SC - chicken on string

[Lisa Sawyer]

Terry Nutter wrote:

> Someone whose account identifies him/her as Michael Macchione asks:
> 
> >Note:  Is brown sugar period???  If so, then I think it would be more
> >appropriate than white sugar.
> 
> Some sugars called brown are period, although I don't know how closely
> they resemble modern ones.  However, period recipes almost never call
> for them; another example, I suspect, of preference for more over less
> processed goods as more suited to refined persons.

There are a few recipes calling for sugar which begin with a detailed
process of refining the sugar, generally by boiling as a heavy syrup,
clarifying with egg whites (as for consomme) and then either using as
syrup or by further cooking it to a sort of candy. My impression is 
that sugar generally would have been preferred as white as possible, but
whether or not medieval clarified sugar ever really resembled modern
granulated sugar in color, I couldn't say. I have been experimenting a
bit with Mexican sugar in the form of a sort of pig ingot, called a
panella dolce. It's a loaf of brown sugar, made more or less by boiling
sugar cane sap into a thick brown syrup, and poured into a  mold to
solidify.

The problem with modern brown sugar is that it is almost always made by
mixing a small percentage of molasses into white sugar. I am put in mind
of an old Alan King routine which included the premise that blackstrap
molasses is a health food, derived as a byproduct of sugar refinement,
the joke being King's deduction that the only thing that blackstrap
molasses OR raw sugar contain that isn't in processed white sugar is
dirt. An interesting, if flawed argument, but worth a small chuckle
nonetheless. 
> 
> So I tend, unless the recipe specifies otherwise, to use white.

There are several grades of sugars, processed to varying degrees,
available in health food stores. One is called "Sugar in the Raw", and
another item, popular in the U.K., is Demarara sugar. These might make
nice compromises between modern granulated sugar, period sugar, and
modern brown sugar.


Adamantius
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================