SC - SC-SHORT BREAD AS PERIOD
david friedman
ddfr at best.com
Tue Dec 9 00:47:32 PST 1997
At 8:50 PM -0600 12/8/97, jeffrey s heilveil wrote:
>Whilst planning this dessert feast, I stumbled across a seemingly period
>shortbread. The deal is that it was called "fine cakes." The source is
>taming of the Shrew (1594)
>To make fine cakes Take a quantity of fine wheate Flower, and put it in
>an earthen pot. Stop it close and set it in an Oven, and bake it as long
>as you would a pasty of Venison, and when it baked it will be full of
>clods. Then searce your flower through a fine sercer. Then take clouted
>Creame or sweet butter, but Creame is best: then take sugar, cloves, mace,
>saffron and yolks of eggs, so much as wil seeme to season your flower.
>Then put these things into the Creame, temper all together. Then put
>thereto your flower. So make your cakes. The paste will be very short;
>therefore make them very little. Lay paper under them. (John Partridge
>[The widowes Treasure] in Lorna J. Sass's "To the Queen's Taste)
>
>Her redaction is as follows:
>6oz butter (room temp)
>.5 cup sugar
>1 egg yolk, beaten
>1.75 C sifted flour
>.5 tsp cloves
>1/8 tsp mace
>pinch ground saffron
>Egg white
>
>1. In a bowl, cream butter. Add sugar and beat until fluffy.
>2. Add egg yolk and beat until thoroughly blended.
>3. In another bowl, combine sifted flour and spices, stirring to
>distribute evenly.
Not what the original says.
>4. Sift dry ingredients into bowl containing butter-and-sugar mixture.
>Combine by stirring or with hands.
>5. Press mixture into a 9-in square baking pan.
>6. Brush top lightly with egg white.
Not in the original.
I don't think the redaction works out to the same proportions as pound
cake. And the recipe doesn't sound much like pound cake--note that cream is
considered superior to butter, and the sugar is in the list with the
spices, which doesn't suggest that it present in a quantity similar to the
flour (not that its impossible, merely mildy contraindicated).
David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
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