cookies-msg – 11/13/07
Period cookies. Recipes.
NOTE: See also the files: desserts-msg, candy-msg, gingerbread-msg, sugar-msg, chocolate-msg, Sugarplums-art, sotelties-msg, 14C-Sweets-art, Digby-Cakes-art, Digby-Cakes-msg, lebkuchen-msg.
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From: David Schroeder <ds4p+ at andrew.cmu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Welsh cookie recipe
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 22:02:00 -0400
Organization: Doctoral student, Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Greetings, friends!
A number of people have asked for the recipe for Welsh cookies.
What follows is my grandmother's version. Except for the baking
soda (which isn't even really necessary) they're very much like
Digbie's Fine Cakes. Digbie's cakes were baked, but the Welsh
tended to cook _lots_ of things on soapstone griddles, so
preparing the same recipe on the griddle rather than in
the oven seems like a reasonable adaptation.
The cookies are amazingly useful -- they're good for breakfast,
lunch, dessert after dinner, and midnight snacks. They also
tend to help "keep a body regular" given all the rush of Pennsic.
I made my quadruple batch in a deep rectangular 18 quart transparent
Rubbermaid plastic storage bin that I bought at KMart for three bucks.
It took about four hours to cook up 300-plus cookies. A double batch
is more practical for first-timers. Be generous with the flour when
it's time to roll out the dough. Chilling it helps a bit, too.
I tend to have a heavy hand with the nutmeg and use half butter/half
margarine. Single batches aren't worth it. You'll eat them all on
the _way_ to Pennsic, if they last even _that_ long. Enjoy!
BERTRAM'S GRANDMOTHER'S WELSH COOKIES
5 cups of flour
1-3/4 cups sugar
1-1/2 tsp. nutmeg
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 cup softened margarine or butter
3 beaten eggs
*1/2 cup milk (add to eggs to make 1 cup)
16 oz. dried currants
Preheat your electric skillet or griddle to 350* and lightly grease
non-teflon surfaces with shortening. Sift the dry ingredients on
the left, above, into a large mixing bowl. Work softened margarine
or butter into the dry ingredients with your fingers or a pastry
blender until well distributed. Beat the eggs and add enough milk
to the egg mixture to make 1-cup. Pour the liquid into a well in
the dry ingredients and stir until blended. Fold in the dried
currants and mix thoroughly. If the batter is too sticky you
may need to add extra flour at this point. (It should feel
almost like pie crust.)
Roll out a portion of the dough until it's about a 1/4" thick
on a lightly floured surface and cut out circular cookies with
a cookie cutter or water glass. Lift cookies from the surface
with a pancake turner and fry them on the griddle until they
are light brown on both sides. Put finished cookies on
a rack until cool.
Makes between six and seven dozen cookies
and takes just over an hour.
These cookies are very similar to the period recipe for
Digbie's Fine Cakes. Except for the baking powder as a
leavening agent all the ingredients would have been easily
available in England and Wales in the 16th century. A period
substitute such as beer could be used instead of baking powder,
or the ingredient could be left out entirely without changing
the taste of the cookies.
Happy eating! -- Bertram
From: Melissa Hicks <meliora at macquarie.matra.com.au>
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 1997 14:04:06 +1000
Subject: SC -Riley, responding to and recipes (long)
Elaina wrote:
do the cookies use baking powder or baking soda? if so, they are right
out! if they use only leavening from highly beaten eggs, like an
Elizabethan 'biscuit bread' then they may be okay. another alternative
might be Digby's "Excellent Small Cakes" - although they are 17th century.
I can post the recipe if you would like it.
Yes, I would like to see Dgby's recipe (if you don't mind or you haven't
already posted it, I'm only 50 messages behind). As to your question, the
recipes as I know them are as follows. This is all of the information I have.
Almond Cookies
1 cup ground almonds
1 cup flour or more
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup rosewater
1/2 teaspoon ground anise seeds
1/2 teaspoon salt
Almond oil and water
Moisten the ground almonds with the rosewater and a little water to make a
soft paste. Add sugar, salt, anise, and 1 tablespoon of almond oil and mix
well. Stir in enough flour to make a paste which is stiff enough to flatten
on a floured surface, but not too dry. Cut into shapes with cookie cutters,
prick with a skewer, and baked in an oiled tin in a moderate oven for about
twenty minutes, until golden and cooked through.
