SC - White Gingerbread, Gums Tragacanth & Arabic

[Margritte]

>It was written:
>
>>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 (much snippage)
>^^^^^^^^^
>
>>Redaction:
>>1/2 pound almond paste
>>2 tbsp rose water
>>1 tsp gum arabic  (much snippage)
>      ^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Gum tragacanth (dragagant, dragon) and gum arabic are NOT the same
>thing and don't necessarily _do_ the same thing in a recipe.
>Tragacanth is a binder and strengthener, especially used in sugar
>paste.  Replacing tragacanth with arabic might lead to some of the
>problems experienced. Also, note that while this recipe is called
>"gingerbread" it is almond based, not bread based.  It's a delicious
>recipe, but not the same thing as gingerbread as one would expect
>gingerbread to be.

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.

In my defense, I'm very new to historic cooking, and not quite ready to do
my own redactions. 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?

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.

>>Cover a cookie sheet with a piece of rice paper or kitchen
>>parchment and place the cakes on it.
>
>Interesting difference.  You can eat the rice paper but you can't eat
>the kitchen parchment.
>
>I don't recall having sticking problems when I did the recipe but there
>were several probable differences.  I don't use commercial almond paste
>(too sweet) and made my own.

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?

- -Margritte

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