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
************************************************************************
NOTICE -
This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.
This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org
I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.
The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors.
Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s).
Thank you,
Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous
Stefan at florilegium.org
************************************************************************
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.