Raspberry Cream
1 pint (600 ml) fresh heavy cream
3 whites of egg
2 blades mace
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel (without pith)
2 oz. (60 g) white sugar
1 lb. (550 g) raspberries
Melt the sugar and raspberries together on a very low heat. Strain through
a fine sieve into a bowl and let it cool. Meanwhile bring the cream up to
the boil, then take it off the heat. Add, very carefully, the egg whites
beaten with a little cold crean and stir gently until the custard thickens -
putting the pan back on the heat from time to time to avoid cooling too
soon. Put it one side and let it cool, then stir in the raspberry juice.
Mix together thoroughly to get an even pink colour, or swirl the juice in
with the minimum of stirring to created a marbled effect.
Meliora
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 21:00:31 -0400
From: Nick Sasso <grizly at mindspring.com>
Subject: SC - Cookies and St. Francis
I recently procured this recipe from a franciscan list I subscribe to
who claim it to be Francis' favorite cookie. My problem is that the
sender had a photocopy of a photocopy of some page out of some book.
The ingredients are most certainly on target, especially if substitute
breadcrumbs for the flour. Alas, no documentation can I find. I've
seen recipes similar (the many gingerbreads we have discussed here, for
example) and see this one as in line. We are looking at about 1120-1150
or so as a general time frame in Umbria, central Italy, near the recent,
tragic earthquakes. (prayers requested from those of that disposition).
My question is whether anyone has seen this recipe or one with the same
title. In lieu, would there be suggestion as to how to make it a
'period' presentation? Would inferencial documentation be adequate?
How much and how close should I come? My personna is a fransican layman
and I REALLY need this recipe to be useful in our setting. (sure it'll
be good at home, too) Any help would be appreciated as I pour over my
tomes and shuttle to the local University book repository for dust mites
and divine intervention on this quest. :o)
---------------------------------
Francis' Favorite Cookie
1 pound blanched almonds
1/2 cup honey
1 tsp cinnamon OR 1 tsp vanilla (OOP)
2 egg whites, lightly beaten
approx. one cup flour
Chop almonds very fine or coarsely grind in a blender. In a bowl
combine the nuts,
honey, cinnamon, and egg whites. Mix thoroughly. Gradually stir in
enough flour
to form a thick paste.
On a lightly floured surface, knead the paste until smooth and stiff.
Roll out to 1/4" thick. Cut into diamond shapes about 2 1/2" long. Place on
lightly buttered and floured baking sheet and let dry 1 to 2 hours.
Bake 250F oven for 20 to 30 minutes until set. Do not let brown.
------------------------------------
niccolo difrancesco
Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 20:57:50 -0500
From: L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt <liontamr at ptd.net>
Subject: SC - Re: sca-cooks V1 #327
>On Fri, 3 Oct 1997, Christi Redeker wrote:
>> How period are cookies? Other than shortbread and gingerbread, which
>> we have already discussed. What are some other types of cookies, or
>> sweetbread type items that would make good gifts for the holidays?
>
>Unfortunately, cookies, as such, are not even close to period. They
>require the use of baking powder or baking soda - which is 19th century.
>
>You can to various sweet yeast breads. If you go slightly out of period
>to late Elizabethan / Jacobean you have a variety of bisket breads, etc.
>that are much like biscotti. and there's always my favorite from Kenelm
>Digbie - "Excellent Short Cakes" made to the redaction by Mistress Johanna
>of Griffenhurst.
>
>elaina
Whoa Nelly! Stop the train and tip the porter! What about Jumballs? What
about Macaroons (almond). What about Diet Bread (really a fruity biscotti)?
What about Bisket Bread, a pre-curser of modern english biscuits or biscotti
(ie: cookies)?
These all use baking powder today, but existed in period in perfectly
recognisable forms:
From Huswife's Jewel, 1596 pg. 17
To make Fine Cakes.
Take fine flowre and good Damaske water you must have no other liqeur but
that, then take sweet butter, two or three yolkes of eggs and a good
quantity of Suger, and a few cloves, and mace, as your Cookes mouth shall
serve him, and a lyttle saffron, and a little Gods good about a spoonful if
you put in too much they shall arise, cutte them in squares lyke unto
trenchers, and pricke them well, and let your oven be well swept and lay
them uppon papers and so set them into the oven. Do not burne them if they
be three or foure days olde they bee the better.
