p-cold-treats-msg

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p-cold-treats-msg - 5/13/08

Period cold or frozen foods eaten cold.

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Stefan at florilegium.org

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From: "Elise Fleming" <alysk at ix.netcom.com>

To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:04:14 -0500

Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: Period Ices/Sorbets/Cold Treats?

For any documentation (for or against) I would strongly recommend

reading Elizabeth David's _Harvest of the Cold Months_, Viking

Press. If I read the material correctly, she negates the contention

that what we know of as sorbets existed within "our period". She

admits to having spread some stories about the Medicis and ices

(before she knew better). "Since the story (my note: that Catherine

de Medici brought ices and frozen sherbets to France) is so widely

believed in Italy...and is one I was myself once gullible enough to

believe and repeat, it is necessary to say here that although the

source of the story remains unidentified, it is plain that its

origins are in the nineteenth century, the likelihood being that it

arose out of a linguistic confusion such as the one I have described

on p. 61..."

If I read her correctly, you could serve chilled wine, or wine with

crushed ice in it, but not a sweetened milk product, or ice with a

flavoring other than wine poured over it. However, the best bet, if

one wants to be as "authentic" as possible, would be to request the

book from a library and have an interesting "read".

Alys Katharine

From: "Elise Fleming" <alysk at ix.netcom.com>

To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:25:45 -0500

Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: Period Ices/Sorbets/Cold Treats?

Magdalena vander Brugghe wrote:

>I have read, and would *love* to get this confirmed, that the Italians

>would drag ice down from the mountains, chip it and serve it on the

>street with fruit juice. Basically a period Sno-Kone. Does anyone here

>know if there is any truth to this?

I'm still scanning Elizabeth David's book and can't find any

evidence that what we know of as snow cones, sorbets,

sherbets...existed within period. It seems as if they originate as

novelties after 1660 or thereabouts. There were ingenious ways to

cool _wine_. And in my earlier post I had mentioned ice. David

says that it was snow, not ice. The 1688 English-Italian dictionary

that David quotes gives as a meaning for "sorbetto" 'any kind of

supping broth; also a kind of drink used in Turkey, made of Lemonds,

Sugar, Corrans, Almonds, Musk and Amber very delicated called in

England Sherbet.' " David continues... "Torriano (the dictionary

editor) made no reference to frozen sherbets. He didn't, however,

give an entry for 'gelato' as 'frozen, congealed, gellied'. This

too was an entry new since 1611, and although it does not yet appear

as a noun it is not without relevance to the story of ices, because

when translating seventeenth-century and indeed earlier culinary

Italian IT IS ALL TOO EASY TO FALL INTO THE TRAP OF SUPPOSING THAT

'GELATO' MEANT SOMETHING FROZEN OR CONGEALED WHEN IN FACT IT MEANT

'GELLIED'." (Caps are for emphasis, not shouting.)

Fruit encased in ice as part of a dessert display _was_ done. But

this isn't fruit juice poured over ice, or frozen in cream...

Alys Katharine, getting hungry for ice cream

From: "Elise Fleming" <alysk at ix.netcom.com>

To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:40:12 -0500

Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: Period Ices/Sorbets/Cold Treats?

I wrote:

>Fruit encased in ice as part of a dessert display _was_ done. But

>this isn't fruit juice poured over ice, or frozen in cream...

And Olwen asked:

>Can you give some examples of this fruit encased in ice and some

>documetation please.

Short of re-reading the whole book (I may just take it to Pennsic

with me!), I think now even the fruit encased in ice was OOP for the

purists. She says re a 1625 meal, "it is difficult to tell if

Frugoli meant fruit sent in ice, or preserved and sugar-frosted

fruit in pyramids, or simply fresh fruit with snow or crushed ice.

Here indeed is a fair example of the linguistic trap which has been

responsible for many improbable legentds concerning the early

history of ices..."

