ÒTurkish HalvaÓ, p. 128.
ÒMakes about 1 1/4 pounds (600g.)
1 1/4 cups sugar (300ml.)
5 egg whites, stiffly beaten
1/3 cup honey, warmed (75 ml.)
1 cup almonds, blanched, peeled and coarsely chopped (1/4 liter)
3 1/2 oz. (100 g.) mixed candied fruit, finely chopped (about 3/4
cup/175 ml.)
edible rice paper
ÒBeat the sugar into the egg whites, and continue to beat unti the
sugar has dissolved. Add the honey and put the mixture in a saucepan
of hot water. Cook for 25 minutes, stirring constantly. When the
mixture thickens to a paste, stir in the almonds and candied fruit.
ÒUse a wet knife to spread the mixture on rice paper. Cover the
mixture with another piece of rice paper and press it down evenly with
a heavy weight. Let it sit in a cool place for a day. Remove the
weight and cut the halvah into bars.Ó
There is also a recipe for ÒMacedonian HalvahÓ from the Balkans but it
incorporates vanilla and cocoa powder... Tasty without a doubt, but
further afield.
Alys Katharine
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1998 23:52:52 -0400
From: John and Barbara Enloe <jbenloe at mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: SC - horehound candy
>Anyone have a recipe??? I would prefer period, if it exists, but if not,
>I need one to make some for a friend.
>
>Bogdan
I made some horehound candy earlier this year by steeping the horehound in
hot water to make a tea, then using this in place of the water in a regular
hard sugar candy recipe. I had several people use it as cough drops and
others just ate it like candy.
Jon
[sent to the Florilegium by: "Philippa Alderton" <phlip at bright.net>]
From: Gaylin Walli <g.walli at infoengine.com>
To: heilveil at uiuc.edu <heilveil at uiuc.edu>; sca-cooks at Ansteorra.ORG
<sca-cooks at Ansteorra.ORG>
Date: Saturday, September 12, 1998 10:12 PM
Subject: RE: SC - horehound candy
>Dear Bogdan,
>You wrote:
>>Anyone have a recipe??? I would prefer period, if it exists, but if not,
>>I need one to make some for a friend.
>
>The closest I can get to references for you now are these, per your
>request for period Horehound candy. I thought for sure Le Menagier
>has something, but it's nearly 11 pm in Michigan, I'm still at
>work on a Saturday night (egads), and all my good references are at
>home.
>
>Nicholas Culpepper's 1652 book "The English physitian: or an
>astrologo-physical discourse of the vulgar herbs of this nation" has this
>reference to horehound syrup:
>
> "There is a Syrup made of Horehound to be had at the Apothecaries,
> very good for old Coughs, to rid the tough Flegm, as also to
> avoid cold Rhewm from the Lungs of old Folks, and for those that
> are Asmatick or short winded."
>
>And the way to make the syrup hasn't changed much since then,
>as far as I've been able to track it. My research hasn't been
>all that extensive, though, so...
>
>Here's my take on how to make it. For what it's worth, I seem to
>remember Stefan's Flore..florig...flora...gemitxta pickles
>recipe files, contains similar recipes for "stained glass candy"
>but you'll have to check those yourself.
>
>My Horehound Candy recipe is something like this (from memory):
>
>To one cup of water, place two cups packed of fresh-picked, bruised leaves
>and stems of horehound. Place this in a non-reactive saucepan, cover,
>and simmer on low (with little bubbles coming up the sides of the
>pan, but no big bubbles rolling around), for 1/2 hour.
>
>Remove from heat and cool with cover on. When cool, uncover and
>strain out the solid matter. Measure the liquid you have left.
>For ever two cups of horehound liquid, add three cups of sugar
>(trust me on this one, the stuff is nasty without tons of sugar).
>
>Boil the sugar and horehound liquid together with about 4 tablespoons
>of butter (I've only eyeballed this amount personally, it's
>about enough butter to equal the size of an egg). Continue
>boiling the mixture until a small drop in cold water turn into
>a hard ball (or use a candy thermometer and boil until it
>reads "hard ball stage").
>
>Pour the mixture into a wide buttered pan and when the mixture
>cools enough to hold a mark, mark even sized pieces, large enough
>to suck on comfortably. Or, if you prefer, simply pour the mixture
>into a buttered pan and break apart into random pieces when cooled.
>
>Cautions: THIS STUFF STICKS LIKE BURNING TAR if you get it on
>you skin. Be caref careful careful when you handle it and when
>you're near it boiling. It spits like crazy if you get anything
>that has water on it near the sugar mix. For that matter, it
>spits like crazy even when you least expect it. I wear rubber gloves,
>a long sleeve shirt, and safety glasses when I make it. Mostly
>cause I'm accident prone in the kitchen.
>
>It's late, I've written enough, and I should probably go home
>and have some of that vegetable wine I made. I've toyed briefly
>with finishing the tomato butter I started before being called in,
>but gawd I'm tired. I'd probably kill myself in the kitchen.
>
>Jasmine de Cordoba, Midrealm (Metro-Detroit area of Michigan)
>jasmine at infoengine.com or g.walli at infoengine.com
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 20:09:55 +0930
From: "David & Sue Carter" <drcarter at bigpond.com>
Subject: Re: SC - A Question about thriddendele.
the Cheshire Cat asked for an interpretation of a mystery word:
According to Hiett and Butler, in the glossary of Curye on Inglysch,
thriddendele means the third part,
so:
for every two parts of honey, add one part of pine nuts, and add powdered
ginger thereafter.
Reference:
Hieatt, Constance and Butler, Sharon (ed)
Curye on Inglysch
Eary English Text Society, 1985
ISBN 0-19-722409-1
Esla and Osgot
>Payne Ragoun.
>(Curye on Inglysch)
>
>Take hony and sugur cipre and clarifie it togydre, and boile it with esy
>fyre, and kepe it wel fro brenyng. And whan it hath yboiled a while, take
>up a drope therof with thy fyngur and do it in a litel water, and loke if
>it hong togydre; and take it fro the fyre and do therto pynes the
>thriddendele & powdour gyngeuer, and stere it togyder til it bigynne to
>thik, and cast it on a wete table; lesh it and serue it forth with fryed
>mete, on flessh dayes or on fisshe dayes.
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 21:12:06 -0800
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: SC - Pine Nut Candy (Was: A Question about thriddendele)
Sianon quotes a recipe for Payn Ragoun and asked what "thriddendele" meant.
That question having been answered by several people (1/3 part), I thought
you might like to see a related recipe we have worked out. Ours calls
itself a pynade but actually uses almonds; and it is spiced with radishes
(presumably a cheap way of getting things spicy, since radishes don't have
to be imported). This version is actually Cariadoc's work, not mine--he is
the one who does candy.
>Payne Ragoun.
>(Curye on Inglysch)
>
>Take hony and sugur cipre and clarifie it togydre, and boile it with esy
>fyre, and kepe it wel fro brenyng. And whan it hath yboiled a while, take
>up a drope therof with thy fyngur and do it in a litel water, and loke if
>it hong togydre; and take it fro the fyre and do therto pynes the
>thriddendele & powdour gyngeuer, and stere it togyder til it bigynne to
>thik, and cast it on a wete table; lesh it and serue it forth with fryed
>mete, on flessh dayes or on fisshe dayes.
>
>Thanks for any suggestions
>-A stumped Sianan
>
Pynade
Curye on Inglysch p. 79 (Diuersa Servicia no. 91)
For to make a pynade, tak hony and rotys of radich & grynd yt smal in a
morter, & do to (th)at hony a quantite of broun sugur. Tak powder of peper
& safroun & almandys, & do al togedere. Boyl hem long & held yt on a wet
bord & let yt kele, & messe yt & do yt forth.
1/2 c honey 1/2 c brown sugar 10 threads saffron
4 radishes = 2 1/2 oz 1/2 t pepper 1 c slivered almonds
Cut radish up small, put it in the spice grinder (a miniature blender) with
1/4 c honey or in a mortar and grind small. Slightly crush the almonds. Mix
all ingredients in a small pot. Simmer, stirring, until candy thermometer
reaches between 250¡ and 270¡. Dump out in spoonfuls onto a greased marble
slab or a wet cutting board--the latter works if you have gotten up to 270¡
but sticks at 250¡. Let it cool.
I got it to 270¡ without serious scorching by stirring continuously near
the end. When it cools fully, the 250¡ is firm but chewable, the 270¡
between chewable and crunchy.
Elizabeth/Betty Cook
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 16:51:22 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Three Questions (one of them oop)
melc2newton at juno.com wrote:
> Going through my cookbooks lately, I found a recipe for Vinegar Taffy
> which was fairly simple and which I thought would make a good children's
> activity during an inside event. (Although if the weather keeps behaving
> this nicely, we may not have any indoor events in Calontir this year: ) )
> Does anyone know when taffy was first (documentable) made?
Not documentable taffy in name, but here's something that seems to come
very close indeed, even down to the pulling. See Curye on Inglysch, Book
V (Goud Kokery), #14, To mak penydes. I'm in a bit of a rush at the
moment, so I'm not able to type it in just now, unless someone else has
it on disk already, but it involves boiling sugar (whether dry or as a
syrup isn't really clear because it discusses clarification sort of at
the same time) to either a hard ball or one of the crack stages (my best
guess), and then poured on an oiled marble slab, cooled slightly,
kneaded into a mass, and pulled just like taffy on an iron hook, until
"fair and white", then formed into sticks and cut into portions. I
suspect hard ball stage would give you a more viable taffy texture when
done.
The vinegar, BTW, in your modern recipe, is probably there to create
some invert sugar or glucose molecules, which should help keep the taffy
from becoming a rock-hard crystallized mass, either immediately on
cooling or upon storage.
Adamantius
¯stgardr, East
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 19:26:41 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Candied Spices???
Jennifer Conrad wrote:
> I am doing an Italian theamed feast in April and I was wondering, would
> anyone out there know of a source of candied spices? Or are these
> relatively easy to make? Also, what types of spices would be candied,
> besides coriander. (The only one I've come across so far)
>
> Luveday
If you have until April, you have a bit of time to experiment. There's a
good period recipe in Goud Kokery, which is volume 5 of Curye on
Inglysch. The trick on which everything else hangs is that no water is
added to make a sugar syrup, you just melt the sugar in small
quantities, slowly, being careful not to burn, and coat your seeds,
nuts, or what have you.
Coriander seeds, anise, fennel, caraway, cumin, peppercorns, chips of
cinnamon (albeit hard on the teeth) and little ginger cubes, are all
suitable for candying.
Adamantius
¯stgardr, East
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 20:15:07 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Candied Spices???
Robyn Probert wrote:
> At 18:38 02/12/1998 -0500, Luveday wrote:
> >I am doing an Italian theamed feast in April and I was wondering, would
> >anyone out there know of a source of candied spices? Or are these
> >relatively easy to make? Also, what types of spices would be candied,
> >besides coriander. (The only one I've come across so far)
>
> You can buy a candied spice mix in Indian stores here which might be
> suitable - certainly all the spices are period ones.
I used to think that, too, until I bought some, made some, and saw how
different they really are. The Indian ones I've seen are candied,
usually, using various gums and artificial colors along with the sugar,
so the look and texture are quite different. They seem to be primarily
fennel, which could have been done, but doesn't seem all that high on
the list of seeds to be confyted. Anise, on the other hand, is, and many
people have trouble distinguishing the flavor of anise from fennel from
liquorice.
Certainly you could buy the Indian candied spices, and most people would
neither know nor care, and would have a good time anyway. But, the fact
is that they're not the same as a period European product.
Adamantius
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 21:44:00 EST
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Three Questions (one of them oop)
melc2newton at juno.com writes:
<< Does anyone know when taffy was first (documentable) made? >>
There are recipes for pulled honey 'taffy' as well as rolled and cut candy in
al-Baghdadi written in 1226 C.E. The translation of this cookbook can be found
in Cariadoc's Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Cookbooks, Vol. I.
Ras
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 22:21:07 EST
From: Mordonna22 at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Candied Spices???
CONRAD3 at prodigy.net writes:
> Also, what types of spices would be candied,
> besides coriander. (The only one I've come across so far)
Crystallized Ginger is not only delicious, it is also soothing to an upset
tummy, and is invaluable as a source of electrolytes to a body nearing
dehydration from the flux. Boil cubed ginger root in a simple sugar syrup
made with 2 cups sugar, 1 cup water and about 1 tsp salt until crispy tender,
then dry on a cookie tin and store in an air tight container indefinitely.
My daughter has gall bladder disease, and is scheduled for surgery on Friday.
At this point in her disease she cannot keep solid foods down at all, but the
crystallized ginger not only stays down, it helps relieve the nausea and
helps ease the pain for her.
Mordonna
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 12:48:09 -0800
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Three Questions (one of them oop)
At 11:48 PM -0600 12/3/98, LYN M PARKINSON wrote:
>I think we've discussed taffy, and it is documentable to the Near East.
>His Grace or Ras or Stephen will probably say for sure.
Ras mentioned a taffy recipe from al-Bagdadi; here is the original recipe.
We don't have a satisfactory worked-out version yet.
Halwa' Yabisa
al Baghdadi p. 210/13
Take sugar, dissolve in water, and boil until set: then remove from the
dish, and pour onto a soft surface to cool. Take an iron stake with a soft
head and plant it into the mass, then pull up the sugar, stretching it with
the hands and drawing it up the stake all the time, until it becomes white:
then throw once more onto the surface. Knead in pistachios, and cut into
strips and triangles. If desired, it may be colored, either with saffron or
with vermilion. Sometimes it is crumbled with a little peeled almonds,
sesame, or poppy.
Elizabeth/Betty Cook
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 19:22:17 EST
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: SC - Taffy
snowfire at mail.snet.net writes:
<< Is taffy the same thing as toffee? >>
Thought I'd remove the OOP since taffy is period. There are several recipes
in both al-Baghdai and The Anonymous Adalusian Cookbook for a confection that
is basically honey, etc. boiled, cooled on a stone and pulled with the use
of a metal rod repeated until it is done. The finished product virtually
indistinguishable from taffy. No, I don't have a redaction. I just followed
the original recipe.
Anyway toffy is a whole other ball game.
Ras
Subject: ANST - Candy
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 23:17:00 MST
From: Baronman at aol.com
To: ansteorra at Ansteorra.ORG
I believe that it was the Templars that introduced candy into European
culture. The Templars found a honey and sugar syrup that was boiled and
allowed to harden being enjoyed by the Muslims during one of the early
Crusades. Always looking for a profit-UH- contributiuon to social values,
the Templars shipped the "Kandish" to Europe where the name became candy.
From the ramblings of the old man
Baron Bors
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1999 16:49:59 -0700 (PDT)
From: H B <nn3_shay at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: SC - candied spices and other stuff
- --- "Sharon R. Saroff" <sindara at pobox.com> wrote:
> I know I have asked this before, but I can't seem to locate the
> information in my files. THere was a discussion on this list a while back
> concerning candied spices. I have a recipe I want to use for candied spices
> from a middle eastern cookbook but I don't know how period it may be. Any
> help would be appreciated.
> ...
> Sindara
According to _The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy_
(Odile Redon et al., Univ of Chicago Press 1998, ISBN 0-226-70684-2),
the closing of a meal with "epices de chambre" (parlor spices) or
"confetti" (same thing in Italy) was common, a regular part of any
feast. They specifically mention candied coriander and ginger root.
They also say that from records it appears that these were generally
purchased already candied from the spice merchants, and so recipies
weren't included in collections. So for France and Italy at least,
12-13-14th c., some candied spices are documented (I don't know which
of their extensive list of primary sources). Hope this helps.
- -- Harriet
Date: Mon, 02 Aug 1999 21:25:20 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - candied spices and other stuff
H B wrote:
> According to _The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy_
> (Odile Redon et al., Univ of Chicago Press 1998, ISBN 0-226-70684-2),
> the closing of a meal with "epices de chambre" (parlor spices) or
> "confetti" (same thing in Italy) was common, a regular part of any
> feast. They specifically mention candied coriander and ginger root.
> They also say that from records it appears that these were generally
> purchased already candied from the spice merchants, and so recipies
> weren't included in collections. So for France and Italy at least,
> 12-13-14th c., some candied spices are documented (I don't know which
> of their extensive list of primary sources).
Candied spices, under the name dragees and confits, are mentioned
frequently in the 14th-century English recipes from the manuscript
sources compiled for Curye On Inglysch, as well as Le Menagier de Paris
(14th century French) and Chiquart's Du Fait de Cuisine (15th century
Savoyard/French). Harleian Ms. 2378 (15th century, also found in Curye
On Inglysch under "Goud Kokery") includes a confit (candied seed, not
all confits are the same) recipe which I think I have somewhere on disk.
If I can find it I'll post it later.
Then, of course, there's a recipe in Sir Hugh Plat's "Delightes for
Ladies" (pub. 1609 CE), which is quite long but is a little easier to
understand than the one in Harl. 2378.
Adamantius
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 14:29:01 -0400
From: Lurking Girl <tori at panix.com>
Subject: Re: SC - candied spices and other stuff
Master A wrote:
> H B wrote:
> > According to _The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy_
> > (Odile Redon et al., Univ of Chicago Press 1998, ISBN 0-226-70684-2),
> > the closing of a meal with "epices de chambre" (parlor spices) or
> > "confetti" (same thing in Italy) was common, a regular part of any
> > feast.
>
> Candied spices, under the name dragees and confits, are mentioned
> frequently in the 14th-century English recipes from the manuscript
> sources compiled for Curye On Inglysch, as well as Le Menagier de Paris
> (14th century French) and Chiquart's Du Fait de Cuisine (15th century
> Savoyard/French). Harleian Ms. 2378 (15th century, also found in Curye
> On Inglysch under "Goud Kokery") includes a confit (candied seed, not
> all confits are the same) recipe which I think I have somewhere on disk.
> If I can find it I'll post it later.
For strange reasons, I have my copy of Curye on Inglysch here at work...
(thorns turned into "th": yoghs(?) reproduced as "3")
12 To mak anneys in counfyte. Take ii unc of fayre anneys & put them
in a panne & drye them on the fyr, euermore steryng them wyth 3owre
hand, till thei ben drye. Put them than owte of the panne into a
cornes and take up thi suger in a ladell the montynance of a unc and
sett it on the fyr. & ster thi suger wyth a spatyle of tree, & whan
it begynneth to boyle take a lityll up of the | suger betwene th
fyngers & thi thombe, & whan it begyneth any thyng to streme than it
is sothyn inowe. Than sett it fro the fyre & stere it a lytyll wyth
thi spatyll, and put thin anneys than to the panne to the suger, and
euermore stere in the panne wyth thi flatte hand sadly, euermore on
the bothum, tyl thei parten. Bot loke thou ster them & smertyly for
cleuyng togedyr. & than sette the panne ouer the forneys ageyn,
euermore steryng wyth thi hand, & wyth that other hand euermore tourne
the panne for cause of more hete on the othyr syde tyl thei ben hote &
drye. But loke that it mel no3t be the bothyn. And al so as 3e see
that it ges ageyn in the bothym, sette it fro the fourneys and
euermore stere wyth 3oure hand, and put on the fourneys ageyn tyl it
be hote & drye. And in this manere schull 3e wyrke it vp til it be as
grete as a peys, and the gretter that it waxes the more suger it
takys, and put in 3oure panne at ilke a decoccioun. And 3if 3e see
that 3oure anneys wax rowgh and ragged, gyf 3oure suger a lower
decoccioun, for the hye decoccioun of the suger makys it rowgh and
ragged. And 3if it be made of potte suger, gyf hym iiii decocciouns
more abouen, and at ilk a decoccioun ii vnc of suger: and it be more
or lesse, it is no forse. And whan it is wroght vp at the latter
ende, drye it ouer the fyre, steryng euermore | wyth thi hand, and
whan it is hote and drye sette it fro the fyre and stere it fro the
fyre wyth thi hand sadly att the panne bothym til thei ben colde, for
than will thei noght chaunge ther colour. And than put them in
cofyns, for 3if 3e put them hote in cofyns thei will change ther
colour. And in this maner schull 3e make careawey, colyandre, fenell,
and all maner round confecciouns, and gyngeuer in counfyte; but thi
gynger sud be cote leke a dyce in smale peses, fowr sqware, and gyf
thi gynger a litill hyar decoccioun than thou gyffes the other sedys.
