p-cold-treats-msg - 5/13/08 Period cold or frozen foods eaten cold. NOTE: See also the files: dairy-prod-msg, wine-msg, hot-weth-fsts-msg, spiced-wine-msg, fruits-msg, berries-msg, fruit-citrus-msg, fruit-pies-msg, marmalades-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 ************************************************************************ 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 <the end> Edited by Mark S. Harris p-cold-treats-msg 8 of 8