She mentions (p. 61) that Leonardo (da Vinci, I suppose) had

designed an ice mountain. Frugoli who lived in period, wrote about

meals covering the years 1618-1631. (Gee! Someone can do library

research!) The book is _Practica e Scalcaria_ with detailed lists

of the dishes served at 80 different meals. By the 1700s you can

find dessert tables with pictures of iced fruit. Massialot (1734)

has a number of them.

So, my earlier statement may well have been in error; that the

ice-encased fruit may well have started just past 1620. I still

recommend reading Elizabeth David's book. I tend to read fast, and

I will sometimes miss things that others will pick up.

Alys Katharine

From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>

To: "'sca-cooks at ansteorra.org'" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Subject: RE: [Sca-cooks] Re: Period Ices/Sorbets/Cold Treats?

Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:55:20 -0500

Gelato is attributed to Bernardo Buontalenti, an architect and hydraulic

engineer performing services similar to those provided by Leonardo da Vinci

50 years earlier. I haven't found any pointers to primary or solid

secondary sources, but the scope of the gentleman's works make the

attribution a distinct possibility. The date given for his preparation of

gelato is 1565, which is during the period when Catherine de' Medici really

was altering French cusine.

However, the earliest recipe I've found (without having read David's work)

is from 1750.

"Take 12 pints* of cream and 4 pints of milk and let it boil with 3/4 pound

of sugar. Take 1/2 pound of chocolate that you melt in a pan of water set in

the fire, which you stir with a spatula or wooden spoon, and let it simmer

just to the point of boiling. You must add three egg yolks that you have

mixed well with the milk and cream. Pour it all into the pan with the

chocolate and mix together. Then you must place it in a terrine until you

are ready to place it on ice."

Menon, La science du maitre d' hotel.

Bear

From: Druighad at aol.com

Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 09:37:13 EDT

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Period Ices/Sorbets/Cold Treats?

To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

alysk at ix.netcom.com writes:

But... prior to 1600? I sure would trust Elizabeth David's

scholarship over a culinary magazine, for example. Or over the

beliefs of the Ice Cream Council. Last Sunday our local newspaper

printed an "authoritative" timeline. It states:

1200: Flavored water ices were known in Asia for centuries. Venetian

adventurer Marco Polo brings back to Italy recipes for making these

treats.

1600: Early colonists bring ice cream recipes to America.

Their sources include Dreyers web site, an ice cream magazine,

International Dairy Foods Association, etc. That 1600 assertion

that colonists bring recipes starts warning sirens in my head. I

have not seen any references to ice cream prior to 1600 and you

can't tell me that the colonists just happened to have some

confectioner's secret recipe. Elizabeth David makes frequent

references to words that look like modern words but had a different

meaning in an earlier time. Specifically, the Turkish sorbet.

Anyone else out there up to reading this book? Finnebhir?? >>

I'll be up to reading some new material after Pennsic, when I actually have

some time on my hands again, but I still can't find that reference....

Just found it. What is actually being discussed is the process for making

frozen desserts and it is from " the Magia Naturalis" 1589, Giambattista

della Porta, Italy. A 13th century Arab treatise is also mentioned, but not

named or detailed. Also, the article mentions that "by 1600's, Sicilian ice

cream makers were famous throughout Italy, creating granitas(and such) for

aristocratic households" Some starting points could be other texts that were

quoted from. Not SCA period, but maybe a jumping point to earlier texts?

"A Tour Through Sicily and Malta" Patrick Brydone- 1773

"Picturesque Voyage to Sicily" Jean Houel-1784

"A Tour in Italy and Sicily" L. Simond-1828

Finnebhir

From: "E. Rain" <raghead at liripipe.com>

To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 09:18:26 -0700

Subject: [Sca-cooks] RE: Period Ices/Sorbets/Cold Treats?

Well topically I just came across this while doing some work in the Tacuinum

Sanitatis (14th c. Italian health Handbook).

