suckets-msg - 4/1/02 Spices, fruit or fruit peel in a sugar syrup. NOTE: See also the files: comfits-msg, candy-msg, spices-msg, fruits-msg, candied-peels-msg, Sgr-a-Cnftns-art, Sugarplums-art, sugar-msg. ************************************************************************ 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 ************************************************************************ Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 02:10:09 -0500 From: "Katherine Rowberd (Kirrily Robert)" To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org Subject: [Sca-cooks] green ginger upon sirop Here's a recipe I've been wanting to try for a bit. It's from Plat's "Delightes for Ladies" (1609): 48. To make green ginger upon sirup. Take Ginger one pound: pare it clean: steep it in red wine and vinegar equally mixed: let it stand for XII daies in a close vessell, and every day once or twice stir it up and down: then take of wine one gallon, and of vinegar a pottle: seethe all together to the consumption of a moity or half: then take a pottle of clean clarified honey, or more, and put thereunto, and let them boyle well together: then take halfe an ounce of saffron finely beaten, and put it thereto, with some sugar if you please. I'm pondering a few things related to it, though, before I start. First off, the recipe seems to be giving us two things: a sour ginger pickle thing, and a sweet/sour syrup. Presumably they're meant to be brought together at the end, but how? Secondly, I'm presuming that the ginger available at this time would have been dried. Since whole dried ginger's hard to come by, how could this recipe be adapted for whole fresh ginger? So here's what I'm thinking. My guess is that they would have started with whole, dry ginger, and that the 12 days' soaking in wine and vinegar is mostly to soften it up. Of course it would also impregnate the ginger with the sour flavour. So, perhaps I could settle for just soaking fresh ginger overnight in a similar mixture, which should achieve some of the impregnation of the sour flavour. Then I'd strain what's there and bottle it using the syrup of wine/vinegar/honey/etc, perhaps made a little more tart than necessary since the ginger won't have picked up as much vinegar as it might otherwise have done. Half an ounce of saffron!?!? Yow. I think I might skimp on that a tad. And as for adding sugar, I'm not clear on why one might want to do that, unless it's just that dishes of that period all seem to contain sugar more as a matter of conspicuous consumption than as a necessary sweetener. I'm guessing that the honey probably makes it adequately sweet, but the sugar could be added if you had a really sweet tooth, which I don't; also, see earlier notes on perhaps wanting extra tartness. Anyway, I think this ginger could be a really nice sweet/sour preserve. Yum. Just my favourite sort of thing. -- Lady Katherine Rowberd (mka Kirrily "Skud" Robert) katherine at infotrope.net http://infotrope.net/sca/ Caldrithig, Skraeling Althing, Ealdormere From: "Elise Fleming" To: Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 08:46:44 -0600 Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: green ginger upon sirop Stefan asked: >Yes, just the "dainty" for a party of nobles. The fork was still not >very common in England at this time, as far as I remember. Just how >would you eat this dainty without them? Sounds a bit messy to pick >up with your fingers. Actually the sucket fork was in use by this time but only for the sweets. It appears to have been a either two- or three-pronged affair, often with a spoon on the other end. Two are pictured on the cover of C. Anne Wilson's _Banquetting 'Stuffe'_. The forks, which look like the tiny kind used today for canapes, appear to have been smaller than the forks we know today. Even the one with three tines is depicted smaller than the bowl of the spoon. The fork would have been dipped into the syrup ("wet suckets") to remove the fruit or peel. The spoon could be used to dip out syrup. However, this use of the fork didn't seem to carry over to using forks as we use them for carrying regular food to the mouth. And, I don't know if the fork was merely for extracting the fruit, then placing it on a plate, or for extracting the fruit and placing it directly into the mouth. I would guess the former, but it's only a guess. Alys Katharine From: "Vincent Cuenca" To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 16:35:40 +0000 Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: green ginger upon sirop I think the green ginger in question is a very fresh ginger, i.e. just dug out of the ground. I seem to remember reading somewhere that ginger was grown in England at some point, but it's fuzzy. There is a recipe for green ginger comfit in the "Llibre de totes maneres de confits" that calls for soaking the ginger in an acidic mixture for an entire year. Sheesh! Vicente Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:08:46 -0400 From: Jane Boyko Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Peaches? To: Cooks within the SCA To Preserve Peaches Of your fairest and best coloured peaches, take a pound, and with a wet linnen cloth wipe off the white hoare of them: then perboyle them in halfe a pint of white wine, and a pint and a halfe of running water; and being perboyled, pill off the white skinne of them, and then weigh them : take to your pound of peaches, three quarters of a pound of refined sugar, and dissolve it in a quarter pint of white wine, and boyle it almost to the height of a sirip, and then put in your peaches, and let them boyle in the sirup a quarter of an houre or more, if need should require : and then put them up, and keep them all the year. I like the wine idea and when the Ontario peaches come in I think I will give this a shot. Cheers Marina