This is clearly a square short-cookie enriched with egg yolks and spices,
baked on parchment.
To make fine bisket bread. page 19
Take a pound of fine flower, and a pound of sugar, and mingle it together, a
quarter of a pound of Annis-seeded, foure eggs, two or three spoonfuls of
Rosewater put all these into an earthen panne. And, with a slyce of Wood
beate it the space of two houres, then fill your moulds half full: your
mouldes must be of Tinne, and then lette it into the oven your oven, being
so whot [hot] at it were for cheat bread, and let it stande one houre and an
halfe: you must annoint your moulds with butter before you put in your
stuffe, and when you will occupie of it, slice it thinne and drie it in the
oven, your oven beeing no whot-ter [hotter] than you may abide your hand in
the bottome.
Although the directions are out of order, this is clearly a recipe for an
Anise Seed Biscotti-type confection that gets a drying in the oven, just as
modern biscotti does. An alternative interpretation would be that they are
cut so thin before the drying that they are like modern english tea biscuits
(ie: fine digestive biscuits).
No offense, my Lady Eleana, But I do love my cookies. As they say, there is
nothing new in this world. Perhaps the word Cooky had not been invented yet,
but they did have small cakes and pastries, which would definately qualify
as cookies by today's standards. 1596 is smack in period to me.
Aoife
Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 12:05:20 -0500
From: L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt <liontamr at ptd.net>
Subject: SC - Re: sca-cooks V1 #326
>Francis' Favorite Cookie
>
>1 pound blanched almonds
>1/2 cup honey
<snip>
>Bake 250F oven for 20 to 30 minutes until set. Do not let brown.
>
>niccolo difrancesco
This bears a striking resemblance to macaroons, ratafia cakes, and almond
wreaths, which hail from england/france, italy, and russia respectively.
They all seem to have the same ingredients. I recall (quick, someone, hand
me my brain) that there is a recipe for mackrons or some such spelling in a
14th century English cookbook. I'll try to rack those brains a little harder
and come up with a name. And me a librarian. Sheesh. The Russian version is
quite nummy and is from Elena Molokhovet's Gift to Young Housewives (1700s).
She's got a couple of them for similar cakes.
A hint, since I made these and they were *devoured* while still too hot to
eat in the wreath form: do not chop the almonds too finely. Chunky almonds
make for a lovely, nut brown cookie. Baked marzipan would be a good guess
here, too, i suppose, but i loved the crunchy type. I lightly chopped
slivered almonds. The results were astounding. You are supposed to use a
cookie press (which obviously won't work with chunky almonds), but I don't
own one. I simply blopped a teaspoon of the stuff on the baking sheet and
flattened, then made the hole with my finger. They like to stick to the
baking sheet, though. Mrs. Molokhovets reccomended parchment, I believe, or
rice paper. I used Pam, and had to remove from the tray a tad too early for
shape-holding. They look lovely as a wreath garnished with a bit of glace
cherry (red and green) for the holidays. I loaned that recipe out and never
got it back. Now I have to run out and try yours!
I do own an English version of the Italian recipe (Ratafia). Not from a
period source. Let me know if you'd like it anyway.
These are my favorite type of cookie. I had completely forgotten them until
you brought it up. Guess I'll have to start making stuff for x-mas. Just as
an excuse to nibble, you know.
Thanks for the blast from the past.
Aoife
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 09:26:28 -0500
From: L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt <liontamr at ptd.net>
Subject: SC - Re: ALMOND COOKIES
A few more Almond Cookie recipes from Lady Castlehill's Receipt Book
(1700s, OOP), and Martha Washington (Possibly Period), and Two Anglo-Norman
Culinary Collections, as quoted in Pleyn Delit.
To Make Ginger Bread (Lady Castlehill's Receipt Book, copyright Hamish
Whyte, 1976, Melendinar Press, Glasgow, Scotland, a copy of a private ms.
held by the Mitchell Library, Glasgow). To the best of my knowledge, this is
the second cookbook Scotland produced, but it was never publicly printed
until this century.
Take a pound of Almonds blnach them & beate them very fine with a little
Rosewater then put themin a Dish on a Chafing Dish of coales to drye them.