Vika
- --
Victoria Swann * tori at panix.com * http://www.panix.com/~tori
LNH: Lurking Girl * SCA: Vika (Ostgardr) * WB: miri * work: vf at panix.com
Date: Tue, 03 Aug 1999 17:21:42 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - candied spices and other stuff
Thanks, Vika!
Lurking Girl wrote:
> 12 To mak anneys in counfyte. Take ii unc of fayre anneys & put them
> in a panne & drye them on the fyr, euermore steryng them wyth 3owre
> hand, till thei ben drye.
<snip>
> And in this maner schull 3e make careawey, colyandre, fenell,
> and all maner round confecciouns, and gyngeuer in counfyte; but thi
> gynger sud be cote leke a dyce in smale peses, fowr sqware, and gyf
> thi gynger a litill hyar decoccioun than thou gyffes the other sedys.
>
> Vika
And here, in a more or less modern English version:
"To make anise in confit. Take 2 ounces of fair anise and put them in a
pan and dry them on the fire, evermore stirring them with your hand, til
they are dry. Put the out of the pan into a cornice and take up thy
sugar in a ladle the amount of an ounce and set it on the fire. And stir
thy sugar with a wooden spatula, and when it begins to boil take up a
little of the sugar between thy finger and thy thumb, and when it first
begins to spin a thread it is boiled enough. Then set it off the fire
and stir it a little with your spatula, and put your anise then to the
pan with the sugar, continually stirring with thy flat hand slowly,
always on the bottom, til they separate. But be sure you stir them
carefully to be sure they don't stick together. And then set the pan
over the stove again, continually stirring with your hand, and with your
other hand continually turn the pan so it doesn't heat unevenly, til
they are hot and dry. Be careful they don't stick/melt to the bottom.
And also as you see that it goes again in the bottom, set it off the
stove and continually stir it with your hand, and put it on the stove
again until it is hot and dry. And in this manner you shall work it up
til it is as great as a pea, and the larger it grows, the more sugar it
takes, and put in your pan, at each decoction. And if you see that your
anise grows rough and ragged, give your sugar a lower temperature, for
the high decoction of the sugar makes it rough and ragged. And if it be
made of pot sugar, give them four decoctions more above, and at each
decoction 2 ounces of sugar, and if it is more or less, it makes no
difference. And when it is wrought up at the latter end, dry it over the
fire, stirring continually with your hand, and when it is hot and dry
set it from the fire and stir it from the fire slowly with your hand at
the pan bottom til they are cold, for then they will not change their
color. And then put them in boxes, for if you put them hot in boxes they
will change their color. And in this manner shall you make caraway,
coriander, fennel, and all manner of round confections, and ginger in
confit; but your ginger should be cut in small pieces like dice, cubed,
and give your ginger a little higher decoction than you would give the
other seeds."
This recipe is perhaps the greatest (and most fun) example of how, when
you can't understand how instructions fit together, you should just say,
"What the hey" and go and do what it says, and ask your questions later.
My own questions included how much water to add to melt the sugar; after
some experimentation I discovered that the reason the recipe mentions
no water is that no water is required. You just melt the sugar, slowly,
over a low flame, avoiding caramelizing and burning. It's a good idea to
have a round-bottomed pan, like one of those bowl-shaped copper sugar
pots used for zabaglione, Swiss meringue, and other stuff. I used a
small Japanese wok with a skillet handle, which had the advantage of
being able to toss the seeds around, with sugar syrup running to the
bottom where the heat is.
In the brief experimentation I did, I found that my confits did indeed
become "rough and ragged" no matter how hard I tried to avoid this. They
resembled Grape Nuts cereal rather than peas, and I found that while the
sugar became flavored all through with the volatile anise oils, what I
got was additional lumps of candy without seeds in them, once my confits
reached a certain size. They all tasted more or less like
Good-'n'-Plenty candy, for those who have heard of this product.
BTW, I can only assume that a medieval cook's hands were extremely
impervious to heat. What I finally found was a reasonable substitute for
sticking my fingers into the boiling syrup was to coat a wooden spoon
with the syrup, then dip my finger first in cold water, then in the
syrup in the spoon, to see if it spun a thread. My hands are heavily
calloused and I was concerned about burning; I suggest you be extremely
careful if you try this.
Vika, I think you tried some of these at Eastern Spring Crown Tourney,
A.S. XXXIII. Fun stuff, huh?
Adamantius
Date: Wed, 04 Aug 1999 20:16:25 -0500
From: "Sharon R. Saroff" <sindara at pobox.com>
Subject: Re: SC - candied spices and other stuff
The candied spice recipe that I want to use is called Halwa Chosk (Toasted
and Crumbled Sweet). It is a Persian sweet eaten after Sabbath morning
prayers on the anniversary of someone's death (A Yarzeit). The recipe is
from Copeland Marks' Sephardic Cooking.
Ingredients:
1 cup flour
3 tablespoons oil
1/8 teaspoon ground tumeric
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 cup sugar dissolved in 2 cups of water
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 tablespoons rosewater.
Toast the flour in a pan for 3 minutes. Add the oil and stir for 7 min
until lumps are gone and mixture is light brown. Add tumeric and cardamom
and continue to stir. Add the sugar water 2 tablespoons at a time until
the mixture has the consistency of coarse meal. Add remaining ingredients
and mix well until mixture is a toasted brown color and has the texture of
bread crumbs.
Sindara
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1999 23:02:07 EDT
From: Devra at aol.com
Subject: SC - Re: sca-cooks .candied spices
For good descriptions of candying spices and other confits, look in Sugar
Plums & Sherbets, from Prospect Books. Sorry all my copies are in transit to
Pennsic, so I can't give exact biblio. She does talk about the rough texture
and the smooth, though.
Devra the Baker
www.poisonpenpress.com
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 14:13:06 -0500
From: LYN M PARKINSON <allilyn at juno.com>
Subject: Re: SC - 'Honey Nut Crunch'- [long]
The 'Za' source is given as Zambrini, Francesco, editor, *Libro della
cucina ded secolo XIV*. I have the original text if you need it.
This would be good in your Christmas baskets, wouldn't it?
Also, a great way to use up any of last year's nuts before this year's
crop comes in.
'Honey Nut Crunch'- is recipe 147, pp. 217-218.
Redon, Odile. Sabban, Francoise. & Serventi, Silvano. The Medieval
Kitchen, Recipes from France and Italy. Translated, Edward Schneider, U
of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 1998. ISBN 0 226 70684 2. This was
originally published as La gastronomie au Moyen Age, 1991.
Begin quote
Of honey boiled with walnuts, known as nucato. Take honey, boiled and
skimmed, with slightly crushed walnuts and spices, boiled together: wet
the palm of your hand with water and spread it out; let it cool, and
serve. And you can use almonds or filberts in place of walnuts. (Za 77).
This nucato is related to the delicious nougat noir ("black nougat")
still made in the southern French town of Sisteron. But here, there is
an additional pleasant surprise when you taste it: the perfumed bit of
spices. This is a perfect treat for Christmastime.
For once, we advise departing from the technique described in the recipe:
unless you happen to have asbestos skin, it would be very dangerous to
spread the burning-hot mixture with your bare hands, even if you did wet
them first. Better to use the cut surface of a halved lemon instead.
3 cups honey (1 kg)
2 1/4 pounds shelled almonds, hazelnuts, or walnuts (1 kg)
1 lemon for spreading the mixture
For the spice mixture
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 pinch freshly ground black pepper
1 rounded teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 teaspoon ground cloves
Gradually bring the honey to the boil, skimming off any impurities that
may rise to the surface. Very coarsely chop the nuts and add to the
honey along with 1 teaspoon of the spice mixture. Cook over low heat,
stirring constatly, for 30 to 45 minutes. The mixture is done when you
can hear the almonds beginning to "pop" from the heat of the honey. Take
care not to let the nuts burn and turn dark and bitter. When done, stir
in the remaining spice mixture.
When the nucato is done, pour it ouyt onto a sheet pan or cookie sheet
lined with parchment paper; spread it into an even layer with the cut
surface of a halved lemon. Cool completely before serving.
End quote.
Allison
allilyn at juno.com, Barony Marche of the Debatable Lands, Pittsburgh, PA
Kingdom of Aethelmearc
Subject: Re: Crystallized Rose Petals
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 04:56:00 GMT
From: "Bonne of Traquair" <oftraquair at hotmail.com>
To: atlantia at atlantia.sca.org
>crystallized rose petals as a garnish. Does anyone out there know how this
>is done? Lady Caitriona
Modernly: Beat egg whites until stiff (the powdered kind works and gets rid
of that nasty salmonella risk) brush the petals with the eggwhite using a
brand new brush (the colorings in paints can be nasty poisoning risks) then
dip or sprinkle with sugar. Place on waxed paper to dry.
In period (or close enough): from "Elinor Fettiplaces' Receipt Book" created
for Lady Fettiplace 1605, published by Hilary Spurling 1986.
pp. 99 CANDIE FLOWERS
take your flowers, & spread them abroad on a paper, then clarifie sugar as
you doo for rock candie, let it boile till it bee more than candie height,
then put in your flowers with the stalks upward, & the flowers downeward, as
soone as they be through wet in the syrupe take them out, & with a knife
spread them abroad on a pieplate, & set them where they may dry.
Ms. Spurling interprets as follows:
Take a pound of sugar for the syrup with just enough water--say a quarter of
a pint--to moisten it (again moder refined suage makes the preliminary
clarfication unnecessary.) Heat gently, stirring occaisionally, until the
sugar has dissolved, then boil hard until the syrup passes 'candie heigh'
(240 F, 115 C on the sugar thermometer), which is when it will form a soft
ball in cold water, or a short thread between your thumb and forefinger.
Lady Fettiplace gives admirably clear directions for gauging this stage of
syrup in her reipe for Rock Candie: 'let it boile till it bubble up in great
bubbles, then dip your finger in it, & pull them asunder, & when it drawes
out in a string betweene your fingers, & breaks in the middle, & shrinks
upward like a worme, it is inoughe.' Let the syrup cool before you dip the
flowers if you want them to keep their shape.
My notes: when working with candy, hot and humid air is your enemy!
Turning the AC up a bit will help. Depending on the airflow in your house,
you may have to avoid other heat/steam producing tasks in the background:
Baking in the oven or a pot simmering on the stove may make the kitchen too
warm and steamy.
Lady Bonne de Traquair
Windmasters' Hill, Atlantia
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 08:15:58 EDT
From: ChannonM at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - wafers
troy at asan.com writes:
<< You can get inexpensive little shaved-wood hat-box shaped (i.e. round)
boxes, as small as two or three inches across, at some fabric/craft
stores, maybe a five-and-dime if such places still exist. These can be
covered with fabric and otherwise decorated, or even painted with your
baronial arms, etc., and are a good way of serving candied spices. I've
bought enough of these for one per table at feasts, and they cost maybe
a dollar a pop, and I didn't worry if people took them home as little
souvenirs of the event. >>
I did a similar thing with the same idea, only I cheaped out and used
jewelery boxes that I picked up at the local sally ann,and other various
places. I cleaned them with a bleach solution, then lined them with foil
(silver leaf?).
I had problems getting my confits to be large. I used aniseed, coriander,
ginger. but it must have taken a lifetime of dipping in the sugar syrup to
get them much bigger than their original size.
Anyone have any input here?
Hauviette
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 15:50:02 -0500 (CDT)
From: alysk at ix.netcom.com
Subject: SC - Hauviette's Confits
Hauviette wrote:
>I had problems getting my confits to be large. I used aniseed, coriander,
>ginger. but it must have taken a lifetime of dipping in the sugar syrup to
>get them much bigger than their original size.
>Anyone have any input here?
A lifetime is about right! :-) The recipe I used (Dawson?) mentions coating them many times (10??) and that there were varying conditions. Ragged ones are irregular in size and shape, probably what most of us get. IIRC, modern candied seeds (such as the ones in Indian restaurants) get up to 30 coatings, and they're still pretty tiny. It is a laborious and time-consuming job to make them oneself. I don't believe they ever get terribly big, but the only way is to keep adding layer by layer and letting them dry in between times.
Alys Katharine
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 22:48:18 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Hauviette's Confits
I believe it is Hugh Platt who speaks of caraway or coriander seed
confits reaching the size of peas. However, the process as described in
Ms. Harl. 2378, and also in Platt's "Delightes for Ladies" (1609) calls
for not so much a syrup as for gently melted sugar, a completely
anhydrous sugar syrup, which dries almost instantaneously as it cools.
I've never been able to get them very large either, though, as once they
reach a certain size (about that of Grape Nuts cereal -- you know, the
stuff Madeline Pellner Cosman makes frumenty out of) the extra sugar
seems to break off and form seedless confits of its own. Very strange.
Adamantius
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 11:49:20 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Hauviette's Confits
Liam Fisher wrote:
> Could someone post (or repost) the recipe? I'm curious and I want to play
> with it, I'm wondering if it isn't more a function of what stage the sugar
> as been brought to than anything else?
>
> >I've never been able to get them very large either, though, as once they
> >reach a certain size (about that of Grape Nuts cereal -- you know, the
> >stuff Madeline Pellner Cosman makes frumenty out of) the extra sugar
> >seems to break off and form seedless confits of its own. Very strange.
>
> Sugar is fun, it has weird properties at the various stages. I'd need to see
> the recipe (original too, if I need translation help, I'll ask)
> and play with it for a bit to see how it can be done and then post my
> results here of course.
I had great difficulty grasping the concept too, but you see, there are
no stages involved. The sugar starts out at candy height, hard crack,
and remains that way. As I say, it's pretty much anhydrous: no water is
involved. You dry your seeds (one ounce) in a pan, remove them from the
pan, melt a measured amount (an ounce) of sugar over low heat, and the
sugar coats the seeds and cools on contact with the cooler seeds. You
toss them as they continue to cool, which keeps them separate. You them
remove the coated seeds from the pan, melt another ounce of sugar, and
coat them again. Repeat until the seeds are as coated as you want them
to be, but I've found it's difficult to get them to exceed a certain
size. There may be some trick none of the recipes I've seen detail, but
then we wouldn't know for sure what it is.
Adamantius
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 10:29:59 EDT
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Hauviette's Confits
macdairi at hotmail.com writes:
<< Have you tried this on an open fire arrangement? >>
Not all cooking was done on an open fire or even in a fire place in the MA.
There are pictures of a large centralized flat surfaced cooking areas with
places underneath where the fire was started to heat the flat surface. It
would be my assumption that this type of cooking area would have been more
appropriate for the is type of recipe.
Also, keep in mind that we might better be served in looking for methods of
'manufacturing' these candies (which were in fact 'medicines' added to a dish
to adjust the humoral qualities of the dish). Home production was highly
unlikely. Even Chiquart emphasizes that the cases of 'dragees' he needed to
sprinkle on the finished dishes should not be forgotten when the rest of the
supplies were bought for his feasts. Red and White sugar coated almonds, rock
candy and gold/silver coated sugar beads are all still readily found in most
supermarkets. And some specialty shops carry various candied coated spices.
Of course, someone interested in making these medicines themselves should by
all means try to perfect the technique. Candy making is an art in itself.
IIRC, Dame Alys has made an extensive study of this area and has published
several articles on it.
To add to this topic, I was not surprised to read in Scully's Early French
Cooking that when first introduced to Europe, sugar was available by
physician's prescription only.
Ras
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 11:47:20 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Hauviette's Confits
LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> << Have you tried this on an open fire arrangement? >>
>
> Not all cooking was done on an open fire or even in a fire place in the MA.
> There are pictures of a large centralized flat surfaced cooking areas with
> places underneath where the fire was started to heat the flat surface. It
> would be my assumption that this type of cooking area would have been more
> appropriate for the is type of recipe.
The 15th-century English recipe (which I've seen posted on this list,
but which I don't think I have on disk, and the seventeenth-century
recipe is just too flamin' long to input just now) specifies either a
furnace (in other words, a small, enclosed heat source; too high a heat
would caramelize the sugar before it fully melted) or a stove, similar
to a furnace in medieval cooks' terms but with even gentler heat.
> Also, keep in mind that we might better be served in looking for methods of
> 'manufacturing' these candies (which were in fact 'medicines' added to a dish
> to adjust the humoral qualities of the dish). Home production was highly
> unlikely. Even Chiquart emphasizes that the cases of 'dragees' he needed to
> sprinkle on the finished dishes should not be forgotten when the rest of the
> supplies were bought for his feasts. Red and White sugar coated almonds, rock
> candy and gold/silver coated sugar beads are all still readily found in most
> supermarkets. And some specialty shops carry various candied coated spices.
I wondered about that. I get the impression Chiquart would have made
them if he couldn't get them in sufficient quantity commercially. He
suggests he knows how, but doesn't give a recipe. A possible pitfall to
avoid, though, in connection with candied almonds. Scully says (and he's
right) that if you go to a French confectionery today and ask for
dragees, you'll get candied almonds, but that the period category of
dragees did not include them. They may have eaten sugared almonds in
various places in period, but properly they shouldn't be called dragees.
> Of course, someone interested in making these medicines themselves should by
> all means try to perfect the technique. Candy making is an art in itself.
> IIRC, Dame Alys has made an extensive study of this area and has published
> several articles on it.
Yes indeed. IIRC, though, she mentioned experiencing the "rough and
ragged" phenomenon too. While I'm not glad about that, I guess it's good
to see that I'm not the only one who had this problem.
Adamantius
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 14:08:56 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Hauviette's Confits
Nick Sasso wrote:
> 14th (15th) Century references to brewing pots of enormous size use the word 'furnace'. The large iron pots would certainly be unwieldy, but the term could, perhaps, refer to the same configuration on smaller scale: an iron pot that is rounded in the bottom with highish sides that sits above the heat source.
>
> niccolo
Constance Hieatt's glossary in Curye On Inglysch defines fournes or
forneys as a stove. What form that would take I couldn't say for sure
offhand, but stoves themselves in period seem to have been used as
steady heat sources, something like enclosed braziers, and not
necessarily for general cooking. I've long lusted after a Thai wok stove
(what it's called I don't know, but a wok stove is what it is) I've seen
in one of the Thai groceries downtown. It is basically a clay-lined
steel pot up on legs, with some ventilation holes low down in the sides,
and a larger rectangular hole on one side for feeding in small kindling,
and a notched round upper edge for holding a wok or similar
hemispherical pot with the notches for air and smoke to vent out, as
from a chimney. It's the sort of thing I'd imagine somebody using to
cook on a boat, but probably not too far off from what was used in this
recipe's context.
