SC - Feast Themes/gingerbread

[Margritte]

>Lady Margritte may grace us with the exact recipe.  She makes a
>WONDERFUL period gingerbread :o)
>
>

Good Gentles All:

	The dark gingerbread (see below) is the one I made for fra nic's
feast. I also entered 2 types of gingerbread in the most recent Kingdom A&S
competition. The documentation appears below. As nic said, the dark
gingerbread is wonderful (if I do say so myself  :-). The fine gingerbread
was a disappointment. I made it several times before I came up with
something edible. I tried both wax paper and foil, and it stuck to both of
them, to the point that I couldn't pull it off. What should I have used
instead? The redaction says "kitchen parchment". What is it?

- -Margritte

The History of Gingerbread

	Modern gingerbread uses flour as a thickener, but in the Middle
Ages, either bread crumbs or ground almonds would have been used.
Gingerbread made with bread crumbs was considered "coarse" gingerbread. The
crumbs were usually mixed with honey and spices, with either sandalwood or
red wine to make the mixture red.
	Gingerbread was one of the most popular confections of the Middle
Ages. It was often sold at fairs, molded into gingerbread men. Likewise, it
was also served at nobles' high tables, carefully sculpted and gilded with
real gold.


White Gingerbread (Fine Gingerbread)

Dining With William Shakespeare gives the following recipe and redaction:

To Make White Gingerbread: Take halfe a pound of marchpaine past, a quarter
of a pound of white Ginger beaten and cerst, halfe a pound of the powder of
refined sugar, beate this to a very fine paste with dragagant steept in
rose-water, then roule it in round cakes and print it with your moulds: dry
them in an oven when the breade is drawne foorth, upon white papers, & when
they be very dry, box them, and keepe them all the year. (From John
Murrell, A Delightfull daily exercise for Ladies and Gentlewomen).

Redaction:
1/2 pound almond paste
2 tbsp rose water
1 tsp gum arabic
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tbsp ground ginger

	Rub the almond paste throught the medium holes of a grater into a
mixing bowl. Put the rose water into a saucer, add the gum arabic, and stir
until the gum disolves. Sift the sugar with the ginger, stir in the
dissolved gum arabic, and mix until well blended. Add this to the almond
paste and work it in quickly but thoroughly.
	Divide the paste into twenty-four pieces. Roll each piece into a
ball, flatten it to 1/4 inch thick, and print a design on the top with one
of the small ceramic or wood molds used for printing individual servings of
butter, or make criss-cross patterns with a fork.
	Cover a cookie sheet with a piece of rice paper or kitchen
parchment and place the cakes on it. Bake at 200=B0 for twenty minutes, then
turn off the heat and let the cakes cool in the oven for fifteen minutes.
Remove the cakes from the paper and finish cooling on a wire grill. Store
in single layers in an airtight container.

	When I made this recipe, I used small linoleum blocks to print
designs in the tops of the cookies. The biggest problem was the gingerbread
sticking to any surface it was cooked on.
	This same book also mentions an ordinary or "coarse" gingerbread,
made from grated bread crumbs with spices, and held together by wine or
clarified honey, although it does not give a recipe.


Dark Gingerbread (Coarse Gingerbread)

The Tudor Kitchen Cookery Book give the following recipe for "Gyngerbrede".
Their source is T. Austin: Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books, 1888.

Take a quart of honey and sethe it and skime it clene; take Safroun, pouder
Pepir and throw theron; take gratyd Brede and make it so chargeant that it
wol be y-lechyd; then take pouder canelle and straw ther-on y-now; then
make it square, lyke as thou wolt leche yt; take when tho lechyst hyt, an
caste Box leves a -bowyn, y-stykyd ther-on, on clowys. An if thou wold have
it Red, colour it with Saunderys y-now.

Redaction from the above book:

1 lb. Clear honey
1 lb. Fresh white bread crumbs
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground black pepper
fresh box leaves and whole cloves to decorate

1. Warm the honey until quite runny (modern honey does not give off a scum
so needs no cleaning). Pour into a large bowl and mix in the breadcrumbs
and spices. It should be very stiff, if not add a few more breadcrumbs. If
you wish to follow the Tudoe example and colour the mixture red, then add a
few drops of red food colouring or powder to thehoney before mixing.
2. Line a shallow rectangular cake tin (or gingerbread tin) with non-stick
paper or foil and press the mixure into it. If it is a little difficult to
do this, then press down with your fingers dipped occasionally in cold
water.
3. Ensure the top is quite level, allow to firm up in the fridge for an
hour or two then turn out onto another sheet of paper and cut into small
squares.
4. Stick two small box leaves into each square with a whole clove in the
centre.
5. For a better effect, divide the mixture in two and colour one half red,
then make two lots of squares and arrange them alternately on a large
plate, chequerboard style.

	The above is the recipe I used as a basis for my gingerbread with a
few modi-fications. First of all, I added the spices to the honey before I
added the breadcrumbs, so that the spices would be well-distributed. I used
food color to redden it just slightly. To flatten the mixture, I rolled it
with a rolling pin between two pieces of wax paper.
	I also found out something very important about this recipe-- The
first time I rolled out the mixture, it never set properly because it was
too moist. Several days later, I gave up and plopped the whole mess back
into the sauce pan, re-heated it, and added more breadcrumbs. It worked
like a charm.

Another similar recipe comes from Curye on Inglyessch, p. 154 (Goud Kokery
no. 18), as quoted on Cariadoc's web page:
(http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/miscellany.html)

To make gingerbrede. Take goode honey & clarifie it on the fere, & take
fayre paynemayn or wastel brede & grate it, & caste it into the boylenge
hony, & stere it well togyder faste with a sklyse that it bren not to the
vessell. & thanne take it doun and put therin ginger, longe pepper &
saundres, & tempere it vp with thin handes; & than put hem to a flatt
boyste & strawe theron suger, & pick therin clowes rounde aboute by the
egge and in the mydes, yf it plece you, &c.

One final recipe for coarse gingerbread comes from Gervase Markham's "The
English
Hous-wife" (1615), as quoted in To The Queen's Taste:

Take a quart of Honey clarified, and seeth it till it be brown, and if it
be thick, put it to a dish of water: then take fine crumbs of white bread
grated, and put to it, and stirre it well, and when it is almost cold, put
to it the powder of Ginger, Cloves, Cinnamon, and a little Licoras and
Anniseeds: then knead it, and put it into a mould and print it. Some use to
put to it also a little Pepper, but that is according unto taste and
pleasure.


Bibliography

The Tudor Kitchen Cookery Book, Recipes adapted for modern use by Roz Denny,

Dining With William Shakespeare, by Madge Lorwin; Atheneum, New York, 1976.

To The Queen's Taste: Elizabethan Feasts and Recipes Adapted for Modern
Cooking, by Lorna J. Sass; the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A History of Food, by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, translated from the
=46rench by Anthea Bell, a Blackwell Reference book.

The Complete Book of Gingerbread, by Valerie Barrett; Chartwell Books, Inc.

Gingerbread: Ninety-Nine Delicious Recipes from Sweet to Savory, by Linda
Merinoff, a Fireside book published by Simon and Schuster, Inc. New York,
London, Toronto, Sydney, and Tokyo.

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