Here's Luisa Cogliati Arano's translation from the Liege MS:

Nix et glacies: Snow and Ice

Nature: cold and Humid in the second degree. Optimum: that which has been

formed from sweet water. Usefulness: Improves the digestion. Dangers:

causes coughing. Neutralization of the dangers: By drinking it moderately.

the illustration is very vague & might be an iced over pond?

And here is Judith Spencer's Translation from the Vienna (Cerruti) MS:

Snow and Ice: Nix et Glacies

The nature of both these things is very cold and extremely moist; hence both

are suited only to those with ardent temperaments and only in the summer and

in southern regions. Snow and ice, being things of winter and the north,

very rarely have any use to which they can be put unless one has the costly

opportunity of having them brought from their place of origin with all the

ingenious devices required. They help to improve the digestion, if they

originate from good, fresh water. They cause cesicationem to the joints and

also paralysis; they also cause coughing, for which reasons one should take

them only after drinking a moderate quantity of wine.

the illustration shows a man leading a mule next to a pit with what I assume

is snow in it.

Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 09:27:26 -0700

From: Susan Fox-Davis <selene at earthlink.net>

To: sca-cooks <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Subject: [Sca-cooks] Wine ice

Just because people want to know... Here is what I can find so far on

documentable SCA-period ice goodies.

Magia Naturalis by Giambattista della Porta [1535-1615]

1658 English Translation

http://members.tscnet.com/pages/omard1/jportat5.html

Book XIV, "Of Cookery"

Chapter XI, "Of Diverse Confections of Wines."

http://members.tscnet.com/pages/omard1/jportac14.html

"Wine may freeze in Glasses."

Because of the chief thing desired at feasts, is that Wine cold as ice

may be drunk, especially in summer. I will teach you how Wine shall

presently, not only grow cold, but freeze, that you cannot drink it but

by sucking, and drawing in of your breath. Put Wine into a Vial, and

put a little water to it, that it may turn to ice the sooner. Then cast

snow into a wooden vessel, and strew into it Saltpeter, powdered, or the

cleansing of Saltpeter, called vulgarly Salazzo. Turn the Vial in the

snow, and it will congeal by degrees. Some keep snow all the summer.

Let water boil in Brass kettles, and pour it into great bowls, and set

them in the frosty cold air. It will freeze, and grow harder than snow,

and last longer.

From: Charlene Charette <charlene at flash.net>

Newsgroups: rec.org.sca

Subject: ice and ices

Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2001 07:50:29 GMT

Not too long ago there was a discussion here on ices and ice cream. I

was doing some non-SCA research on ice cream and came across the

following book:

David, Elizabeth; edited by Jill Norman; Harvest of the Cold Months:

The Social History of Ice and Ices; 1994; UK edition Butler & Tanner, US

edition Viking Penguin; ISBN 0-670-85975-4

The book is a series of essays covering from the earliest records to the

20th century and includes worldwide info (rather than just western

Europe). Because of its essay format, there is some repetition among

chapters. There's extensive footnotes and the author appears to have

done some pretty thorough research. She debunks several myths --

providing evidence and speculating on the origins of the myth (the two

biggies being Catherine de Medici introduced ices to France and Marco

Polo learned how to make ices from Kubla Khan). She goes into some

detail on the etymology of various words, in different languages, such

as "ice", "ices", "sorbet", etc. and discusses linguistic traps

historian have encountered. One gets the impression she had quite lost

her patience with 19th century historians.

--Perronnelle

Quotes from the book:

----

Buontalenti's snow monopoly lasted until his death in June 1608, and

somehow, no doubt via familiar linguistic misinterpretation of later

generations, his name, already associated by his contemporaries with the

much-increased popular use of ice and snow in Florence, subsequently

became attached to the invention of ices, it being a curious truth that

food historians, of whatever nationality, rarely trouble to distinguish

between ice and ices. (In English the usage of the nineteenth century

there was a common lack of distinction between ice for cooling and ice

meaning ices as refreshments.)