Adamantius
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 19:00:10 GMT
From: "Liam Fisher" <macdairi at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Hauviette's Confits
>and a notched round upper edge for holding a wok or similar
>hemispherical pot with the notches for air and smoke to vent out, as
>from a chimney. It's the sort of thing I'd imagine somebody using to
>cook on a boat, but probably not too far off from what was used in this
>recipe's context.
I've USED one of those stoves and I can't remember the name for the
life of me.
I'm inclined to disagree, that kind of stove, unless you added a diffuser of
some kind, would caramelize the sugar in no time, woks
needing blazing heat in the 400's and all. Although making one would
be pretty easy, except for the clay...I'm no potter *sighs*
Was it Ras who said he had picture of one of these stoves?
Hmmm...and I have a new anvil coming too *grins* I smell a
project. But not this month.
Cadoc
- -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Cadoc MacDairi, Mountain Confederation, ACG
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 18:22:01 -0400
From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow)
Subject: Re: SC - Hauviette's Confits
I've got a large beautiful illustration from Diderot's Encyclopedia
(~1750s), that shows a confectioner's shop. I can send a copy of this to
whoever wants it, but it's very big.
The illus shows 3 confectioners, each at his own work station. 2 have large
round flat-bottomed pans with handles, suspended from the ceiling on ropes
with hooks; the pans can rock back & forth. One of these 2 fellows has a
funnel suspended high over his pan with a hook. This is to be filled with
syrup, & as he rocks the pan with both hands, the sugar drips down onto
whatever he's coating.
The 3rd fellow rocks his pan back & forth over the open mouth of a large
barrel. Each worker has a brazier full of coals next to him, with a pan of
syrup placed over the coals. There is a crossbar on top of the brazier to
prevent direct contact of the syrup pan with the coals. Each pan of syrup
contains a large spoon.
There is another of these large pans in the background, sitting on what
looks like a warming oven.
Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu
renfrow at skylands.net
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 13:01:41 EDT
From: Devra at aol.com
Subject: SC - Re: bumpy sugared anise seeds
Sorry I'm so slow to comment on this thread.
There's an interesting and informative chapter on the history and making of
sugared seeds (i.e. confits) in Sugar Plums and Sherbets; the prehistory of
sweets, by Laura Mason (Prospect Books, 0-907325-831, 1998).
Among the other things she discusses are "ragged or pearled" confits.
Apparently the raggedness is the result of two factors: the height from which
you pour the syrup--the higher, the more pearled--and the temperature &
concentration of the syrup. "Smooth confits were achieved using a syrup
boiled to the degree of lisse (literally, smooth), a lower temperature of
about 102* C. "
Earlier, Mason says, "Raising the temperature of the syrupt to concentrate it
a little more, and pouring sugar from some distance above the pan gave
confits an irregular surface..."
At a guess, I would venture that, as you progress in coating your confits,
the continued heating/reheating of the syrup concentrates it enough to cause
raggedness. Perhaps diluting a little as you go along, and watching the
temperature very carefully, could control this.
Devra the Baker (mka Devra Langsam)
www.poisonpenpress.com
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 1999 12:45:31 -0500
From: Tara Sersen <tsersen at nni.com>
Subject: Re: SC - structural gingerbread
> I don't know how period it would be but why not make the "glass" from "rock"
> candy. It can be transparent and clear or whatever color food dye you come
> up that is heat stable. It can be poured out thin and cut into shapes and
> fitted with a piping "leading" just like a real window. Anyone have any
> period candy recipes that fit the bill?
For Landsknecht this year, we made a hard sugar candy with rosewater as
the flavoring. It was a wonderfully subtle flavor. I can't remember
what our source was (my co-featocrat found it, and when she sent me her
recipes the night before the event so I could create the recipe booklet,
she didn't list the reference,) but below is the redaction we put it in
our recipe book. The food coloring would be a bit of a stretch, but you
can make a good argument for the candy at least! I seem to remember
that it cooled much more quickly than this recipe said, even though our
kitchen was about 8 billion degrees. The scores didn't really take,
which means it didn't break up into nice neat lozenges, but into random
chunks. So, you'll have to pour quickly and accurately into the shapes
you need. I wonder if you can pipe it, so you can use some dark colored
candy for the "lead", then fill in the spaces? I would fear that icing
would break apart unless you used parchment or waxed paper to back it
permanently, but then it wouldn't be clear, which was the purpose of
using the candy. Well, it's easy enough to practice different
techniques, and I'll eat whatever doesn't work! ;)
Sugar Candy
2 Cups Granulated Sugar
2 oz Rosewater
Rice Flour
Petals of roses, violets or carnations
Dust a marble stone or oiled cookie sheet with rice flour. Mix sugar
and rosewater, adding two or three drops of food coloring if desired.
Bring to a boil. If crystals form on the sides of the pan, brush down
with a pastry brush dipped in cold water. Boil the mixture without
stirring to the hard-crack stage (300 degrees). Immerse the pan in
cold water so that the mixture will not continue to cook. Stir in
flower petals if desired, and pour onto prepared sheet or stone. Wait
five minutes, then mark into lozenge shapes with a knife dipped in ice
water. Leave another few minutes until hard, then remove from sheet or
stone and break into individual lozenges.
Magdalena
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1999 23:42:43 -0500
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: SC - Need help redacting candy recipe
Okay, I confess myself baffled. I was trying to redact a recipe for
melindres. Tried twice, and each time was a failure. So I'm appealing
to the list.
First, here's the recipe:
Source: Diego Granado, _Libro del Arte de Cozina_, 1599
translation: Brighid ni Chiarain (Robin Carroll-Mann)
MEMORIA DE MELINDRES -- Memorandum of Sweet Cakes
Take a pound of sugar, ground and sifted. Take a white of fresh egg and
beat it with a cane, and cast in in the sugar, and knead it very well, and
if it should be soft, cast in more sugar, and take a dozen blanched
almonds, blanched and pounded, add it all together, and after kneading
them take this dough, and make some spirals as you wish, and cook
them in an oven with a basin.
- - - -
I took a large egg white and beat it in my KitchenAid. The first time, I
beat it until foamy; then slowly added the pound of sugar. At the end, I
mixed in 12 blanched almonds, which I had ground finely. What I got
was something that resembled wet sand, and would barely hold
together, let alone be shaped into spirals. I discarded it and started
over.
The second time, I beat the egg white until the soft peak stage, then
turned the mixer to slow, and added in the sugar gradually and the
almonds at the end. This time, the texture was more promising.
Halfway through, it had a dense, smooth look that seemed as though it
might be heading towards a shapable dough. But by the time I had
added in the full pound of sugar, it resembled slightly firmer wet sand. It
was not shapable.
I'm not sure what to try next. Beat the white until stiff? Less sugar?
Both? Or is there some other factor I'm not seeing?
I assume, BTW, that the ground almonds are there primarily for
flavoring. Although I taste the "dough" both times, I could not detect
any almond flavor. Maybe I should grind the almonds finer than powder,
to a more paste-like consistency? Would the oilyness help spread the
flavor, or would it do Bad Things to the egg white?
Seeking your collective wisdom...
Brighid
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 01:27:59 -0500
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: SC - Melindres Redaction Redux
Thanks to all those who responded with suggestions. Tried again
tonight. I ran some granulated sugar through my blender to make a
finer product. It was not powdered, but definitely finer than what I
started with.
I beat the egg white to soft peaks at speed 6 on my KitchenAid. Then I
reduced speed to stir and slowly added the fine sugar, a tablespoon or
two at a time. I discovered that there is a narrow range in which the
mixture is firm enough to be worked but not so firm it become crumbly.
Once you hit the saturation point, just a little more sugar can ruin a
batch. In my first batch tonight, I added 13 oz. of sugar, then made the
mistake of adding 1/2 oz. more. I wound up with "wet sand" which had
to be discarded. Started over. ::sigh:: It's a good thing sugar is
relatively cheap nowadays.
In the second batch, it took only 10 oz. to get to the same consistency
as I had previously achieved with 13. I don't know what made the
difference. Size of the egg white? Degree to which it was beaten?
(The second time, my "soft peaks" were softer than the first.) Halfway
though shaping the spirals, I found my mixture was getting drier and
more crumbly, so I only wound up using half that batch. Next time, I'll
stop at the moister end of that narrow range of workability.
I measured out 1-oz lumps of "dough" and rolled them into ropes, about
11 inches long by 1/2 inch thick. I coiled these into loose spirals and
place them on a non-stick pan. I placed them in a preheated 300 F
oven. After 15 minutes, they were golden-brown and looked done. I
removed them from the pan with the help of a thin spatula, and set them
to cool on a rack.
As expected, the melindres expanded during baking. What I did *not*
expect is that the inner parts of the spirals rose higher, so they had
something of a turban look to them. They were, of course, extremely
sweet, and had only a faint almond taste. My husband liked them more
than I did, but he has more of a sweet tooth. They were firm and
crunchy in texture. If I had to give them an English name, I would call
them something like "almond meringue candy". (I hesitate to call
anything a cookie which has absolutely *no* flour or starch product in
it.) I don't think I will ever love them, but with some tweaking I think they
can be an item that will appeal to some people. And it's something
period to do with all those leftover egg whites from making rosquillas
and bizcochos. :-)
Next time I will see if a shorter baking period will produce something
softer and chewier, but still thoroughly cooked. Maybe a lower
temperature, too. Does anyone have any comments to offer on
temperature/cooking time?
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 01:53:52 -0500
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: SC - Need help redacting candy recipe
And it came to pass on 6 Dec 99,, that Jennifer Rushman wrote:
> Another option to be considered would be meringues. That was my
> impression when first reading the description of the recipe. I don't
> know if meringues are period or not but they are one of my favorites,
> esp around Christmas.
[snip]
As I said in another post, my semi-successful experiment tonight
resembled firm meringues. According to Larousse, meringues were
invented by a French pastry chef in 1720. Melindres are meringue-like,
but have a much higher proportion of sugar to egg white. The recipes for
meringue cookies I found on the web contained only about 1/4 to 1/3
cup of sugar per egg white. Then again, meringues are intended to be
dropped by spoonfuls, not rolled into shapes.
And while I think of it, does anyone know what "cook them in an oven
with a basin" means exactly? I assume it means to bake the melindres
with an inverted basin over them. What would that achieve? Lower the
heat? Increase it? Protect the melindres from excess browning or from
being soiled by cinders?
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 14:38:54 -0500
From: Bernadette Crumb <kerelsen at ptd.net>
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: SC - Need help redacting candy recipe
Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:
> And while I think of it, does anyone know what "cook them in an oven
> with a basin" means exactly? I assume it means to bake the melindres
> with an inverted basin over them. What would that achieve? Lower the
> heat? Increase it? Protect the melindres from excess browning or from
> being soiled by cinders?
Lady Clare,
I'm a novice at redactions and all, but my first thought upon the
"cook them in an oven with a basin" was that the basin might have
water in it to humidify the interior of the oven so the melindres
don't dry out too much on the outside while the heat is cooking
the inside...
My mom would put an ovenproof dish of water in the bottom of our
oven when she made macaroons for that reaon and I was looking at
her recipe in prep for making Christmas cookies... so I might be
way off base and the idea triggered by memories of my mom's
baking...
Bernadette Crumb
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 15:31:06 -0500
From: Jeff Gedney <JGedney at dictaphone.com>
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: SC - Need help redacting candy recipe
> but don't humidity and candy usually not mix? The sugar won't behave
> properly with lots of humidity, it won't set up. I vote for a basin laid
> over them to prevent browning, even though holding in that bit of humidity
> might change the overall texture.
Under pure sugar circumstances, I'd agree.
Under room temperature, I'd agree
But this is not pure sugar, it is sugar amalgamated with egg white, the
intent of which here is to be cooked, or the instructions would probably
say to "dry it out well till it be set", as is done with royal Icing Piped
decorations, which have a similar recipe, but are not cooked in an oven.
Also, even if there is humidity in an oven, the candy is still made hot. and
moisture given OFF, not taken in, as it would be in a humid atmosphere
that is room temerature. The idea, as I see it, is to cook the egg, and
slowly and evenly dry out the candy to harden it. Besides, a basin of
water is not going to make the air inside like a hot shower... Hot Air
absorbs a considerable amount of water. If you had a window on the oven,
I daresay it would not be fogged at all, the inside surfaces, (and the candy)
would be just too hot to allow much condensation!
To Lady Brighid ni Chiarain:
As regards the recent experiment, Good for you!
Sounds like you have a good recipe. If you like picking the piped rosettes
off a very good cake, then you will like this recipe!
Like your hubby, I have a sweet tooth, so I'll try this one too!
Perhaps you can raise the amount of Crushed almonds. I am not sure if
Roasted, blanched, boiled, oven dried, or raw almonds will make
differences to the textures, but I think it will. I think that the amount of
OIL in the nuts will effect the way that the meringe holds air.
I'd also point out that the "sifting" tool used would likely have been a silk
boulting cloth, which would result in a finer grind of sugar than was used in
the redactions. I think that when one makes a blanket statement like "they
didn't have finely powdered sugar in period" it is usually not entirely correct.
If I put sugar in a food processor and processed it, the result would be fine
powder, true, but liberally laced with cracked granules. these would sink
to the bottom of the container. This may explain why the amounts got smaller
before the texture went sandy, as you got lower in the container where you
put the powdered sugar, you probably had a Higher concentration of larger
granules. If the sugar was filtered though a boulting cloth, though, then
most of the larger granules would be trapped, and the flour fine sugar
passed through. I'd say, in this case, that except for the 3% corn Starch
added to as an anti-clumping agent, regular old confectioner's sugar is not
an unreasonable facsimile of finely boulted ground sugar.
IIRC, the particle size is only slightly smaller than that of good milled flour.
I believe that flour is the same size as or smaller then 2X superfine.
Why try to mill your own sugar, when you use pre-milled flour?
Go ahead and use the confectioners sugar.
Because it is a consistent milling, your results will be more consistent as well.
Brandu
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 09:28:04 -0500
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Need help redacting candy recipe
And it came to pass on 6 Dec 99,, that cclark at vicon.net wrote:
> Don't worry about the oiliness of the almonds. Oil is very bad for egg
> white foams, but this is too thick to make a foam. I think the egg white
> is only beaten to get it partly homogenized for purposes of mixing.
>
> Alex Clark/Henry of Maldon
I'm not sure that this is true. Last night I made yet another batch, and
did two things differently with the almonds. I doubled the quantities, in
order to get a stronger almond flavor. I also added them -- gradually --
when I was halfway through adding the sugar. I figured that way I
wouldn't put too much solid matter into the egg white. The white had
been beaten to soft peaks, and even after adding 5 or 6 ounces of
sugar, it still had a certain fluffiness to it. (In my previous experiments,
it had a certain lightness of texture even after adding all the sugar.)
Last night, when I added the almonds, the batter became much denser.
I'm not sure which factor was at work: that I added the almonds in the
middle, or that I doubled the quantity. I suspect the latter. Too much
oil for the egg white to handle. I had been feeling a little guilty about
adding more than the exactly specified quantity of almonds, but I
persuaded myself that it was no different than increasing a spice "to
taste".
I went ahead and baked the extra-almond batch. They rose less,
spread out more, became hollow inside, and crumbled to pieces when I
attempted to remove them from the baking sheet.
Wasn't it Edison who said optimistically that a hundred failed
experiments meant that he knew a hundred ways *not* to make a light
bulb? I feel that I am becoming an expert on how not to make
melindres. :-)
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 10:09:05 -0500
From: Jeff Gedney <JGedney at dictaphone.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Need help redacting candy recipe
> I went ahead and baked the extra-almond batch. They rose less,
> spread out more, became hollow inside, and crumbled to pieces when I
> attempted to remove them from the baking sheet.
I thought that they might. The meringe seems to be the "base" of this
confection. the meringe was not able to hold together because the oil
interfered with the egg white's self-adhesion, and the bubbles broke.
Just some ideas off the top of my head
Try putting the almonds on absorbent paper and putting them in a 200
degree oven overnight to reduce the oil content...
Perhaps you can use blanched almonds ( does anybody know if that
actually reduces the oil? I don't know...)
Use an almond extract ( not almond oil ) to "punch up" the flavor (yeah,
I know, not period)
Add another spice to "augment" the Almond flavor, like vanilla bean,
or nutmeg.
Dont double the almonds, just add half again, as much.
I think the recipe called for 12, add 18.
Form what I have seen of a Lot of period confections, any flavor was
rather subtle in the sugar taste. I think there is a recipe for anise comfits
that is essentially a ball of sugar with a tiny anise seed in the middle.
The anise flavor is not that intense until you hit the seed.
brandu
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 17:16:31 -0500
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: SC - Carrot candy
Yesterday, I went to a local event -- the Inn of the Black Gryphon -- and
brought with me the results of my latest redaction. The recipe title
translates literally as "Grated Carrot". It's a sweetmeat, made from
finely grated carrot which is parboiled, cooked in honey, then mixed with
pinenuts and spices. The end product is a very sweet, slightly chewey
confection. I made two batches. The first came out quite well. The
second was a little too soft (I misjudged the amount of honey), but still
quite edible. I went around offering samples to the populace, and the
reactions seemed to be positive.
I'll post a translation and redaction later. I'm open to suggestions as to
what to call the stuff. "Grated Carrot", though technically accurate, is
not very descriptive. I kept using the generic "sweetmeats" when
offering them to folks (except when I aproached the Moose Lodge
employees who were staffing the cash bar, and instead offered them
"candy".) Is there a generic term for this kind of sweet? I don't know
what it's closest to, though I suspect it's related to the Arabic halvah.
(Did I mention that this is a Spanish recipe? Did I need to?)
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 19:26:12 -0500
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: SC - Carrot candy (recipe)
I was pleased with this one. Simple, tasty, and no candy thermometers
required.
Source: Diego Granado, _Libro del Arte de Cozina_ (Spanish, 1599)
Translation and redaction: Lady Brighid ni Chiarain (Robin Carroll-Mann)
ZANAHORIA RALLADA -- Grated Carrot
You must clean the carrot of its peel, and then wash it, and grate it with
a knife. And set it to cook in a kettle of water which has first been
brought to a boil, and cook it a little while, and then set it aside and
squeeze it. And have clarified honey and cast the carrot into it, and let
it cook slowly, until it absorbs the syrup. And cast in the pinenuts.
And it must be one azumbre of honey to six pounds of carrots, and
when they are cooked cast in a little cinnamon, and ginger. And cast
them into your box, and if you must decorate it, it must be with pinenuts.
Carrot Candy
1-1/2 pounds carrots (weight after peeling and trimming)
1/2 liter honey (2 cups + 2 tablespoons)
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teasooon ground ginger
up to 1 cup pinenuts (or as desired)
Grate the carrots finely. Bring a large pot of water to boil over high heat.
Add the carrots, return to a boil, and cook until tender, about 8-10
minutes. Remove and discard any scum which forms on the surface.
Drain the carrots into a strainer or colander lined with a tea towel or
several layers of cheesecloth. When it is cool enough to handle,
squeeze as much liquid as possible out of the carrot pulp.
Place the honey in a medium saucepan. Bring it to a simmer over
medium-low/medium heat. Add the carrots and mix well. Simmer
gently, stirring frequently. Do NOT boil. In about 20 minutes, the
mixture will begin to thicken and clump together. At this point, you
should stir constantly. Cook until the carrots have thoroughly absorbed
the honey, about 30 minutes.
