SC - Feast Themes/gingerbread

[david friedman]

At 3:31 PM -0500 6/19/97, Margritte wrote:

>but in the Middle
>Ages, either bread crumbs or ground almonds would have been used.

The almond recipe given below is either 16th of 17th century (anyone know
the exact date of Murrell), not medieval. Does anyone know of any medieval
recipes using almonds instead of breadcrumbs? There is another gingerbread
in the medieval sources, but it is not anything like the recipe given
below--basically cooked honey plus spices, apparently used as a confection
or as an ingredient in other things.

So it looks, absent further evidence, as though the "coarse" and "fine"
gingerbread, if that is what they were called, were not medieval
contemporaries but a Medieval dish and a Renaissance dish, with the
medieval dish surviving (as per the Markham recipe) into the Renaissance..

>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

Note that the original has quantities--and the "redaction" ignores them.
Based on the almond paste, this is supposed to be one full recipe. But it
has converted a quarter of a pound of ginger into a tablespoon(!!!) and a
cup (half a pound) of sugar into half a cup.

With regard to the dark gingerbread, which has been one of my standards for
many years, since it is easy to make, popular, and keeps, I normally bring
the honey to a boil, as per the original ("sethe it"), then stir in the
bread crumbs and the spices, and when it is cool enough to handle knead it
to a smooth texture by hand.


David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/