For Cinnamon Bread beate them with cinnamon water; if for Ginger Bread then
with faire water. Then when your almonds are one the Fire mingle with Sugar
to your taste so with Cinnamon or Ginger. The spices must be beaten &
searced very fine.
When it is of a thickness to worke it take it off the Fire & so worke it
and Roll with a Rolling Pin and print it on your Moulds: & drye it before
the Fire. You must worke it with a little Gum Dragon wateres with Cinnamon
water & when you mould it up put three quarters and 2 ouces of Sugar searced
to a pound of Almonds.
To Make Marchpane Cakes (Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, ed. Karen
Hess, Columbia University Press, NY 1980)
Take your Marchpane paste & roule it out about a quarter of an intch thick,
& cut themin little round cakes about ye bigness of a table man. cut them
some 3 & some 4 square, & some like a hart, & what other fashion you pleas.
then lay themon papers or pie plates & dry them. Then take ye white of an
egg, & beat searced [sugar] into it till it is something thick, & Ise ye one
side of themover with it, & drye them againe in a warme oven for a quarter
of an houre, then turne them & ice ye other side of them in ye like manner,
& they will be very white with smooth sides. & soe keep them for yr use.
In addition to these, Pleyn Delit (edition 2, Hieatt, et al, University of
Totonto Press, 1996) has a recipe called Emeles, which are fried almond cakes:
From "Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections", Speculum 61 (1986) The
earliest 'English recipes' (in French) from mss Add 32085 (A-NA) and Royal
12 C.xii RF Jones, Ed.
Emeles
Take sugar, salt, almonds, and white bread, and grind them together; then
add eggs; then grease or oil or butter, and take a spoon and brush them, and
then remove them and sprinkle them with dry sugar.
<<redaction left out so you can have your own fun with it!>>
Aoife
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 22:15:30 +1100
From: Meliora & Drake <meliora at macquarie.matra.com.au>
Subject: SC - Almond Cookies
At 12:46 PM 16/02/98 -0800, Rebecca Tants wrote:
>The only completely non-period item (we'll skip lemonade for the moment)
>was the Almond Cookies. They were AWESOME, but came from a nice Italian
>cookbook I have and can't be dated to prior then the turn of the century.
>They were, however, inexpensive, yummy and a good solution as I got
>frantic. (Recipe for those is 11oz almonds, 1c plus 3T sugar, 1/2 t
>vanilla, 4 egg whites, pinch of salt. Beat egg whites and salt to stiff
>peaks, process almonds and sugar together. Fold almonds/sugar and vanilla
>into the egg whites, bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes on greased cookie
>sheet. YUMYUMYUMYUMYUM)
Hi Rebecca,
There is a similar recipe in Elinor Fettiplace (1602 - so is definately
renaissance not medieval) which follows:
To make french biskit bread
Take one pound of almonds blanched in cold water, beat them verie smale, put
in some rose water to them, in the beating, wherein some musk hath lien,
then take one pound of sugar beaten and searced and beat with your almonds,
then take the whites or fowre eggs beten and put to the sugar & almonds,
then beat it well together, then heat the oven as hot as you doe for other
biskit bread, then take a paper & strawe some sugar upon it, & lay two
spoonfulls of the stuf in a place, then lay the paper upon a board full of
holes, & put them into the oven as fast as you can & so bake them, when they
begin to looke somewhat browne they are baked inough. Elinor Fettiplace
p224.
Moden recipe by Spurling:
100g ground almonds
100g icing sugar
1 beaten egg white
little rosewater
Spurling tends to waffle a lot so the following is paraphrased:
Mix all ingredients together and bake as one large biscuit (the size of the
palm of your hand) in 180oC or 350oF oven for 35-45 mins.
Mel's Notes: I tend to make smaller maccaroons. A double-sized batch
normally makes 20 biscuits. I find that if I wet my hands with water or
rosewater while rolling the mixture into little balls, it gives the finished
macaroons a smooth shell.
I first thought to make this recipe because I does not contain flour and my
mother has Coeliac's Disease (cannot ingest gluten). At the couple of
feasts I provided them at, they were a bit hit but are rather expensive to
make. My mundane work still asks me to make these whenever we celebrate a
birthday though !!
Spurling, Hilary (1986) Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, Penguin Books,
Available on order through any book store in paperback for around $Aust
16.00.
Hope this helps you
Meliora de Curci<