Remove from heat. Add spices, stirring well. Mix in pinenuts. Spread
the mixture as evenly as possible onto a well-greased pan or baking
sheet, about 1/2-inch deep. To smooth the top, lay a piece of waxed
paper across the candy and stroke gently with a spatula or the back of
a large serving spoon. Remove waxed paper and allow to cool. If
desired, decorate the top with pinenuts.
Cut into small squares and store in a tightly-closed container in a single
layer, or with waxed paper between layers.
Notes:
An "azumbre" is a medieval Spanish measurement equivalent to
approximately 2 liters.
I grated the carrots in my Cuisinart by using the shredding disc, then
finely chopped the shreds with the steel blade. I think the finest side of
a box grater would also work. And, of course, you can use a knife.
I used a non-stick pan, which made removing the cooked mixture a lot
easier.
I made two batches. On the second one, I misjudged the lines on my
measuring cup and while trying to pour 1/2 liter of honey, used
something closer to 2-3/4 cups. The resulting candy was tasty, but a
bit gooey to pick up. The first batch, with the correct honey-carrot
proportions, produced something firmer.
The pinenuts can be added in whatever quantities are desired/practical.
One cup makes a fairly nut-dense candy, and I think the nut taste
nicely complements the intense honey flavor. The original recipe does
not specify amount, and using less will not cause problems. I get
pinenuts at Costco for $8/pound, but if you are limited to those absurdly
expensive little jars, then just use a token amount on top for decoration.
The spices could probably be increased to 1 teaspoon each, for a
stronger flavor.
Candy pieces left out on the counter overnight were a little drier and
firmer the next day. I do not know yet how long this confection will last,
but I suspect it should keep for a while. It might eventually become
chewey, like a fruit leather, but my guess is that it would take a long
while to become inedible.
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 08:32:38 -0800 (PST)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?rachel=20mccormack?= <rachel_lothian at yahoo.com>
Subject: [none]
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain writes: <The recipe title
translates literally as "Grated Carrot".>
It sounds like a precursor of the dulce de
membrillo, or dulce de guayaba so popular here today.
You could, I suppose go for direct translating and
call it sweetness of carrots, or be more anglified and
have carrot jelly or carrot paste. Personally I prefer
sweetness of carrot as I think that it has the nicest
ring to it.
Rachel McCormack
Barcelona, Spain
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:57:27 -0500
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: SC - Re: Carrot Candy
And it came to pass on 14 Feb 00,, that rachel mccormack wrote:
> It sounds like a precursor of the dulce de
> membrillo,or dulce de guayaba so popular here today.
A cousin, I suppose. Actually, the same cookbook also has a recipe
for "carne de membrillo" -- quinces cooked to a paste with sugar --
which would probably be a more direct ancestor of the sweet you're
thinking of.
> You could, I suppose go for direct translating and
> call it sweetness of carrots, or be more anglified and
> have carrot jelly or carrot paste. Personally I prefer
> sweetness of carrot as I think that it has the nicest
> ring to it.
> Rachel McCormack
> Barcelona, Spain
It does have a pleasant sound to it. Carrot jelly is not really accurate,
and carrot paste sounds like baby food. I've been looking at candy
recipes, and I think this one qualifies as a nougat. Carrot nougat,
perhaps, though it doesn't fall trippingly from the tongue.
At the event on Saturday, my lord offered some of the candy to a couple
of gentles who were outside the hall on a smoking break. One of them
found his own solution to the name problem. He approached me later
and thanked me, saying "That carrot stuff is awesome."
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 11:24:05 -0500
From: Ian Gourdon <agincort at raex.com>
Subject: SC - Re: radishes, cooked
> > Could someone
> > suggest a book or web site or just a bibliography type reference that
> > mentions radishes?
>Um, yes, in compost. There's also a sugar candy which uses radishes as a
>substitute for pepper, IIRC. Pynades or some such. But cooked in cream
>sauce in period, I'm not aware of anything like that. On the other hand,
>since period ended (roughly) some sixteen generations ago, it's quite
>possible what he says is correct, but they could still not be period.
>Adamantius
Pynade
Curye on Inglysch p. 79 (Diuersa Servicia no. 91)
For to make a pynade, tak hony and rotys of radich & grynd yt smal in
a morter, & do to + at hony a quantite of broun sugur. Tak powder of
peper & safroun & almandys, & do al togedere. Boyl hem long & held yt on
a wet bord & let yt kele, & messe yt & do yt forth.
- --
Ian Gourdon of Glen Awe, OP
Known as a forester of the Greenwood, Midrealm
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 14:17:06 +1100
From: Lorix <lorix at trump.net.au>
Subject: Re: SC - Violet Sugar Plate Was Saxon Violets
david friedman wrote:
> 'Lainie asked about violet recipes a while back. Here is what looks
> rather like a violet pudding?
>
> Vyolette
> Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books p. 29
I have just found another recipe for violets for the use in making 'marbled'
sugar plate in a book that I have been devouring (well not literally ;-)
Sugar Plums & Sherbet - The Prehistory of Sweets, by Laura Mason
ISBN: 0907325 831
For those interested in the book, it would make a nice addition to the library.
Author goes thru the history of sweets & reprints 'period' recipes from various
sources & then offers a redaction for some of them. It is extensively footnoted
& sources quoted. It is also a good book for those learning how to make candy
has it gives lots of technique info.
<snip of sugar-paste info. See sugar-paste-msg - Stefan>
Lorix
Date: Sun, 9 Apr 2000 01:59:30 +1000
From: "Lee-Gwen Booth" <piglet006 at globalfreeway.com.au>
Subject: SC - OOP - Gwynydd of Culloden's Good Turkish Delight
Unto the Gathered Cooks does Gwynydd send the Following:
Gwynydd of Culloden's Good Turkish Delight
(thus called because it actually works - mostly!)
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
3 tb (unflavoured) gelatine (I find that this can vary. I was given a
caterers' jar of gelatine, which may, in fact, be quite old, and I need
about 1/4 c to make the recipe work.)
1/2 tsp citric acid
2 tsp rose water (or more - I love rose water and anyway I find that quality
varies)
colouring as required
icing mixture (i.e. half icing sugar plus half corn flour ( US corn
starch ) )
1) Combine sugar, water, and gelatine in a saucepan and stir over a low heat
until completely dissolved. (This may take 10 or 15 minutes - or more! -
but don't scrimp on this step. You will regret it later! I find that this
can be cut down by mixing the gelatine and sugar together and adding boiling
water, but this can lump if you aren't careful.)
2) Bring to a boil and boil, without stirring, for 20 minutes. (There
should be a light froth on the top for most of this boiling. I advise using
a larger saucepan than seems reasonable; the mixture can boil over when you
least expect it.)
3) Remove from the heat. Add the flavourings and colouring and stir well.
4) Pour into a lightly greased tin and allow to set in the refrigerator.
5) Once it has completely set, Sprinkle the top with icing mixture and then
prise out of the tin carefully with your fingers. It may help to add icing
mixture into the tin as you go. This stops the Turkish delight from
sticking to itself - which it will do at the drop of a hat!
6) Cut into squares (this is probably easiest if you use kitchen scissors
coated in icing mixture). Dust each piece separately with icing mixture.
Turkish Delight will keep for about a week in an airtight tin - I find that
it is getting a bit tough by the end of that time, but no-one else seems to
notice, as well, the icing mixture can start to cake a bit.
Variations
Ginger: 2 tsp minced ginger (I use the pre-prepared bottled variety) before
the mixture begins to boil. Omit the citric acid and use only one tsp of
rose water.
Lemon: Omit the rose water and double the citric acid (expect problems with
this! My Lady (who cuts it up for me) believes that rose water has magic
powers in this recipe because we have fewer failures with any variety with
even a smidgen of rose water than those which have none!)
Please note: All measurements given are Australian Standard (although, when
I come to think of it, my tablespoons may all be 15 ml rather than 20!)
This could be called Multi Purpose Turkish Delight too! As well as being a
very nice sweet it has been used for:
Resurrecting the Dead (in a quest one year - the coating apparently has
"magic powers" - I sold masses at that event!);
Makeshift Chalk (a Lady needed to sketch out a pattern on cloth - same
event, great sales!);
A Toy to Occupy Mundane Children (just play with it for a while and you will
see why!).
Enjoy
Gwynydd (who guarantees that she has not omitted any ingredient to ensure a
lack of success!)
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 07:36:58 -0600
From: Serian <serian at uswest.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Anise
Pleyn Delit has the candied anise seeds. (recipe 135)
Serian
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 11:35:59 +1000
From: "Lee-Gwen Booth" <piglet006 at globalfreeway.com.au>
Subject: Re: SC - Help!!
Another good, cold dish is this one from Take a Thousand Eggs or More:
Pynade
Pynade is similar to Pokerounce, but it is thicker and may be sliced.
An interesting way to serve Pynade is to cut it into 1-inch thick slices,
pinch the ends closed to form rings, and then stuff the "napkin rings" with
cold sliced meats or fruits; (if you wish to do this, you must cook the
honey mixture to hard-ball stage and omit the chicken).
Alternately, pour the mixture (without the pine nuts) into a dish and
decorate with pine nuts to form various designs; serve cold.
Variation 1:
1 cup honey
2 teaspoons ginger powder
1 teaspoon galingale powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1/4 teaspoon pepper powder
1/2 teaspoon cardamon powder (or grains of paradise)
1/4 c pine nuts
1 c cold cooked chicken, chopped
Place honey and spices in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir
until mixture thickens. Add pine nuts and cook to soft-ball stage (or until
a drop of the hot mixture clings to a cold knife blade). Cool the mixture
and add the cold chicken. Stir. Pour into a large buttered dish and cool
completely. Slice when cold. Serve cold.
Variation 2:
Omit chicken. Increase pine nuts to 1 cup and proceed as above.
I have done this, and it was simply wonderful - mind you, I didn't get the
mixture to soft ball, but Cindy Renfrow (the author of the book) said that I
could serve it on little bits of toast, which worked very well. Do not get
horrified by the quantity of honey - the dish tastes lovely!
Gwynydd
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 08:17:03 -0400
From: Elaine Koogler <ekoogler at chesapeake.net>
Subject: Re: SC - SC honey strawberry spread
Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:
> One of the recipes in the 14th century confectionary manual is
> Pinyonada de Mel -- a kind of nougat made by coating pine nuts with
> honey that has been heated to the hard-crack stage, and flavored with
> chopped fresh ginger, and a little powdered cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg,
> and mace.
I did something similar recently for a feast, only I used walnuts. The recipe
came from Scully's Early French Cookery, and was called "Confiture de Noiz" as
follows:
Confiture de noiz
Prenez avant la saint Jehan noiz nouvelles et les pelez et perciez et mectez en
eaue freshce tremper par .ix. jour, et chacun jour renoivellez l’eaue, puis les
laisser secer et emplez les pertuiz de cloz de giroffle et de gingembre et
mectez boulir en miel et illec les laissiez en conserve. – (Menagier de Paris
from Early French Cookery, Scully).
Yield- about 2 cups
Redaction: by Scully
1 cup liquid honey
10 - 15 whole cloves
2 Tbsp. finely sliced slivers of fresh ginger
8 oz whole or halved (or large pieces) walnuts
1. Combine honey and spices over low heat.
2. Let spices marinate in warm honey for 5 - 10 minutes.
3. Add walnuts and bring to a boil.
4. Cook, stirring occasionally until honey reaches soft ball stage.
5. Spoon out walnuts (include some cloves & ginger), and set them to cool and
harden on tinfoil.
6. Store in tightly sealed container.
VERY tasty! And, as these were part of a dessert table served during the Grand
Ball, a very good kind of finger food.
Kiri
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 01:51:26 +1000
From: "Lee-Gwen Booth" <piglet006 at globalfreeway.com.au>
Subject: SC - Sweets to serve with hot drinks
In my searching I found this recipe - it looks wonderfully easy (and tasty!)
and I was wondering if it is, indeed, period.
Pastfeli
Here is something sweet to round out the meal. Use equal weights of honey
and sesame seeds. In a heavy skillet bring the honey to a very firm ball
stage (250 to 256 8 F). Stir in the sesame seeds and continue cooking until
the mixture comes to a bubbling boil. Spread the mixture 1/2" thick on a
marble slab or tray moistened with orange flower water. Cool and cut into
small diamonds or squares.
Found at:
http://www.godecookery.com/letters/letter05.htm#Pastfeli
Gwynydd
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 23:36:12 EDT
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Sweets to serve with hot drinks
piglet006 at globalfreeway.com.au writes:
<< in my searching I found this recipe - it looks wonderfully easy (and tasty!)
and I was wondering if it is, indeed, period.
>>
From the top of the site page, according to Master Huen who is the originator
of the recipe "The recipes given here were created by taking modern Greek
ones, removing or replacing non-period ingredients and attempting to
reconstruct cooking methods. They are the types of dishes that would have
been served by the common people or middle classes rather than to the
Imperial household."
Ras
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 03:23:13 +1000
From: "Lee-Gwen Booth" <piglet006 at globalfreeway.com.au>
Subject: SC - Payn Ragoun - 2 redactions
I have just finished making Payn Ragoun (it looks like it is going to be
really nice! My Lady comes home tomorrow, and now I have a welcome home
gift for her!) according to a redaction I found on-line. The same recipe
appears in Pleyn Delit, but the redactions are different. I am curious to
see what some of the experienced cooks here have to say about the two
redactions. (Oh, and I am curious to know whether there are any similar
sweets which use different spices - I do know some people who can't
eat/don't like ginger and I wonder if cinnamon or nutmeg might work - while
remaining period - in its place.)
This is one of the originals which appear on the on-line reference (the
second differs only on a few minor points, AFAICS)
"Payn Ragoun PD (131)
"Take hony and sugur cipre and clarifie it togydre, and boile it with esy
fyre, and kepe it wel fro brennyng. And wha it hath yboiled a while, take up
a drope perof wip py fyngur and do in a litel water, and loke it if hong
togydre; and take it fro the fyre and do perto pynes the thriddendele &
powdour gyngever, and stere it togyder til it bygynne to thik, and cast it
on a wete table; lesh it and serve forth with fryed mete, on flessh dayes or
on fyssshe dayes."
This is her redaction:
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. ginger ground.
Boil honey and sugar together until it forms reaches soft ball stage. Add
powdered ginger and set out to cool. This makes a gingered flavor fudge-like
candy.
Now, here is the original as it appears in Pleyn Delit:
"Payn Ragon PD
"Take hony sugar and clarifie it togydre and boile it with esy fyr, and kepe
it wel from brenyng. And whan it hath yboiled a while, take up a drope
per=of wip py fynger and do in a litel water, and loke it if hong togydre,
and take it fro the fyre and do perto the thriddendele & powdour gyngen, and
stere it togyder til it bigynne to thik and cast it on a wete table; lesh it
and serue it forth with fryed mete on flessh day or on fyssshe dayes. FC67"
"This recipe makes a fudge-type candy, complete with soft-ball test. The
unspecified ingredient added during the beating stage would most probably be
ground almonds, currants, pine nuts - the sort of ingredient used to stuff
roasts, flavour stews, etc. Pegge suggests that the 'third part' must be
bread ('payn") [which would make it very similar to ginger brede, I think],
but it seems more likely that this is one of the names which suggests an
appearance rather than an ingredient. Just as 'yrchouns' are sausages made
to look like hedgehogs, this is a sweet shapped and sliced like bread [which
is not how this version would look, according to the redaction]. Since this
dish is recommended to accompany fried meat, it would provide the kind of
contrast that a sweet sauce might."
And the Pleyn Delit Redaction:
Honey and Almond Candy
2 cups sugar
3 tbsp honey
2/3 cup water
2/3 cup ground almonds
1/4 - 1/2 ginger
Cook the sugar, honey, and water together, stirring frequently over a fairly
low heat, stirring, until the syrup reaches the soft-ball stage
(approximately 234 degrees). Cool it a little, then beat it until it begins
to stiffen. Then add the almonds and ginger stir together, and pour out
onto waxed paper. When hardened, slice and serve.
Gwynydd
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 10:58:51 -0500
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Sweets to serve with hot drinks
It's missing one step:
The Recipe for Sesame Candy
The recipe for sesame candy. Put white pure honey near a moderate
fire in a tinned [pan] and stir it unceasingly with a spatula. Place
it alternately near the fire and away from the fire, and while it is
being stirred more extensively, repeatedly put it near and away from
the fire, stirring it without interruption until it becomes thick and
viscous. When it is sufficiently thickened, pour it out on a [slab
of] marble and let it cool for a little. Afterwards, hang it on an
iron bolt and pull it out very thinly and fold it back, doing this
frequently until it turns white as it should. Then twist and shape on
the arble, gather it up and serve it properly.
Mappae Clavicula, translated by Cyril Stanley Smith and John G.
Hawthorne, c. 12th c. (the Mappae is older than that, but this recipe
is from a part that only appears in a manuscript from about that
date).
The recipe doesn't mention adding sesame, but I think we can assume
that from its title. The major difference is that it is being pulled
like taffy as the final step.
Lee-Gwen Booth wrote:
> In my searching I found this recipe - it looks wonderfully easy(and tasty!)
> and I was wondering if it is, indeed, period.
>
> Pastfeli
>
> Here is something sweet to round out the meal. Use equal weights of honey
> and sesame seeds. In a heavy skillet bring the honey to a very firm ball
> stage (250 to 256 8 F). Stir in the sesame seeds and continue cooking until
> the mixture comes to a bubbling boil. Spread the mixture 1/2" thick on a
> marble slab or tray moistened with orange flower water. Cool and cut into
> small diamonds or squares.
> Found at:
> http://www.godecookery.com/letters/letter05.htm#Pastfeli
>
> Gwynydd
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 00:49:25 EDT
From: CBlackwill at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Sweets to serve with hot drinks
stefan at texas.net writes:
> Do any of you candy makers have any idea why this recipe calls for this
> to be put alternatively near the fire and away from it? What does this
> do that putting it in a spot between the two and just leaving it there
> would do? I'm assuming you are stirring continuously in either case.
You are trying to control the temperature of the mixture. This is also a
common practice when making a standard Hollandaise sauce. Little spurts of
heat are more easy to control and manage than a constant heat source, which,
in this case, might make the sugar burn. Once sugar reaches a particular
temperature, the changes which lead to caramelization occur quite rapidly.
It is this very volatile nature which makes sugar work (particularly pulled
sugar) so daunting and intense.
Balthazar of Blackmoor
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 12:12:40 -0500
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Payn Ragoun - 2 redactions
At 3:23 AM +1000 6/28/00, Lee-Gwen Booth wrote:
>I have just finished making Payn Ragoun (it looks like it is going to be
>really nice! My Lady comes home tomorrow, and now I have a welcome home
>gift for her!) according to a redaction I found on-line. The same recipe
>appears in Pleyn Delit, but the redactions are different. I am curious to
>see what some of the experienced cooks here have to say about the two
>redactions. (Oh, and I am curious to know whether there are any similar
>sweets which use different spices - I do know some people who can't
>eat/don't like ginger and I wonder if cinnamon or nutmeg might work - while
>remaining period - in its place.)
>
>This is one of the originals which appear on the on-line reference (the
>second differs only on a few minor points, AFAICS)
>
>"Payn Ragoun PD (131)
>"Take hony and sugur cipre and clarifie it togydre, and boile it with esy
>fyre, and kepe it wel fro brennyng. And wha it hath yboiled a while, take up
>a drope perof wip py fyngur and do in a litel water, and loke it if hong
>togydre; and take it fro the fyre and do perto pynes the thriddendele &
>powdour gyngever, and stere it togyder til it bygynne to thik, and cast it
>on a wete table; lesh it and serve forth with fryed mete, on flessh dayes or
>on fyssshe dayes."