----

RE: Torriano's 1688 update of Florio's English-Italian dictionary

He did, however, give an entry for gelato as 'frozen, congealed,

gellied'. This too was an entry new since 1611, and although it does

not yet appear as a noun it is not without relevance to the story of

ices, because when translating seventeenth-century and indeed earlier

culinary Italian it is all too easy to fall into the trap of supposing

that gelato meant something frozen or congealed when in fact it meant

'gellied'.

----

Ice-diluted and ice-cooled sherbets do not, however, equate with frozen

sherbets any more than putting a few pieces of ice into a glass of

drinking water turns that water into ice, or than the milk half-frozen

in the bottle on your doorstep in an icy morning has become ice-cream.

It should not be necessary to state truths so crashingly obvious, but it

is surprising to discover the ease with which such basic confusions took

root, and in the minds of an extraordinary number of people grew into a

belief in this or that fairytale....

----

This time it was the feast of Pentecost and there were two fountains and

two monti di frutti diversi diacciate, two mountains of divers iced

fruit, by which it is difficult to tell if Frugoli meant fruit set in

ice, or preserved and sugar-frosted fruit in pyramids, or siimply fresh

fruit with snow or crushed ice. Here indeed is a fair example of the

kind of linguistic trap which has been responsible for many improbable

legends concerning the early history of ices. It has been all too easy,

to later generations, to interpret sixteenth- and seventeenth-century

Italian and French allusions to plain ice, iced drinks, glazed creams,

and sugar icing and frosting as meaning ices and ice-creams.

----

Sherbets came into Europe, from Turkey, Persia and India, as sweet,

syrupy, fruit- and flower-scented essences, pastes and powders. Some

were freshly prepared from fruit juice, sugar and spices, some were made

for storage in boxes and jars, and were exported. They were drunk

diluted with cold water and frequently also with ice or snow, or were

chilled by indirect contact, but as countless travellers from the

thirteenth century onwards have testified, they were not ever -- and

indeed still are not -- frozen. Nor were Italian sorbetti, French

sorbets or English sherbets at first frozen or even necessarily iced,

the term sherbets and its European equivalents being another of those

linguistic traps into which unwary nineteenth- and twentieth-century

gastronomic historians have tumbled, assuming that right from the first

a sherbet or sorbet was the part-frozen, grainy refreshment, neither

quite solid nor quite liquid, which it eventually became and which until

as recently as the 1950s it remained. Except, that is, in the United

States, where the term sherbet has for so long implied a frozen

milk-based or fruit juice confection that I have been very conscious

during my researches that unless some explanation such as I have no

supplied were forthcoming, American readers would be baffled by

allusions to sherbets as differentiated from frozen sherbets. That

nobody need go further than Webster to discover that 'a water ice to

which milk, egg-white or gelatin is added before freezing' is not the

primary but only the third meaning of sherbet is less to the point than

the prevailing American belief that a sherbet is a frozen dessert, not

an iced drink. When I questioned James Bear on the subject, he was

quite emphatic that in the United States a sherbet indicates some kind

of ice-cream or frozen confection. [And thus her opinion of the Yanks.

-- P]

Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 10:00:59 -0400

From: Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Camp cooking ideas

To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

We tried making ice cream one year in the War, but we didn't have

the ice cream bowl sufficiently cold. This is of course the problem

that they encountered in the Renaissance when working with ices.

It's all related to making things cold. See Elizabeth David's Harvest

of the Cold Months for the information. I'm afraid I've never purchased

the old fashioned ice cream maker that uses salt and ice.

There are dozens of sorbet recipes including beer sorbet at

http://www.hungrymonster.com/recipe/recipe-search.cfm?

Course_vch=Sorbet&ttl=176

Johnnae

> Yes I have tried to making a wine sherbert, didn't actually freeze but was

> enjoyed by all. Course then again I cheated and used an ice cream machine.

> Never actualy became a sherbert, sort of became a huge slushy, more

> liquid then ice.

> Cealian

> Has anyone tried to freeze something like that with wine? Will

> the wine freeze or just get slushy?

> Ysabeau