SC - Re: White Gingerbread, Gums Tragacanth and Arabic
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
Sat Jun 21 05:12:13 PDT 1997
Margritte wrote:
>Hmm.. interesting points. I knew that arabic and dragacanth aren't the
>same thing, but I had assumed they were similar in how they acted.
I don't believe they do. A local group, several years ago, did a dish
substituting arabic for the tragacanth and the result was gummier and
more tacky.
>In my defense, I'm very new to historic cooking, and not quite ready
>to do my own redactions.
Oh, please...I hope I didn't sound so crabby that defense is necessary.
I do tend to come off rather dogmatic, but then I teach recalcitrant
teenagers so it's sort of inbred! :-) I use other people's redactions
also, especially to start with. Then I go back and look to see what
differences there might be. (See Cariadoc's comments on bisket bread
proportions.) Lorwin's "Shrewsbury Cakes" was one where I began to
learn that the authors take liberties with the original recipes. In
this one, the original recipe (as for the aforementioned bisket bread)
had you beating the dough for a _long_ time. Lorwin instructs us, with
her rationale, to beat it only a few minutes. Her Shrewsbury cake is
delicious, flaky and light. If one beats it for a long time as the
original says, it is still delicious but hard and more "tough".
>The redaction that I used was straight out of _Dining With William
>Shakespeare_. I also had the gum arabic on hand, but no idea
>where to find the tragacanth even if I had been tempted to try it.
>Could you point me toward a source?
Gum tragacanth is hard to find and rather expensive. The cheapest
source I know of is Penn Herb Co. in Philadelphia. Their toll free
number is 1-800-523-9971. It should be item #630 but I don't know the
current price. It comes in 1 oz, 4 oz. and 1 lb. plus shipping. One
ounce is roughly $2.50; 4 is roughly $7.50 and 1 lb. is around $28. It
is also available from the former Maid of Scandanavia in Minneapolis
but I believe their price is even higher and they only sell in small
quantities.
As far as whether it's actually "gingerbread" or not, I admit that it
is
not bread-based. However, judging from what I've read, it was still
_called_ gingerbread in period.
>Why would commercial almond paste be too sweet? Are we talking about
>almond paste or marzipan here? I used almond paste, and I don't
>believe it had any extra sugar added to it. How did you go about
>making your own?
Oops! You're right...commercial marzipan is the sweet one. There are
a number of ways to make one's own, mostly time-intensive. Having a
food processor helps. I have a file I can send you via private e-mail
if you want. It's basically the same article I sent in to TI a few
years ago. I've found that grinding the almonds in small amounts and
then re-grinding at least twice more makes a smoother paste, but I have
not been able to duplicate modern paste just because their grinders
really do mash down the almonds. I often wonder just how "smooth"
medieval almond paste was compared to what I can get from the
processor. They had plenty of time and lots of muscle power.
Alys Katharine
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