>
>This is her redaction:
>
>1/2 cup honey
>1/2 cup sugar
>2 tsp. ginger ground.
>Boil honey and sugar together until it forms reaches soft ball stage. Add
>powdered ginger and set out to cool. This makes a gingered flavor fudge-like
>candy.
She has omitted a major ingredient--pine nuts. That's the "do perto
pynes the thriddendele" part.
And, of course, "perto" is "thereto," with the "p" representing a thorn.
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 08:23:21 CEST
From: "Christina van Tets" <cjvt at hotmail.com>
Subject: SC - payn ragoun
We had a discussion about payn ragoun Maggie Black-style a while back (maybe
18 months ago?), and came to the conclusion that breadcrumbs were a mistake.
Maggie Black said that the 'thriddendele' was a mystery ingredient and she
recommended using breadcrumbs to substitute (where the *&%$ did she get that
one from??), while only a teaspoon of pine nuts.
My conclusion when testing the recipe was that it actually reads 'a third of
that quantity' in pine nuts (dele = part) - therefore, much more like a pine
nut brittle. Apart from the fact that I used sugar, having no honey at the
time, the recipe was easy and successful (but don't use sugar - it does
funny things to the texture). Just follow the proportions given in the
original.
I imagine that the 'payn' notion comes in because it's a little loaf that
you slice, if you haven't used sugar, whereupon it falls apart.
Cairistiona
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:25:25 +0200
From: "Cindy M. Renfrow" <cindy at thousandeggs.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Begging A Favor<
snip of gingerbread recipes. See gingerbread-msg. -Stefan>
Here's another good crowd-pleaser that can be made ahead of time. The honey
sauce can be served with crackers:
"Pokerounce is reminiscent of warm mead on toast, and is quite delicious in
small quantities. The honey mixture may be made in advance and preserved
either by canning or refrigeration.
Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundezxxxvj.
Pokerounce.
Take Hony, & caste it in a potte tyl it wexechargeaunt y-now; take & skeme it clene. Take Gyngere, Canel, & Galyngale,& caste [th]er-to; take whyte Brede, & kytte to trenchours, & toste ham;take [th]in paste whyle it is hot, & sprede it vppe-on [th]in trenchouryswith a spone, & plante it with Pynes, & serue f[orth].36. Pokerounce. Take Honey, & cast it in a pot till it wax thick enough;take & skim it clean. Take Ginger, Cinnamon, & Galingale, & cast thereto;take white Bread, & cut two trenchers, & toast them; take thine paste whileit is hot, & spread it upon thine trenchers with a spoon, & plant it with
Pine nuts, & serve f[orth].
1/2 cup raw honey
1/4 teaspoon ginger powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1/4 teaspoon galingale powder
2 thick slices homemade bread or 4 slices white bread
4 teaspoons pine nuts
Put honey in a 1-quart saucepan. Slowly heat to boiling. Skim away any
scum that rises to the surface. Add spices and stir for 2 to 5 minutes
until flavors are well blended. Remove from heat.
Toast bread slices and arrange them flat on a plate. Spread toasted bread
with warm honey mixture and top with pine nuts. Serve warm.
Makes 2 to 4 slices.
Serves 2.
"(From "Take a Thousand Eggs or More" , copyright 1990, 1997, Cindy Renfrow)
Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu
Author and Publisher of "Take a Thousand Eggs or More" and "A Sip Through Time"
http://www.thousandeggs.comcindy at thousandeggs.com
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 11:01:53 EDT
From: ChannonM at aol.com
Subject: SC - Re: Doable stuff for kids
Someone was looking for hands on recipes. Nuts were used in combination with
sweets such as sugar and honey in other ways as well. In a German recipe in
Daz Buch von Guter Spise (1345 to 1354) From an Original in the University
Library of Munich, Translation by Alia Atlas. Found in A Collection of
Medieval and Renaissance Cookbooks, 7th Edition, almonds are ground and
blended with honey to make a tasty treat.
Original Recipe
Heidenische erweiz (Heathen (Saracen)Peas)
Wilt du machen behemmische erweiz. so nim mandel kern und stoz die gar
cleine. und mengez mit dritteil als vil honiges. und mit guten wurtzen wol
gemenget. so ers aller beste hat. die koste git man kalt oder warm.
How you want to make heathen peas. So take almond kernels and pound them very
small. And mix it with a third as much honey. And with good spices well
mixed. So it has the very best. One hands this out greedily, cold or warm.
Heathen Peas
4 cups whole almonds*
1 cup honey
2-3 tsp. ground cinnamon
In a food processor, coarse grind 3 cups of almonds. On a baking sheet, place
the almonds into a 400 degree oven for 5 minutes**. Finely grind 1 cup of
the almonds and add to the roasted almonds. Mix in cinnamon.
Warm the honey and add to the almonds, stirring well.
Keeping a bowl of warm water near by (to rinse your hands occasionally), take
a generous pinch of the honey/nut mixture and roll into a 1 inch ball.
Continue until all of the mixture is used. Keeps well in a cool place, sealed
container. Makes approximately 90- 1 inch balls
* The original recipe calls for a 3 to 1 ratio of almonds to honey. In my
trials I have found that this results in a meal that is a little too loose to
roll properly. I have reduced the ratio to 4 to 1 and am much happier with
the end result. This effect could be accounted for in the original recipe as
the cook using approximations which might be off slightly.
**Although this recipe does not call for roasting the ground nuts at all, I
have found that this extra step eliminates the sometimes harsh taste of the
oil in the almonds. If you feel you would like to stick to the letter of the
recipe, I would simply suggest you avoid that step.
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 21:59:01 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jeff Heilveil <heilveil at uiuc.edu>
Subject: SC - Period fruit candy.
Dame Elys sent me the original and I played with it for a redaction. I'll
have some at pennsic, but I don't know how long it will last... Yummy
stuff and we are trying the Apples tonight, Pears tomorrow and Peaches
later. So the following is Dame Elys' email with my redaction after it.
Cu drag,
Bogdan
- ---
Greetings, again. I found an earlier recipe in Dawson's _The
Second Part of the Good Hus-wives Jewell, 1597, which might
serve as a documentation for you for the later date fruit paste
recipe. It is called "To make a condonak". At the end he says
that one can also do the recipe with pears, peaches, damsons, and
other fruits.
"Take Quinces and pare them, take out the cores, and seeth them
in fair water until they break, then strain them trhough a fire
mingle it together in a vessel, and boile them on the fire alwaies
stirring it until it be sodden which you may berceive, for that it
will no longer cleave to the vessel, but you may stamp muske in powder,
you may also ad spice unto it, as Ginger, Sinamon, Cloves, and Nutmegges,
as much as you think meet, boyling the muske with a litle Vineger,
then with a broad slice of wood spread of this confection upon a table,
which must be first strewed with Suger, and there make what proportion
you wil, and set it in the sunne until it be drye, and when it hath
stood a while turn it upsidown, making alwayes a bed of Suger, both
under and avove, and turn them still, and drye them in the sunne
untill they have gotten a crust. In like maner you may dresse Peares,
Peaches, Damsins, and other fruites."
Redactions:
For Plums:
take 16 plums, peel and halve them. Put them in a pot with enough water
to cover. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 3-5 minutes, until the plums
break apart. Strain off the water (keeping it for a drink), mash the
plums and return to the pot. Add spices (we used 2T cinnamon). Stir
constantly until bery thick. Spoon on sugar covered wax paper. (This
didnt work well. Spread on a marble slab with sugar and then transfer to
dehydrator). Cover with sugar until it isnt tacky. The sugar will
sweeten the tart mush and remove much water. Then dehydrate. Its yummy!!
_______________________________________________________________________________
Jeffrey Heilveil M.S. Ld. Bogdan de la Brasov, C.W.
Department of Entomology A Bear's paw and base vert on field argent
University of Illinois
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 12:55:22 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jeff Heilveil <heilveil at uiuc.edu>
Subject: SC - period fruit candy update
For those of you interested in the period fruit candy that I sent a
redaction for earlier.... a modification for the plums.
It turns out (no pun intended) that with the plums (and DEFINITELY THE
APPLES) that it is far better (post straining and mashing) to cook the
fruit mash down as much as possible and then transfer it to a sugared piece
of wax paper on a cookie sheet. Then let it dry in the oven (pilot light)
for 24-36 hours. At that point, resprinkle it with sugar, peel it up from
the wax paper and put it in the dehydrator (sugar side down). Sprinkle it
with sugar, let it go over night, and then flip it in the morning. It
should be done by tonight, so I'd say let it go another 12 hours after
flipping.
The apples we tried putting the mash on a sugared, cold, cutting board and
then transferring it to the dehydrator. You don't have the nice sugar
crust like we did with the plums. Ideally, dry it in the sun, it should
be amazing. However, I live in a post-draintile swamp and cannot do so
here... too humid.
Bogdan
_______________________________________________________________________________
Jeffrey Heilveil M.S. Ld. Bogdan de la Brasov, C.W.
Department of Entomology A Bear's paw and base vert on field argent
University of Illinois
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 00:35:08 -0400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: SC - Alojas/Aloxas -- Spanish/Catalan confection (long and polyglot)
Ximena asked about the recipe for "Alojas" which she translated from
the _Manual de Mugeres_. I have some additional info to share, but first
here's the original and her translation:
> 131 Receta para hacer conserva de alojas
>
> Para seis onzas de almidón dos libras de az?car. Echar
> el almidón en una escudilla de agua rosada y derretir el
> az?car en otra escudilla de agua rosada. Y en dando tres o
> cuatro hervores, echarle una clara de huevo batido. Y en
> tornando a hervir, colarla por un paño espeso. Y colar el
> almidón. Y junto con el az?car, ponedlo al fuego. Y esté al
> fuego hasta que se ponga espeso, meneándolo siempre. Y como
> esté espeso, echadlo en sus cajas.
>
> Recipe for lark/spiced honey drink preserves
> For six ounces of starch two pounds of sugar. Put the
> starch in a bowl of rose water and melt the sugar in
> another bowl of rose water. And while it boils two or
> three times, put in a beaten egg white. And returning it
> to a boil, strain/filter it through a thick cloth. And
> strain/filter the starch. And together with the sugar, put
> it on the fire. And it should be on the fire until it
> becomes thick, always stirring it. And when it is thick,
> put it in its boxes.
(Ximena, forgive me if I go over some ground that you have already
covered.)
The modern editor's note to this recipe says that it is curious, since all
known definitions of "aloja" refer to a beverage made with water, honey
and spices. (My medieval Spanish dictionary confirms this.) The recipe
above is a confection, not a drink, and contains no honey. She
suggests that perhaps it might possibly be intended to be dissolved in
water, then drunk.
There is a parallel recipe in the _Libre de Totes Maneres de Confits_.
(!4th century Catalan confectionary manuscript, reprinted in a 1947
Spansih journal.) I will give the original Catalan, then my crude
paraphrase of the recipe, then the modern Castilian editor's linguistic
notes.
CAPITOL XXVII PER FER ALOSSES
Per fer alosses tu veuras entorn quina quenditat ne volrets fer, ho iiii o v
llr. he en una liura de sucre he prendras i liura d ayguo entre ayguo ros
he ayguo de font, tant de la un con de l altrem e couras ho tant fins que
comens a fer fills. E lavors auras aperrellat ii pans de mido mes en
remuyll ab a poc d aygua ros, e, com sera remullat e destrempat,
metras ho dins lo sucre bulent, menant menant, e lexar ho en tant
coura fins que sia axi con a sebo. E aso es per i ll de sucre, he apres
auras mersepans que s fan ya per de mige liure, he metras ne la
maytat en la una capsa e l altre maytat en l autre. E en aquesta
manera ne feras tantes con ne volras fer moltiplicant ho, e si per ventura
per nessecitat ho volras pers mals de pits o altre achsident, metras hi i
diner d oli de metles dolse per liura.
(Rough paraphrase follows. Warning! -- I have not studied Catalan, and
am relying on dictionaries and similarities to Spanish and French)
To make alosses in the quantity you wish to make, (have?) 4 or 5
pounds, and in a pound of sugar you will take and put a pound of water
between rosewater and well water, as much of the one as of the other,
and cook it until it begins to make threads. And then you will have
ready 2 loaves (?) of starch set to soak in a little rosewater, and when it
is soaked and dissolved, cast it in the boiling sugar, little by little, and
let it cook until it is like barley. And thus it is for 1 pound of sugar, you
will have ready marzipans that are thus made in a half pound, and cast
one half in one box and the other half in the other. In in this manner you
will make as much as you wish, multiplying it, and if by chance or
necessity you wish it for illnesses of the chest or other accident, cast in
1 dinar (?) of the oil of sweet almonds per pound.
note: as far as I can tell, this is some kind of sugar confection which is
poured into boxes that are lined with a marzipan crust. If I understand
the directions correctly, the syrup is heated to the thread stage, then
cooked with starch until it has the consistency of (presumably cooked)
barley. I do not know how it would act when cooled, though I doubt it
would be any stiffer than fudge. In any case, this is also not a
beverage, despite the name. The part about "illnesses of the chest"
becomes clearer when we remember that sugar was often used as a
medicine.
Now, on to the editor's notes. Fortunately, these are in modern
Spanish, not Catalan (except for the parts that are in Latin.)
ALOSA. s. f. -- Vocablo de etimologia incierta. En ant. cast. 'aloxa' y
mod. 'aloja': bebida compuesta de agua, miel, y especias. De la baja
latinidad acogio Du-Cange las voces sinonimas alosanthium y
aloxinium, "potione ex melle et vino diversis speciebus confecti suavi et
odorifera", que mas bien parece la composicion del hipocras, el cual en
realidad no era sino una aloja con vino en lugar de agua. La voz
'aloxinium' se ha supuesto formada del ar. 'al' y del griego 'oxys', acido;
con todo, la forma 'alosanthium' aparece mas aproximada a la 'alosa'
cat. y a las ant. franc. 'aloysie', 'aloine' y en lat. med. 'alonia' "potus
species ex vino et absinthio". La siguiente delicadisima receta oficinal
de la 'alosa pectoral' identica a la de nuestro texto(cap. XXVII), se
encuentra inserta en la pagina 85 de la 'Concordia pharmacopolarum
Barcinonensium' (ed. 1587), seguida de otra, la 'alosa secunda
secundum usum', mucho mas complicada.
"ALOSA COMMUNIS PECTORALIS USUALIS.
Rx
Sacchari albissimi -- uncias quinque
Aquae Rosarum -- uncias quator
Amyli recentissimi -- unciam unam
Olei Amygdalorum |
dulcium recentissimi | -- unciam semissem
Misce & coque in diplomate ad justam crassitiem."
Las alojas, asi como otras bebidas aromatizadas, melifluas or
azucaradas, y los vinos compuestos con especias y esencias
orientales ('brocas', 'piment', etcetera), servian, desde muy antiguo, de
estimulantes digestonicos a continuacion del postre en los banquetes
pantagruelicos de la epoca y tambien en el yantar ordinario de la gente
que comia 'usque ad satietatem', a la manera del clerigo sibarita que,
en 'Lo Terz del Crestia', refiere fray Eiximenic:
"a les colacions prench de mos letovaris segons lo temps: o ALOSES
enzucrades per refrescar lo fetge.. o endiana fina ab qualque gingebrada
per fer digestio."
[The editor then goes on to quote a Catalan doctor's list of medicines,
which includes ALOSES.]
Translation of editor's notes:
ALOSA. feminine noun -- Word of uncertain etymology. In old Spanish
'aloxa' and modern Spanish 'aloja': a drink composed of water, honey,
and spices. From the low Latin, Du-Cange took the synonymous words
'alosanthium' and 'aloxinium', "potione ex melle et vino diversis
speciebus confecti suavi et odorifera", which rather resembles the
mixture of hypocras, which in reality is nothing but a alosa made with
wine in place of water. The word 'aloxinium' is supposed to be formed
from the Arabic 'al' and from the Greek 'oxys', acidic; nevertheless, the
form 'alosanthium' seems closer to the Catalan 'alosa' and the old
French 'aloysie', 'aloine', and in medieval Latin 'alonia', "potus species
ex vino et absinthio". The following very delicate officinal [ie.,
pharmaceutical] recipe, identical to the one in our text (Chap. XXVII),
was found inserted on page 85 of the 'Concordia pharmacopolarum
Barcinonensium' (1587 ed.), followed by another, the much more
complicated 'alosa secunda secundum usum'.
"ALOSA COMMUNIS PECTORALIS USUALIS.
Rx
Sacchari albissimi -- uncias quinque
Aquae Rosarum -- uncias quator
Amyli recentissimi -- unciam unam
Olei Amygdalorum |
dulcium recentissimi | -- unciam semissem
Misce & coque in diplomate ad justam crassitiem."
The alojas, just like other aromatic, honeyed or sugared beverages, and
the wines compounded with eastern spices and essences ('brozas',
'piment', etc.), served, from antiguity, as digestive stimulants in a
continuation of the dessert in the Pantagruelian[1] banquets of the
epoch and also in the ordinary fare of the people who ate 'usque ad
satietatem', in the manner of the sybaritic cleric, who, in "Lo Terz del
Cresia", refers Friar Eixemenic, "a les colacions prench de mos
letovaris segons lo temps: o ALOSES enzucrades per refrescar lo
fetge.. o endiana fina ab qualque gingebrada per fer digestio."
[Roughly, he's recommending various remedies: sugared aloses to
"refresh the liver" and gingerbread for the digestion.]
[The editor then goes on to quote a Catalan doctor's list of medicines,
which includes ALOSES.]
By the time of the _Manual de Mugeres_, the aloja may have lost some
of its medicinal associations, but this is apparently its origin.
If someone (Thomas?) would care to translate the Latin here, I'd be
grateful. I can get the sense of it, but I won't venture even to paraphrase
it.
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 10:25:12 -0400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Alojas/Aloxas -- Spanish/Catalan confection (long and polyglot)
And it came to pass on 30 Aug 00,, that Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:
> Pantagruelian[1] banquets of the epoch
I was tired and forgot to put in the footnote. This is a reference to
Pantagruel, the gluttonous giant, in Rabelais' novel _Gargantua and
Pantagruel_.
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
mka Robin Carroll-Mann
harper at idt.net
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 16:35:44 +0200
From: TG <gloning at Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE>
Subject: Re: SC - Alojas/Aloxas -- Spanish/Catalan confection (long and polyglot)
<< If someone (Thomas?) would care to translate the Latin here, I'd be
grateful. >>
Well, I can try...
Concordia pharmacopolarum Barcinonensium
Common book/pharmacopoeia of the apothecaries of Barcelona
"ALOSA COMMUNIS PECTORALIS USUALIS.
ordinary Alosa good for the chest/lung
Rx (=Recipe)
Take
Sacchari albissimi -- uncias quinque
Of most white sugar -- five ounces
Aquae Rosarum -- uncias quator
Of rose water -- four ounces
Amyli recentissimi -- unciam unam
Of most fresh starch -- one ounce
Olei Amygdalorum |
dulcium recentissimi | -- unciam semissem
Of most fresh oil of sweet almondtrees [or: milk of sweet almonds?]
-- half an ounce
Misce & coque in diplomate ad justam crassitiem."
Mix it and cook it in a diploma [a double sided cooking vessel with
water in between the two sides] until it has the right thickness/
viscosity
Th.
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000 13:00:25 EDT
From: Seton1355 at aol.com
Subject: SC - PAYNE RAGOUN
Some questions please:
What does *cipre* mean?
What is *pynes*?
Why does one lay out the resulting paste onto a table?
*lesh* it? Huh? Corral it? so keep it in a bowl!
Thanks Phillipa
Take hony and sugur cipre and clarifie it togydre, and boile it with esy
fyre, and kepe it wel fro brenyng. And whan it hath yboiled a while, take up
a drope therof with thy fyngur and do it in a litel water, and loke if it
hong togydre; and take it fro the fyre and do therto pynes the thriddendele &
powdour gyngeuer, and stere it togyder til it bigynne to thik, and cast it on
a wete table; lesh it and serue it forth with fryed mete, on flessh dayes or
on fisshe dayes.
Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2000 13:29:05 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - PAYNE RAGOUN
Seton1355 at aol.com wrote:
> Take hony and sugur cipre
sugar from Cyprus
> and clarifie it togydre, and boile it with esy
> fyre, and kepe it wel fro brenyng. And whan it hath yboiled a while, take up
> a drope therof with thy fyngur and do it in a litel water, and loke if it
> hong togydre; and take it fro the fyre and do therto pynes
pignoles; pine nuts
> the thriddendele &
> powdour gyngeuer, and stere it togyder til it bigynne to thik, and cast it on
> a wete table;
pour the goo on a wet table to form it into a sheet; nowadays you'd use
a sheet pan or a marble slab -- think in terms of peanut brittle,
although I suspect this may not be cooked to as hard a candied state--
which process should make it easier to...
> lesh it
slice it; cut it into pieces
> and serue it forth with fryed mete, on flessh dayes or
> on fisshe dayes.
Adamantius
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000 10:43:11 -0700
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - PAYNE RAGOUN
At 1:00 PM -0400 9/9/00, Seton1355 at aol.com wrote:
>Some questions please:
>Why does one lay out the resulting paste onto a table?
>*lesh* it? Huh? Corral it? so keep it in a bowl!
>Thanks Phillipa
> the thriddendele
You missed this one, which completely confused the author of one
published source. Probably "the third part," meaning a third as much
as of the stuff already there.
> &
>powdour gyngeuer, and stere it togyder til it bigynne to thik, and cast it on
>a wete table; lesh
Cut into slices, I believe--which is why you lay it on a table. My
guess is that the "wet" is to keep it from sticking, but I don't
actually know if that would work.
Do you have either _Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books_ or _Curye on
Englysce_? They have glossaries which are helpful for such things.
The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) is also useful.
- --
David/Cariadoc
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000 13:50:24 EDT
From: Etain1263 at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - PAYNE RAGOUN another question....
<< And whan it hath yboiled a while, take up a drope therof with thy fyngur
and do it in a litel water, and loke if it hong togydre; >>
"When it has boiled a while...take up a drop ON THY FINGER (????) and do it
in a little water and look if it hang together."
Would this not cause a serious burn? I'm not really sure..but I haven't
ever stuck my finger into a pot of boiling sugar syrup. I use a spoon. (but
verification of the old "cold water test" is cool! 8)
Etain
Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2000 15:34:39 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - PAYNE RAGOUN another question....
Etain1263 at aol.com wrote:
> "When it has boiled a while...take up a drop ON THY FINGER (????) and do it
> in a little water and look if it hang together."
> Would this not cause a serious burn? I'm not really sure..but I haven't
> ever stuck my finger into a pot of boiling sugar syrup. I use a spoon. (but
> verification of the old "cold water test" is cool! 8)
This is an excellent point, and this isn't the only such recipe to call
for a step like this, so I can only assume there's consistently
something we're not being told. One of the recipes for seeds in confit
tells the cook to take up a little of the melted sugar between the thumb
and forefinger. Presumably the author assumes you'll take the pot off
the heat and let it cool somewhat, or have some intermediary step or
barrier between the boiling sugar and your skin.
This could conceivably include dipping the finger in cold water first,
or spooning some syrup out, blowing on it, then scooping a bit up on
your finger. It would depend on your own callouses, resistance to burns
and/or pain, etc.
Which leads to the question of whether it's possible for a full-time
cook (i.e. someone who does this stuff all the time), under the right
circumstances, to simply do as the recipe instructs. When I've made
anise in confit, I was able to dip a wooden spoon in the boiling sugar,
wet my finger, and scrape the sugar off the spoon with my finger without
burning it. Of course, I have moderately calloused hands and have spent
years with my hands in ovens and steamers, and over grills, so I've
become fairly resistant to all but the most serious burns. Another
consideration is that syrups that have boiled for a while, and therefore
contain less water, cool faster than those that have not. The syrup for
anise in confit is nearly anhydrous; it's just melted sugar, not sugar
dissolved in water and boiled down. The finger thing may be more doable
for that type of cooked sugar than for a boiling syrup.
Adamantius
Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2000 22:07:36 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - PAYNE RAGOUN
LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> ddfr at best.com writes:
> << Sugar of Cypress, I believe >>
>
> OK. I have seen this mentioned 3 times now. What is sugar of Cypress and why
> would it work better than sugar syrup in this recipe? Since I have translated
> the term as sugar syrup and it works well in this recipe, what leads you to
> believe that cipre is simply not a scribal error for the word 'sirop'?
Hmm. (Bear in mind I'm about to express opinion.) Because this
explanation allows us to follow the recipe as read, without assuming a
scribal error in transposing consonants. Another example of Occam's Razor.
~generic noun, for example "sucre"~ de cypre is still used to describe
things from Cyprus in modern French.
"Sugur cypre" appears in several recipes, always spelled that way, or in
a similar manner more suggestive of the Isle of Cyprus than of syrup.
IIRC, Cyprus was a major center for the sugar trade in medieval Europe,
becoming in the later Middle Ages (15th century and on) a center for
sugarcane farming and processing as well. This is one of the major
reasons for the increase in sugar use, and drop in prices, found in the
second half of the Middle Ages. You'll find references to sugar from
Cyprus in a lot of 14th-15th century English recipes, with perhaps an
implication that while it isn't as fine as some of the more highly
processed sugars from India or the MidEast, it's plenty fine enough for
reprocessing in the form of candy.
It's also my impression (and I could be wrong about this) that the word
"syrup" and cognates thereof, aren't generally applied to sugar
solutions at the time this recipe appears, rather a syrup tends to be a
thin sauce or gravy.
Adamantius
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 20:41:17 -0500
From: harper at idt.net
Subject: Re: Spiced, Candied Nuts - was, Re: SC - (no subject)
> That would be nucato, essentially an ancestor of praline? I think it
> comes from one of the more obscure Italian MS sources.
>
> Adamantius
There are several Catalan/Spanish recipes for nuts candied with
honey or sugar. And Platina says that sugared pinenuts are
served at the beginning of a meal. I don't recall any of these
recipes including spices, though.
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 21:44:24 -0400
From: johnna holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Pulled sugar was Sugar Plate Again
Lady Orlaith of Storvik wrote:
Okay so I have a question. I've been trying to find the beginnings of
hard candy for making things like pulled sugar and I haven't had much
luck so far. Does anyone have a beginning date for such things? Or any suggestions on sources?
Orlaith
------------
For photos of pulled sugar.
See--
http://www.notterschool.com/default.asp?page=hp
and look at the photo gallery.
I did some minor work with pulled sugar in December
when I did the dragon for the Red Spears feast. I did
"pulled sugar wings" to go along with
a cast or poured sugar
body. Sir Hugh Plat includes recipes for molding a poured sugar
syrup as does John Murrell.
My Italian materials on sugarworks are sitting in a stack
and sometime later this summer I will be doing some more
work with them. Earliest printed recipe in English for Sugarpaste
is that of Alessio which is 1558. The earliest Alessio in Italian
would be 1555, so that's probably the earliest printed recipe.
There is one 1525 work that contains confectionary recipes,
but I've not yet seen a copy and it's not been reprinted for
purchase. I've not seen any description that indicates that it
contains either sugarpaste or pulled sugar. One has to remember
that in order to have pulled sugar, they must have made the
transition from honey to sugar and figured out how to work with
boiling a sugar syrup. In any case you should start with
one of the best books on confections and sweets which is
Sugar-Plums and Sherbet by Laura Mason. Also see
her PPC 69 article which has the early English mss. candy recipes
in it. They date from the 15th century.
Johnnae llyn Lewis Johnna Holloway
From: "Elise Fleming" <alysk at ix.netcom.com>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 09:12:54 -0500
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: Pulled Sugar
Greetings. I see two different questions here. Boiled sugar
(poured into molds) was done as early as the 13th century and there
is a recipe in the Anonymous Andalusian cookbook which is in one of
Duke Cariadoc's volumes. There is also a recipe for "sugar plate"
in Form of Curye. This isn't sugar paste, but is a boiled sugar
syrup poured into plate form.
Pulled sugar is something else, although it starts with a boiled
syrup. I haven't seen any evidence for pulled sugar within period.
What we thought was evidence was apparantly a mistranslation of
"sugar paste".
Alys Katharine
Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 21:28:22 -0400
From: johnna holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Pulled Sugar
The mistranslation involved the term being
"spun sugar" when Henry III of France was really served
sugarpaste figures in Venice during his visit there in the
1570's..
The manuscript "Goud Kokery" which is section V
in Curye on Inglysch has the following:
13. To make suger plate
14. To mak penydes
15. To make ymages in suger.
This mss. is dated late 1300's.
The penydes recipe is interesting because penydes is
actually pulled and drawn out with the hands over a hook.
It was then cut with shears. See Laura Mason for description.
(Yes, this is the beginning of pulled candies.)
The question that I am after--- was this done for
ornamental sugarworks for the table or presentation?
There is an early translated 18th century apothecary work by Pomet that
I have been trying to
see. The original is dated late 17th century in France.
Mason credits it with prviding the barley sugar recipe
that is pulled. The question would be what else is included there.
There are 15th century reference to sugar figures in
Feste e Banchetti pp. 109 and 166. That's from a Roman
banquet in 1473.
I just rec'd by the way a copy of a book called:
Bittersweet. The Story of Sugar by Peter Macinnis.
It arrived today. It was published in 2002 in Australia.
Johnnae llyn Lewis Johnna Holloway
Elise Fleming wrote:
> Greetings. I see two different questions here. Boiled sugar
> (poured into molds) was done as early as the 13th century and there
> is a recipe in the Anonymous Andalusian cookbook which is in one of
> Duke Cariadoc's volumes. There is also a recipe for "sugar plate"
> in Form of Curye. This isn't sugar paste, but is a boiled sugar
> syrup poured into plate form.
>
> Pulled sugar is something else, although it starts with a boiled
> syrup. I haven't seen any evidence for pulled sugar within period.
> What we thought was evidence was apparantly a mistranslation of
> "sugar paste".
>
> Alys Katharine
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 18:49:50 +0000
From: "Vincent Cuenca" <bootkiller at hotmail.com>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Hazelnut Nougat
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Here ya go, Olwen!
CAPITOL .XXXIJ. PER FER TORONS DE AVALANES
Per fer torrons de avalanes torrades ab mell e fer ne tauletes, tu pendras
les avallanes e torrar les as, e com sien torrades tu les faras ben netes ab
un tros de vidre e que sien ben netes. E pux pendras la mell tanta com ne
auras manester, so es una llr. de mell per liura de vallanes, e metras la al
foch ab patit foch e menar l as be, e puxs levar l as del foch. E metras per
liure de mell un blanch d ou e lensar los hi has com la mell sia tebea, e
lavons menau ho una gran estona fort. E apres tornar ho has tentost al foch
e cogua tant fins que sia cuyta, menant tostemps ab poch foch. E la
conexensa de la mel con es cuyta es atras en lo capitol de la pinyonada. E
cuyta la mell, levar l as del foch, e pendras les avallanes e metras les
dins e mesclar les as ben ab la dita mell. E fet aso lensar ho has sobre una
taula que sia ben neta ab aygua. E apres estendras ho tot e fer n as
tauletes de calt en calt tals com volras.
Chapter Thirty-Two To Make Hazelnut Nougat
To make nougat of toasted hazelnuts with honey and cut into pieces, take the
hazelnuts and toast them, and when they are toasted make them very clean
with a piece of glass and they should be very clean. And you can take the
honey, as much as seems necessary, which is a pound of honey for a pound of
hazelnuts, and put it on the fire over a low flame and stir it well, and
take it from the fire. And add for each pound of honey the white of an egg
and add it when the honey is cool, and at that time stir it vigorously for a
long while. And afterwards return it to the fire and cook it until it is
done, stirring constantly over a low fire. And recognizing that the honey
is cooked is as said before in the chapter on pine nut candy. And once the
honey is cooked, take it from the fire and take the hazelnuts and put them
in and mix them well with the aforementioned honey. And once this is done
pour it out on a board that should be well cleaned with water. And then
spread it all out and cut it into pieces once it is cool as you may wish.
Here ya go, Olwen! It's a black nougat, more like a brittle than a soft
nougat, but good. Enjoy.
Vicente
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 14:21:50 -0400
From: johnna holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Two Books on Sweets
To: "sca-cooks at ansteorra.org" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Here are a couple on sweets--
A King's Confectioner in the Orient: Friedrich Unger, Court Confectioner
to King Otto I of Greece
by Friedrich Unger
ISBN: 0710309368 Subtitle: Friedrich Unger, Court Confectioner to King
Otto I of Greece Translator: Merogullari, Renate Translator: Akmak,
Maret Publisher: Kegan Paul International Ltd. September 2003 in the UK
208 pages. Also listed as being pub. in December 2003 in the USA.
Acc. to the publisher-
"This book, written in 1837 by Friedrich Unger, Chief Confectioner to
King Otto I of Greece, is a remarkable window onto what is in many
respects a lost world. Only a professional confectioner could have
understood the techniques, equipment and ingredients sufficiently to
leave a record so invaluable for recreating oriental confectionery. His
book is comprehensive and detailed, with recipes for 97 confections,
some of which have disappeared entirely today. The light the book throws
on relations between Turkish and European confectionery is of particular
interest."
The author Mary Isin has translated over 150 books from Turkish to
English. She began researching the history of Turkish cuisine in 1981,
publishing a Turkish cookery book in 1985, and an annotated
transcription of an Ottoman cookery book into modern Turkish in 1998.
She lives in Istanbul and has two daughters.
This is apparently translated from the German by Merete ‚akmak and
Renate …merogullari according to a publisher's note.
http://www.keganpaul.com/product_info.php?products_id=741&;osCsid=15355addd75604ee634970ebaf4872fa
lists what the chapters include.
----------------------
Sugar-Plums and Sherbert: The Prehistory of Sweets
by Laura Mason is available again in paperback.
ISBN: 1903018285 Subtitle: The Prehistory of Sweets Publisher: Prospect
Books ( August 2003 Paperback)
Johnnae llyn Lewis
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 12:05:57 -0600
From: Sue Clemenger <mooncat at in-tch.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] candied ginger, URL??
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Mairi Ceilidh wrote:
>> And candied carrots are documetable!
>
> Oh yummy. Recipe and source please? (Especially if it is different
> from the honey glazed root vegetables, which I dearly love.)
There's a candy made with carrots in the webbed "Anonymous Andalusian"
cookbook on His Grace's website that I've always wanted to try....It's
in the last chapter, IIRC.
--maire,
Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 21:50:50 -0400
From: Elaine Koogler <ekoogler1 at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Kiri's feast
To: Cooks within the CA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Here 'tis...hope you enjoy! It was a great hit at the feast. The other
"cool" thing about them is that they can be made t least a week in
advance and keep very well. Mistress Rose kept the ones we made as a
test batch at her house and sent them to school with her kids for lunch!
Manual de mugeres translated by Meisterine Karen Larsdatter (a 16th C.
Spanish manuscript)
Recipe for making a conserve of alajœ (a delicacy of Arabic origin,
basically a paste made of almonds, walnuts, or pine nuts, toasted
breadcrumbs, spices, and honey).
Knead together well-sifted flour with oil and water. And leave the dough
somewhat hard nd knead it well. And make thin cakes and cook them well,
so they can be ground; and grind them and sift them. And then take a
celem’n of ground cleaned walnuts, and two pounds of ground toasted
almonds. And while you crush the walnuts and almonds, mix thm. Put a
well-measured azumbre of honey to the fire, and the best that you can
find, skim it and return it to the fire. And when the honey rises, add
the walnuts and almonds in it. And cook it until the honey is cooked.
And when it is, remove it from the ire and put with it a half a celem’n
of the grated flour cakes, and mix it well. And then add a half-ounce of
cloves and another half (ounce) of cinnamon, and two nutmegs, all
ground-up. And then repeat the stirring a lot. And then make it into
cakes or pt it in boxes, whichever you desire more.
My redaction (with the assistance of Mistress Rose of Black Diamond):
1 cup breadcrumbs
1 cup Walnuts, ground
1 cup almonds, toasted and ground
1 cup honey
1/8 tsp. cloves, ground
1/2 tsp. cinnamon, ground
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
Toast almonds. Grind almonds and walnuts together.
Heat honey until it boils up. Add the almond/walnut mixture and
continue cooking until 250¼ on a candy thermometer.
Add the breadcrumbs, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. Mix together ell.
Press into molds or a pan, and turn out to finish drying.
Made 3 doz. Small heart cakes. (We made them in heart shapes to go
along with the theme of the event...but you could use any kind of mold
you wish.)
Kiri
Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 22:58:06 -0400
From: Elaine Koogler <ekoogler1 at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [ca-cooks] Kiri's feast
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
To be honest, I did not. The results of my initial effort, using the
breadcrumbs, was very dense...so much so, in fact, that we were able to
press the resulting mixture into molds, then turn the molded mixture out
onto a sheet of waxed paper. I don't believe making it denser would have
made it any better...in fact, it probably would have been a little too
dry. But yes, I did use dry breadcrumbs. Again, given that I was making
it in large quantities, we used commercially prepared breadcrumbs. The
description in the original recipe seemed to produce something very
similar to those.
Kiri
Phlip wrote:
> Dry breadcrumbs?
>
> Kiri, did you try this with a flat bread as well as with the breadcrumbs?
> I'm thinking that you would get a denser texture with the unleavened
> flatbread, as described in the riginal. Possibly as matzos would make it,
> although I don't remember oil being an ingredient of matzos....
>
> If you did try it with both, I would assume the textures were close enough
> that you felt the substitution was adequate for simplifying large
> quantities...
>
> Saint Phlip,
Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 23:12:32 -400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <rcmann4 at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Kiri's feast
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
On 12 May 2004, at 1:50, Elaine Koogler wrote:
> Manual de mugeres translated by Meisterine Karen Larsdatter (a 16th C.
> Spanish manuscript)
>
> Recipe for making a conserve of alajœ (a delicacy of Arabic origin,
> basically a paste made of almonds, walnuts, or pine nuts toasted
> breadcrumbs, spices, and honey).
>
> Knead together well-sifted flour with oil and water. And leave the dough
> somewhat hard and knead it well. And make thin cakes and cook them well,
> so they can be ground; and grind them and sift them
[snip]
> My redaction (with the assistance of Mistress Rose of Black Diamond):
>
> 1 cup breadcrumbs
I have always made this with ground up pie crust made from flour, water, and
olive oil. If I were using breadcrumbs (and I might well do so if making it in
feast quantities), I'd be inclined to add some olive oil to the mix.
Brighid ni Chiarain *** mka Robin Carroll-Mann
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 16:29:22 -0800 (PST)
From: Jakie Wyatt <vaanthro at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Rue Substitute?
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
> I thought this might be the pine nut candy, which comes out somewhat
> like modern peanut brittle, but milk? and what is "passum"? Can someone
> post the recipe?
piper, nucleos, mel, rutam et passum teres, cum
lacte et tracta coques. coagulum coque cum modicis ovis. perfusummelle, aspersum <pipere> inferes.
(Flower & Rosenbaum, p. 84)
Passum is raisin wine- it's wine made from raisins rather than grapes
right off the vine.
Medb ingen Dungaile
(the friend who's doing the recipe for pent this weekend and keeps
finding new nags)
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 18:16:22 -0500
From: Bill Fisher <liamfisher at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] candies and sweets
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Rabisha includes a "Book of Preserving, Conserving, and Candying"
but that is from 1661 - since other parts of this book include reprints
of earlier sources, does anyone know if this includes this section?
Cadoc
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 13:03:02 -0800
From: David Friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] candies and sweets
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Aoghann asked about period candies.
We have a number of worked-out recipes in our Miscellany, webbed at:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/miscellany_pdf/Miscellany.htm
in the second on desserts, etc. We have the candy recipes together,
Islamic as well as European; they start on p. 124, right after the
cuskynole recipe. My favorite for just plain odd is the spicy nut
candy (one of the pynades, although it calls for almonds rather than
pine nuts) using radishes rather than pepper for the spiciness.
Elizabeth of Dendemonde/Betty Cook
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 16:41:36 -0600
From: Robert Downie <rdownie at mb.sympatico.ca>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] I Got My Portuguese Convent Sweets Books -
Who-hoo!
To: SCA_Subtleties at yahoogroups.com, SCA-Cooks at ansteorra.org,
SCAFoodandFeasts at yahoogroups.com
And only 20 Euros for shipping...grumble, grumble...
Mesa, Doces e Amores no Sec XVII (the table, sweets and passions in the 17th C)
Docaria Conventual do Alentejo as Receitas e o Seu Enquadramento
Historico (convent sweets of Alentejo, the recipes and their history)
Docaria Conventual do Norte Historia e Alquimia da Farinha (convent
sweets of the north, history and alchemy of flour)
Of course, now it's going to take me a while to go through them.
Unfortunately, in quickly skimming the contents, the recipes are not
dated, so there could be modern ones along with the originals. One of
the introductory chapters mentioned the rise of convent sweets starting
in the second half of the 16th C, and truly blossoming by the 17th C.
and that many of the sweets were created specifically for the nobility,
as these religious orders were also responsible for entertaining Kings.
I'll keep notes as I go along, and eventually I hope to have some
useful information to share. There's a fair amount of info on monastic
life in General there too, by the looks of it.
Faerisa
Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2005 10:44:36 -0600
From: Robert Downie <rdownie at mb.sympatico.ca>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] 16th C Portuguese Convent Sweets documentation so
far
To: SCA_Subtleties at yahoogroups.com, sca-cooks
<sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>, SCAFoodandFeasts Moderator
<SCAFoodandFeasts-owner at yahoogroups.com>
I've been perusing the Convent Sweets books I got from Portugal, and
surfing the web in hopes of documenting them specifically.
(I've also got a couple more on order: Ë MESA COM LUêS VAZ DE CAMÍES -
the romance of Portuguese cookery in the Age of Discovery & DOCE NUNCA
AMARGOU (O) - history, decoration and recipes of Portuguese sweets...
I'm not sure how much useful historical info I'll find in the second
volume, but it'll be a fun read and good modern reference anyway).
I found this in one of the Alfredo Samargo volumes:
There exists written record of D. Jo‹o II (1481-1495) ordering several
items from convents in ƒvora for the wedding of his son, prince D.
Afonso to the princess of Castela:
-7 arrobas of "confeites" (confits)
-5 arrobas of "t‰maras" (dates)
-50 basins of "fritos doces" (fried pastries)
-30 basins of "fartens" (sweet fruit paste wrapped in pastry, I think)
(an arroba is equal to 14.688 KG)
The author goes on to say that D. Manuel I (crowned in 1495) requested 3
trays of sweets each day during his stays at the convent.
Filipe II considered the sweets of ƒvora and Beija to be the best he had
ever had. Filip III visited the various convents in ƒvora, where he
sampled various delicies, and in Santa Monica attended a repast where
the sweets were laid out over two tables "the size of 2 men laying down"
The bad news: no real names are specified (there are lots of different
fried pastry types, fartens may be the "fartos" referenced in the
extant15th C.Portuguese cookbook "Livro de Cozinha da Infanta D.
Maria") The recipe section of each book has lots & lots of recipes, but
although most are conjecturally period based on ingredients, none of
them are dated specifically. We are told which convents each recipe
originated from, and when those convents were established, but that's
it. However, I do get hungry after scanning the recipe pages! I'm
thinking of also going through the pastries in the 15th C. "Livro de
Cozinha" and seeing how may similar recipes I can find in the convent
recipes.
My webcrawling also yielded some interesting results:
Gaspar Frutuoso records in his "Saudades da Terra", a chronicle of the
history of the islands (Azores and Madeira), the splendors of sugarworks
in the embassy of Sim‹o Gonalves da C‰mara to Pope Le‹o X in 1508 which
consisted of:
"muitos mimos e brincos da ilha de conservas, e o sacro palacio todo
feito de assucar, e os cardiais todos feitos de alfenim, dornados a
partes, o que lhes dava muita graa, e feitos de estatura de hum homem".
(many gifts and earrings (?) of the island of preserves, and the sacred
palace all made of sugar, and the cardinals all made of alfenin, gilded
in parts, and made in the stature of a man). *I'm not sure if by
"stature of a man" they mean life -sized. If so, I'm very impressed!
This is a modern recipe, but probably unchanged from the original, which
is supposed to have originated from the Moors
Alfenim
1 Kg sugar
1 T white wine vinegar
butter to grease the bowl
Bring the sugar to a boil with 400 ml of water and the vinegar and let
it boil until it reaches the soft-ball stage. Pour the syrup into a
greased metal bowl which is placed in a larger container filled with
cold water. As the sugar starts to set around the edges, you will need
to pull it back towards the center of the mass with a knife. As soon as
it cools down enough to handle, start kneading it with your hands,
pulling it out and stretching it, folding it and stretching it until it
becomes very elastic, opaque and white.
Divide the paste into sections, cutting it with scissors, and work it
while it is still warm. To keep the alfenim pieces moldable (ie not
allowing them to cool completely), keep them near the mouth of a warm
oven or the intermittent warmth of an electric radiator.
With the alfenim you can mold animals, flowers, etc. It can also be
eaten like candies.
There are some really neat subtlety like desserts in the recipe sections
of the books that I really wish I could document to SCA period (they may
very well all be that old, I just haven't been able to document them
yet):
-Pombinhas de Alcorce e Caroos de Alcorce ( little doves and peach pits
form Alcorce)
-Lampreia de Ovos (lamprey of eggs)
-Peixes (faux fish)
-Sardinhas Albardadas (faux egg fried sardines)
-Nuvens do Ceu (clouds from the sky)
and there are so many others that just look so tasty, and all have
_conjecturally_ period ingredients... sigh, so close and yet so far...
Faerisa
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 10:08:06 -0500
From: Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Sweets at British Library
To: SCA_Subtleties at yahoogroups.com, Cooks within the SCA
<sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
While looking for something else this am, I came across
this page at the British Library's online site--
http://bllearning.co.uk/live/sweets/
Author Tim Richardson is being interviewed about his book
Sweets.
There are pages shown from a number of original books on sweets
and confectionery arts, including Plat and Jarrin. Take a look
at the illlustration of the comfit making pan as shown in Jarrin's book.
Click on the page to enlarge it. Even in 1820, they were still using
the hanging pan over charcoal. Brears depicts the Tudor variation in
his book.
I am lucky to own an early copy of Skuse now. Jarrin is on the list.
Johnnae
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 11:06:29 -0500
From: "Elise Fleming" <alysk at ix.netcom.com>
Subject: [Sca-ooks] Re: Rock Candy
To: "sca-cooks at ansteorra.org" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Rock Candy
I think there are earlier recipes, but canÕt lay my hands on them right
now. Also, much of the candy/confection-making was done by the apothecary,
not the regular cook. I donÕt have apothecary books which might contain
earlier accounts. The approximate temperature for Manus Christi depends...
one source suggests 215 F. Other authorities equate it to the thread stage
which is 230-234 F.
The Ladies Cabinet, 1655
#41 – To make the Rock Candies upon all Spices, Flowers and Roots.
Take two pound of Barbary sugar, clarifie it with a pint of water, and the
whites of twoeggs, then boil it in a posnet to the height of Manus
Christi, then put it into an earthen Pipkin, and therwith the things you
will candy, as Cinamon, Ginger, Nutmegs, Rose buds, Marigolds, Eringo
roots, &c. Cover it, and stop it close with clay or paste then put it in
a Still with a leisurely fire under it, for the space of three days and
three nights; then open the pot, and if the Candy begin to coine, keep it
unstopped for the space of three or four dayes more, and then (leaving the
syrup) take ut the Candy, lay it on a Wier grate, and put it in an oven
after the bread is drawn, there let it remain one night, and your Candy
will be dry. This is the best way for Rock candy, making so small a
quantity.
William Rabisha, The Whole Body of Cookery issected, 1682
To Candy all sorts of Flowers, Fruits and Spices, the clear Rock-Candy.
Take two pound of Barbery Sugar great grained, clarified with the whites of
two Eggs: boyl it almost so high as for Manus Christi, then put it into a
pipkin that s not very rough, then put in your Flowers, Fruits, and
spices, so put your pipkin into a still, and make a small fire with
small-coals under it, and in the space of twelve dayes it will be
Rock-candyed.
Mrs. Mary EaleÕs Receipts (Confectioner to her lat Majesty Queen Anne),
1733
To make Rock-Sugar.
Take a red Earthen Pot, that will hold about four Quarts, (those Pots that
are something less at the Top and Bottom than in the Middle) stick it
pretty thick with the Sticks of a white Wisk, a-cross, one ver the other;
set it before a good Fire, that it may be very hot against your Sugar is
boilÕd; then take ten Pound of double-refinÕd Sugar finely beaten, the
Whites of two Eggs beaten to a Froth in half a Pint of Water, and mix it
with the Sugar; thenput to it a Quart of Orange-flower-water and thee half
Pints of Water, setting it on a quick Fire; when it boils thoroughly put in
half a Pint of Water more to raise the Scum, and let it boil up again; then
take it off and skim it; do so two or thre Times, Ôtill it is very clear;
then let it boil, Ôtill you find it draw between your Fingers, which you
mist often try, with taking a little in the Ladle; and as it cools, it will
draw like a Thread; then put it into the hot Pot, covering it close, and
setting it in a very hot Stove for three Days: It must stand three Weeks;
but after the three first Days a moderate Fire will do; but never stir the
Pots, nor let the Stove be quite cold; Then take it out, and pour out all
the Syrup, the Rock willbe on the Sticks and the Pot-sides: set the Pots
in cold Water, in a Pan, on the Fire, and when it is thorough hot all the
Rock will slip out, and fall most of it in small Pieces; the Sticks you
must just dip in hot Water, and that will make the Rock lip off; then put
in a good Handful of dry Orange-Flowers, and take a Ladle with Holes, and
put the Rock and Flowers in it, as much as will make as big a Lump as you
wouÕd like; dip it in scalding Water, and lay it on a Tin Plate; then make
it up n handsome Lumps, and as hollow as you can: When it is so far
preparÕd, put it in a hot Stove, and the next Day it will stick together;
then take it off the Plates, and let it lye two or three Hours in the
Stove; if there be any large Pieces, you may mae Bottoms of them, and lay
small Pieces on them.
Household Discoveries, 1909, Sidney Morse
Rock Candy - A special kettle is required to make fine rock candy. This
kettle should be broad and shallow, the width being three or four times the
depth. Place in the bottom of the kettle a circular rim of smooth tin
about 2 inches high and closely fitting to the inside of the kettle all
around. Near the top of this make ten or twelve holes in a circle all
around at equal distances from each other, and tring across threads from
one side to the other on which the candy may crystallize.
Prepare the sirup in a separate vessel, and when it is done pout it into
the kettle so that it will reach an inch above the threads. Place the
kettle on the stove at amoderate heat and leave it to crystallize, shaking
it from time to time. It will require about six days. Then the crystals
have formed pour off the remaining sirup and dash in a little cold water to
clean the crystals from the sediment left in thebottom of the kettle.
Remove the rim with the rock candy adhering to the threads, and set it in a
clean vessel in a hot oven until it is dry and fit for use.
To prepare the sirup clarify refined granulated sugar, filter and boil
until it is ready to crstallize, which will be at 35 degrees on the sirup
test.
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
http://home.netcom.com/~alysk/
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 16:55:35 -0500
From: Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise <jenne at fiedlerfamily.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Sugar and cheese
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
>> 2. Anyone have a good recipe for "Rock Candy"?
> Hmmm. Anyone know if this is period? Or if not, when it was first made?
It's period. Recrystalizing sugar is part of the refining process, so
when you whiten sugar you're recrystalizing it.
The mention of Sugar Candy I recall is in C. Anne Wilson, and it's one
of the sickly young kings being fed rose sugar and violet sugar candies.
--
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 13:55:10 -0500
From: Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] rock candy
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Ok the better book to look this up in is Laura Mason's
Sugar-Plums and Sherbet. The Prehistory of Sweets.
(HINT-- it's available again Folks. Devra carries it in the
new paperback edition.)
Mason notes on page 95--
"The name 'rock' leads to more confusion. To nineteenth-century
confectioners, rock could mean pulled sugar, as in the modern
definition, but it could also mean rock candy, large crystals grown on
sticks in sugar solutions, or 'rock sugar', made from royal icing
foamed by the addition of hot syrup."
Earlier on page 66--
"Another specialized use of the word is in the term rock candy.
This is composed of large, semi-transparent crystals grown slowly
over a period of days on sticks or strings suspended in warm sugar
solution. These are huge versions of the crystals which form from sugar-cane
juice boiled down to a syrupy consistency, which are the stuff of
sugar loaves. It is not always clear from early recipes which sort of
candy they refer to."
Jonnae
snipped
> Hmmm. Okay, but when I think of "rock candy", I think of large
> crystals of sugar and in sugar refining I'm not sure large crystals
> gain you anything and they are more expensive since they take more
> time to create. When I think of rock candy I think of strings left in
> saturated sugar solutions and slowly cooled or left in the solution
> for multiple days. since that is the way I remember making it as a
> child. But I guess it could come down to what you consider "rock
> candy" to be
> But were these large crystals of sugar or just a syrup of sugar formed
> into shapes?
> Stefan
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 10:16:31 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
From: Robin Carroll-Mann <rcmann4 at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Poured sugar
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Gedney <gedney1 at iconn.net>
in the florithingummy file on sugar that weas recently posted to the
list, there was mention of a company selling food grade silicone
molding supplies, which (I think) are suitable for working with pouring
sugar (Though you should probably wait until after it cools some... to
where it is still thickly fluid but not bubbling or running any more. I
dont know what the temperature cap is for this sort of silicone. I
know that Silpats can handle sugar at "Hard Crack" temps, but it never
hurts to err on the side of caution! Caution in sugar work is always a
good idea... sugar can raise one NASTY burn)
-------------------------------------------------------------
Silicon baking dishes have become fairly common -- you can find them in
kitchen stores. There are loaf pans, muffin pans, etc. Since they're
meant to go into an over, they should surely handle melted sugar.
I LOVE Silpats. They've taken most of the stress out of baking
bizcochos (which, being made of eggs, sugar, and starch, are muchly
inclined to stick like sweet barnacles to ordinary "nonstick" baking
sheets). I made honey-sesame candies for a recent dayboard, and used a
tip I found on the Web -- I placed the ring of a springform pan on top
of a Silpat mat, and poured the hot honey mixture into it. When it was
partially cooled, the ring and the mat pulled away quite easily,
leaving a flat disc that I could cut into neat diamonds.
Better living (and cooking) through chemistry, I say!
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 17:49:24 -0700
From: lilinah at earthlink.net
Subject: [Sca-cooks] French Confectionery Manual
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Has anyone ever seen a copy of Le Bastiment de Receptes? It's the
French translation, published in 1541, of a Venetian confectionery
manual (name unknown to me) which was published a few months
earlier... Or for that matter, if anyone knows of that Venetian
confectionery manual... but i at least can read French...
I'm reading a French history of cookbooks and cuisine - Culture and
Cuisine by Jean-Francois Revel - and it is, naturally, rather heavy
on the French books and rather light on any others, but, then, it's
clear that for the author the best cuisine is French. In it i've
found the titles of a number of "period" French cookbooks that i
hadn't heard of before and that are not on Thomas Gloning's site,
other than mention in his bibliographies.
--
Urtatim, formerly Anahita
Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 21:00:13 -0400
From: Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] French Confectionery Manual
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
The only copy I have ever come across of this one lies
buried in DC. The earlier one is like 1525. It's not available either.
There's not been a facsimile or copy done of Le Bastiment.
The best thing to read on the topic is
Liliane Plouvier's "La confiserie europeenne au moyen age."
Medium Aevum Quotidianum, Krems, 1988.
(Drive your librarian crazy--- go ahead ask for it.)
Johnnae
lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:
> Has anyone ever seen a copy of Le Bastiment de Receptes? It's the
> French translation, published in 1541, of a Venetian confectionery
> manual (name unknown to me) which was published a few months
> earlier... Or for that matter, if anyone knows of that Venetian
> confectionery manual... but i at least can read French...
>
> I'm reading a French history of cookbooks and cuisine - Culture and
> Cuisine by Jean-Francois Revel - and it is, naturally, rather heavy on
> the French books and rather light on any others, but, then, it's clear
> that for the author the best cuisine is French. In it i've found the
> titles of a number of "period" French cookbooks that i hadn't heard of
> before and that are not on Thomas Gloning's site, other than mention
> in his bibliographies.
Date: Sun, 24 Apr 200521:43:18 -0400
From: Robin Carroll-Mann <rcmann4 at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] French Confectionery Manual
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:
> Has anyone ever seen a copy of Le Bastiment de Receptes? It's the
> French translation, published in 1541, of a Venetian confectionery
> manual (name unknown to me) which was published a few months
> earlir... Or for that matter, if anyone knows of that Venetian
> confectionery manual... but i at least can read French...
I don't know if this is the same book... there's a 1552 book by that
title online at:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/document?O=N054458
If you cick on "telecharger" you can download the whole thing.
--
Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 11:14:44 -0700
From: lilinah at earthlink.net
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Hulwa? Related Sweets?
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Mike C. Baker
SCA: al-Sayyid Amr ibn Majid al-Bakri al-Amra
wrote:
> Having been introduced to this confection today by HL Saqra al-Kudsi, in her
> kitchen as part of advanced preparation for Lindenwood Midsummer Masked Ball
> this year, I am looking for more information about the origins, variations,
> and related developments that may exist out there. (For those who may be as
> new to this concept as I was, hulwa [hul-wah?] might be considered an
> ancestor or parallel development of divinity and similar boiled-sugar
> candies...)
There is a confectioner's manual included in the 14th century "The
Book of the Description of Familiar Foods" with MASSIVE amounts of
cooked sugar recipes.
This book is included in "Medieval Arab Cookery", published by
Prospect Books, translated by Charles Perry. I HIGHLY recommend
purchasing this book if you enjoy Near and Middle Eastern cooking. It
includes al-Baghdadi's cookbook - with updated and expanded footnotes
by Charles Perry that correct errors in the Arberry translation and a
great deal of much needed additional information. And a couple other
cookbooks, excerpts from cook books, and wonderful essays by Charles
Perry.
I've never made any of the cooked sugar recipes because i don't much
care for sweets.
> Along similar lines, what about variations on the theme such as a softer
> delicacy I grew up enjoying in central Oklahoma, probably originating from a
> _Grit_ or _Capper's Weekly_ recipe: Date-Nut Log
There are certainly modern (19th and early 20th) c. recipes for
date-nut confections in the Near and Middle Eastern corpus. There
could be some in the Medieval Arabic language cookbooks that i
haven't noticed
al-Sayyida Urtatim al-Qurtubiyya bint 'abd al-Karim al-hakam al-Fassi
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 13:15:56 -0700
From: David Friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Hulwa? Related Sweets?
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
> Along similar lines, what about variations on the theme such as a
> softer delicacy I grew up enjoying in central Oklahoma, probably
> originating from a _Grit_ or _Caper's Weekly_ recipe: Date-Nut Log
If you make Hulwa using honey instead of sugar, you get a softer
variety. At least, I've never succeeded in boiling the honey down to
the point where it produces the sort of hard candy you get with sugar.
--
David/Caridoc
www.daviddfriedman.com
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 21:01:29 -0500
From: Robert Downie <rdownie at mb.sympatico.ca>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Spun Sugar
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Carole Smith wrote:
> I have a vivid memory of getting some hot sugar syrup on my fingers
> once. It held a lot of heat and was hard to wash off quickly because
> of its viscosity. No way would I voluntarily make a sugar thread this
> way.
>
> Cordelia Toser
Hot sugar can be nasty stuff. One of my co-workers got 2nd degree burns
on her arms between where the oven mitts ended and her sleeves started
while flipping over a large tray of pecan buns (if she hadn't run
straight to the sink and kept the cold water running over the burn area,
it would have been even worse).
That being said, the tips of your fingers, when repeatedly subjected to
large doses of heat for short periods at a time, will eventually develop
a resistance to it. Just ask anyone who has hand turned comfits in a
frying pan for any length of time :-) When you are dealing with a very
small amount of hot sugar between the pads of your fingertips, it's a
much more controlled circumstance than accidentally spilling a big glob
of the stuff on a more sensitive part of your hand or anywhere else on
your body.
Of course, common sense and caution should always be exercised when
dealing with hot sugar syrup.
Faerisa
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 12:02:33 -0400
From: Gretchen Beck <grm at andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] candy
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>, Cooks within
the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Charles O'Connor found descriptions of caramel (or a substance very like
caramel) in old Irish writings -- butter, milk, honey, boil and stir...
toodles, margaret
--On Tuesday, August 01, 2006 10:30 AM -0500 Marcha
<nigsdaughter at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> Is caramel period? Program on the food channel yesterday stated that it
> possibly could be period. So, with a wave of my fan and a soft "He'p", I
> ask...is caramel period?
>
> Bertha
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 23:24:47 -0400
From: Gretchen Beck <grm at andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] candy
To: grizly at mindspring.com, Cooks within the SCA
<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Pre-1200s, as I recall, but I don't remember more than that.
toodles, margaret
--On Tuesday, August 01, 2006 9:42 PM -0400 grizly <grizly at mindspring.com>
wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
>
> Charles O'Connor found descriptions of caramel (or a substance very like
> caramel) in old Irish writings -- butter, milk, honey, boil and stir...
>
> toodles, margaret> > > > >
>
> Did he give any indication what "old" meant in those writings?
>
> niccolo
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 05:01:17 +0200
From: Volker Bach <carlton_bach at yahoo.de>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] candy
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Am Dienstag, 1. August 2006 17:30 schrieb Marcha:
> Is caramel period? Program on the food channel yesterday stated that it
> possibly could be period. So, with a wave of my fan and a soft "He'p", I
> ask...is caramel period?
Can't say. There are some early recipes for sugar cooking (a kind of sesame
brittle is described in the Mappae Clavicula, and milk sweets in the Liber
Trotulae), but it's impossible for me to say whether these involve
caramelisation or not. I guess the recipe in Trotula could be interpreted as
modern caramel, but it might equally well be simply boiled sweets.
Giano
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 12:07:31 -0400
From: "grizly" <grizly at mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] candy
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
-----Original Message-----
hmn ... butter, milk, honey ... boil and stir ... sounds a lot like the
modern equivalent of carmel sauce, which really ISN"T caramel in the strict
sense of the word. Going to experiment a tad with portions and variants a
little this weekend ... and will report back on Sunday with results.
The kids are really excited about the possibility. We do a lot of projects
together ... but this one really has the full attention of the the
young-uns.
Cheers
Malkin> > > > > >
While the ingredient list is similar, there's nothing telling us quantities
or what technique was used. This could just as easily be a concoction for
invalids to take in nutrition if we are just adding butter and honey to a
lot of milk. Now, it you take a quantity of honey and boil it with butter
to a ball stage and add scalded milk, you can, indeed get a caramel or
caramel sauce. The whole curiosity for me is where you will take your
inspiration for direction and techniques in your experimentation . . . 1
quart milk, 2 ounces butter and 6 ounces honey will be different than 6 lbs
honey, 8 ounces butter, 8 ounces scalded milk.
I only ask because 1) I am excited about the results of your testing with
your children and the goodies that will come out of it and 2) the assertions
and generalizations of your findings to historical cultures will still be
seen through the lens of any documentation. We can prove that using modern
candy making techniques and a list of ingredients from 1200 Ireland, a
modern cook can create caramel or whatever. But it still seems to be
missing the bridge to what they would have knowledge, motivation,
inspiration and skill to do.
niccolo difrancesco
Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 10:43:52 -0600
From: "Kathleen A Roberts" <karobert at unm.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] candy
To: grizly at mindspring.com, Cooks within the SCA
<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
On Wed, 2 Aug 2006 12:07:31 -0400 "grizly" <grizly at mindspring.com> wrote:
> We can prove that using modern
> candy making techniques and a list of ingredients from 1200 Ireland, a
> modern cook can create caramel or whatever. But it still seems to be
> missing the bridge to what they would have knowledge, motivation,
> inspiration and skill to do.
IIRC, the original recipe was a drink of extreme
sustenance given the the young, especially those taken in
hostage (the good kind). of course, the book is at
home....
cailte
early irish and all that good stuff
Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2006 11:11:23 -0600
From: "Kathleen A Roberts" <karobert at unm.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] candy and hostages
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
On Thu, 03 Aug 2006 13:06:23 -0400
Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu> wrote:
> And this book is titled.......?
if i am remembering correctly (having a number of irish
history books) that would be....
Early Medieval Ireland, 400 to 1200 A.D.
Daibhi O?Croinin, Longman Press, 1995
thank goodness for lunchtime typed documentation! great
book... gets a tad scholarly at times but quite
interesting. talks a lot about farming with give a good
jumping point for food.
cailte
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 19:56:36 -0400
From: Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] hard candies was Favorite Food Gift Ideas
To: hlaislinn at earthlink.net, Cooks within the SCA
<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Stephanie Ross asked:
> Are hard candy suckers period?
> ~Aislinn~
The problem with sugar confections is that it is hard
to tell from many early recipes exactly what the end product
intended to be. Is it a hard clear
candy drop or a grained sugar treat? The recipes give
ingredients and one may be told to cook the mixture to a certain stage.
But often we aren't told what that stage is exactly. Modern
experts vary in their opinions too.
So is it hard crack or soft ball? Are the candies soft?
Are they hard?
The best book on the subject is back in print and in paperback--
*Sugar-Plums and Sherbet by Laura Mason*
Some of the chapters are up for viewing at
http://www.kal69.dial.pipex.com/shop/pages/isbn285.htm
Johnnae
(BTW--Devra carries the book on her website if you'd like to buy it.)
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 08:01:23 -0800
From: Lilinah <lilinah at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] A Sugar Dish Question
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
In my search for late SCA-period sweets for our
Duchesses Masked Rose Ball, I've looked through
La Varenne's cookbook, The French Cook, 1653
English translation. I realize his cookbook is
too late for the SCA in general. But many of his
recipes for sweets don't seem so different from
those of the later 16th. (his meat and vegetable
recipes appear quite different, but I'm not using
them.)
This recipe attracted my attention:
Slices of Gammon
Le Cuisinier Fran?ois
La Varenne
p. 232
Take some pistaches stamped by themselves, some
powder of roses of Provins by themselves, allayed
with the juice of lemon, and some almonds stamped
also by themselves, and thus each by it self.
Seethe about one pound and a half of sugar as for
conserve; after it is sod, sever it into three
parts, whereof you shall put and preserve the two
upon warm cinders, and into the other you shall
powre your roses, and after you have allayed them
well in this sugar, powre all together into a
double sheet of paper, which you shall fold up
two inches high on the four sides, and tie it
with pines on the four corners. After this, when
this first sugar thus powred shall be half cold,
and thus coloured, take of your almonds, mix them
into one of the parts of sugar left on the warm
cinders, and powre them over this implement, and
do the like also of the pistaches. Then, when all
is ready to be cut with the knife, beat down the
sides of the sheet of paper, and cut this sugar
into slices of the thickness of half a crown.
-----
But I wonder how this would stand slicing...
Below I've broken down the recipe (feel free to
correct my interpretation, if I've erred)
some crushed pistachios
some powdered of roses of Provence
lemon juice
some crushed almonds
about one pound and a half of sugar
a double sheet of paper
tie it with pines (sound like toothpicks to me... anyone know?)
Boil the sugar as for conserve.
After it is sod, divide it into three parts, keep two warm.
Mix the rose powder with some lemon juice.
Into the first pour the roses and mix them well in the sugar.
Take a double sheet of paper, fold up two inches
high on the four sides, and tie with pines
(toothpicks?) on the four corners.
Pour the roses mixed in sugar into this.
Let the rose sugar become half cold, and thus coloured,
Then take the almonds, mix them into one of the
parts of sugar left on the warm cinders, and pour
into the paper on top of the rose layer.
Do the same with the pistachios.
Then, when all is ready to be cut with the knife,
take down the sides of the sheet of paper, and
cut this sugar into slices of the thickness of
half a crown.
Thanks for any assistance.
--
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 12:44:15 -0500
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius"
<adamantius.magister at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] A Sugar Dish Question
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
On Oct 30, 2006, at 11:01 AM, Lilinah wrote:
> Slices of Gammon
> Le Cuisinier Fran?ois
> La Varenne
>
> p. 232
> Take some pistaches stamped by themselves, some
> powder of roses of Provins by themselves, allayed
> with the juice of lemon, and some almonds stamped
> also by themselves, and thus each by it self.
> Seethe about one pound and a half of sugar as for
> conserve; after it is sod, sever it into three
> parts, whereof you shall put and preserve the two
> upon warm cinders, and into the other you shall
> powre your roses, and after you have allayed them
> well in this sugar, powre all together into a
> double sheet of paper, which you shall fold up
> two inches high on the four sides, and tie it
> with pines on the four corners. After this, when
> this first sugar thus powred shall be half cold,
> and thus coloured, take of your almonds, mix them
> into one of the parts of sugar left on the warm
> cinders, and powre them over this implement, and
> do the like also of the pistaches. Then, when all
> is ready to be cut with the knife, beat down the
> sides of the sheet of paper, and cut this sugar
> into slices of the thickness of half a crown.
>
> -----
>
> But i wonder how this would stand slicing...
I imagine that the instruction to boil as for conserve (as opposed to
candy) is significant; to me it suggests some unspecified "candy
height" lower than that of the modern hard crack stage. You
presumably want something somewhat fudgey, or maybe at the upper end
of that range, but definitely something that can be sliced, at least
while warm. It would be speculation to suggest boiling your syrup to
the soft-to-hard-ball range, but I think in this case form is
supported by function.
> Below I've broken down the recipe (feel free to
> correct my interpretation, if I've erred)
>
> some crushed pistachios
> some powdered of roses of Provence
> lemon juice
> some crushed almonds
> about one pound and a half of sugar
> a double sheet of paper
> tie it with pines (sound like toothpicks to me... anyone know?)
It makes sense. Maybe it's "pynnes", which might be steel pushpins or
the equivalent of toothpicks. Clearly the goal is to keep the sticky
sugar away from pans and other surfaces where you'd have to damage
the stuff to get it off.
> Boil the sugar as for conserve.
> After it is sod, divide it into three parts, keep two warm.
> Mix the rose powder with some lemon juice.
> Into the first pour the roses and mix them well in the sugar.
> Take a double sheet of paper, fold up two inches
> high on the four sides, and tie with pines
> (toothpicks?) on the four corners.
Yes, you should have triangular overlaps, pretty much any way you
fold the paper. Pin these to themselves and/or to the sides of the
folded paper "pan". If the recipe really wants you to tie them, this
can be reinforced with thread. BTW, I'd give very serious thought to
oiling the paper first, maybe with almond oil, particularly since the
only layer that doesn't have a little oil mixed in will be the one on
the bottom. I find that a bit odd...
> Pour the roses mixed in sugar into this.
> Let the rose sugar become half cold, and thus coloured,
> Then take the almonds, mix them into one of the
> parts of sugar left on the warm cinders, and pour
> into the paper on top of the rose layer.
> Do the same with the pistachios.
> Then, when all is ready to be cut with the knife,
> take down the sides of the sheet of paper,
Don't forget to tamp down the edges where slippage and/or surface
tension might cause the stuff to creep up the sides; you'll get more
uniform slices that way...
> and cut this sugar into slices of the thickness of
> half a crown.
I'm not sure how thick a mid-17th-century half-Crown is, and I'm also
curious as to what La Varenne was actually referring to, because it
could be an assumption of the translator or some specific knowledge
that La Varenne's equivalent coin or measurement would be the same...
Adamantius
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:42:14 -0300
From: Suey <lordhunt at gmail.com>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] A Sugar Dish Question - Pynnes
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
In my Medieval English Vocabulary, pynnes are pins. It seems more
logical to stick to toothpicks not pines.
Susan
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:49:31 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Halvah marzipan or nougat?
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
On Oct 21, 2007, at 1:23 PM, Suey wrote:
> I have a conflict here. My Spanish sources say halvah is a
> Hispano-Jewish type of nougat consisting of an almond-sugar paste with
> **flavored with other ingredients such as rosewater, honey, julep,
> clove, camphor or sesame. There are several variations using cashews,
> pistachios and other nuts. David M. Gitlitz & Linda Kay Davidson in A
> Drizzle of Honey, The Lives and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews clearly
> indicate that they think it marzipan not nougat. What was halvah before
> the 15th Century marzipan or turron? What distinguishes the difference
> between the two - baking? Yes, I know the Spanish versions clearly have
> a different taste but Gitlitz gives a Mexican recipe which sounds like
> turron to me. Why am I getting bottled up on this?
> Suey
Halvah, hulwa, etc., are presumably Persian or Arabic in origin, and
generally have in common a cooked sugar-syrup base (or sometimes a
fruit syrup, such as date or pomegranite). They may or may not
contain beaten egg white, which is probably where the confusion with
nougat or torrone come in, and chopped nuts or other starchy staple,
such as sesame seed, simple flour or semolina. Some contain milk or
eggs. Today it's found all over the Islamic world, which is
presumably how Spain got it.
There are quite a few Islamic hulwah recipes in sources such as Kitab
al Tabikh, which I seem to recall is somewhat older than the 15th
century -- the recipes are sort of formulaic and modular, as I
recall, with instructions on how to make sugar syrup, then a basic
candy from that, with egg whites, then going on to add things like nuts.
Adamantius
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:50:10 -0500
From: "otsisto" <otsisto at socket.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Halvah marzipan or nougat?
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
The Greek halva that I have is a cake made of flour and hazelnut meal, eggs
and a bit of sugar with a hot syrup poured over it after it is out of the
oven and it is to soak through the cake. I usually cheat and heat up
marmalade and pour it on. So I am a bit confused about it being a
marzipan or nougat.
De
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:57:14 -0300
From: Suey <lordhunt at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Halvah marzipan or nougat?
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Playing around with different versions of the spellings of "halvah"
I came across Stefan's candy-msg from 1998 when spelling it "halwa":
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/candy-msg.html
which has a long discussion on this calling it a "candy" - dag gone
Stefan has an answer for everything - does that mean that Gitlitz and I
are wrong in our attempt to label this as a type of turron/nougat or
marzipan? Don't forget I have this Spanish "ajonjoli, jonjoi?, _turron
de alegria_", Eng. sesame candy, which is obviously is translated as a
type of nougat in Spanish and contains the same ingredients as some
recipes for halvah.
Going back to the basics of turron, it was originally almonds boiled
in honey to coagulate which Perry calls /mu'aqqad. /Three recipes are
found in _Anon Andalus_ which is online. From here we can see various
versions with the addition or changes to other nuts and/or sesame seeds,
eggs and flour etc.
Now marzipan in Spanish is also called "turron blanco" (white
nougats) consisting of ground almonds and syrup, sometimes eggs were
added and that was or are some recipes flavored with rosewater or
cinnamon and several variations found online. Nola has a few online
thanks to Lady Brighid.
I wonder if Gitlitz and I are both right - I for calling halvah a
type of nougat and he for calling it marzipan? Could I label marzipan as
a type of nougat? What do you think???
Suey
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:17:02 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Halvah marzipan or nougat?
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
On Oct 21, 2007, at 5:57 PM, Suey wrote:
> I wonder if Gitlitz and I are both right - I for calling halvah a
> type of nougat and he for calling it marzipan? Could I label
> marzipan as a type of nougat? What do you think???
Considering where Europeans first got both almonds and sugar, it
seems likely there are some cultural connections. However, I think
one clear difference between the whole torrone/nougat/praline
spectrum is that they are, as far as I know, always made with cooked
sugar (yes?). Marzipan, unless you count the modern industrial
product, generally is not a cooked product.
I suspect you can build a stronger case for a connection between
torrone or nougat and some Middle Eastern or Indian original, which
may or may not belong to the general family of hulwah-like dishes,
than you can for torrone and marzipan being directly related.
It sounds like there's a little equivocation that may be occurring
here that may not be fully supported by the facts as we know them...
it might be easier to look for characteristics and clearly identify
separate items before worrying about placing them into categories.
Adamantius
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:31:21 -0700
From: David Friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Halvah marzipan or nougat?
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
> There are quite a few Islamic hulwah recipes in sources such as Kitab
> al Tabikh, which I seem to recall is somewhat older than the 15th
> century --
...
> Adamantius
"Kitab al tabikh" means, roughly speaking, "cookbook." If you are
thinking of the one by al-Warraq, it's tenth century, but I don't
know if it has any hulwa in it, although it's likely enough. If you
mean the one by al-Baghdadi, it's 13th c. and has hulwa recipes in it.
As best I understand it, the word means, roughly, "sweets," and
refers to a category of dishes. The one I do is a "beat sugar syrup
into beaten egg white to make natif, use that as a binder for nuts"
version.
--
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:39:39 -0700
From: Lilinah <lilinah at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Halvah marzipan or nougat?
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
The problem is that halwa just means "sweet (dish)". The term does
not indicate a specific dish.
I've had halwa made of semolina cooked with water and honey. It was
like a very sweet thick porridge while hot, and set up into something
fairly stiff (like polenta) when cooled and could be cut into pieces.
There's no set ingredient for halwa except sugar or honey, so there
are almost infinite possibilities for combinations.
--
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita
<the end>