SC - Comfits, recipe diagrams and foiles
Ian van Tets
ivantets at botzoo.uct.ac.za
Sun Nov 9 12:38:56 PST 1997
Hi, Cairistiona here.
1. Comfits: here is a recipe from T. Newton. Lennie's Touchstone,
1581. (A leechbook, not a cookery book, hence the health note)
A few graynes of Coriander first stieped in veneiger wherin Maioram
hath bin decocted, & then thinly crusted or couered ouer with Sugar.
It is scarrce credible what a special commoditye this bringeth to the
memory.
2. In _Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections..._ (Hieatt and Jones,
Speculum 61/4, 1986), there is another recipe with a diagram. I
think someone was asking about this kind of this recently? There are
no dots, unfortunately, but an 8x4 grid is drawn for the recipe for
Cressee, in the first collection (p. 863). The authors feel (p.
869), that the 'noodles are apparently to be served with one colour
crossed over the other: hence the name of the dish. To prepare the
cressee, the noodles are cut to the appropriate size, then stretched
to form the characteristic crisscross'.
The recipe: 'E une autre viaunde, ke ada a noun cressee. Pernez
flur demeyne e des oefs e festes past, e metez dedenz le past bon
gingivre trie [sorry, can't give you e acute] e sucre e saffran; e
pernez la moyte [acute] de cel past colore [acute] de saffran e la
myte [ac.] blaunc, e festes rouler sur une table a la graundur de
vostre dei; e puys festes goboner a la graundur de une piere de
late; e puys festes trere sur une table en meimes la manere cum est
ceste forme: [hand-drawn 8x4 grid, not at all even]; e puys festes
boiller en ewe; e puys pernez une quiller perce [ac.] parmy, si
pernez hors cel cressez de l'ewe; e puys pernez formage mye [ac.]
desus e desuz, e metez bure ou oile, e puys dressez.
B.L. Add. 32085, which contains nothing later than early documents
from the early part of the reign of Edward 1 (1272-1307), according
to the authors.
Recipe translated:
Here is another dish, which is called cressee. Take best white four
and eggs, and make pasta dough; and in the pasta dough put fine,
choice ginger and sugar. Take half of the pastry, which is coloured
with saffron, and half white, and roll it out on a table to the
thickness of you finger, then cut into strips the size of a piece of
lath; stretch it out on a table as illustrated, then boil in water;
then take a slotted spoon abd remove the cressees from the water;
then arrange them on, and cover them with, grated cheese, add butter
or oil, and serve.
3. Does Maggie Black have any precedent for directing foiles to be
rolled up like a spring roll or strudel? All I can find is that
foile meant very thin pastry. Other translations (for other recipes)
that I have found have not recommended this, but suggested folding
over, like pasties, before frying or boiling. Black says, at least
twice, to put a small piece of the filling on the end of a strip of
pastry, then to roll the whole piece up (which mught be 8 inches
long) and seal. Where does she get this definition?
Thanks
Cairistiona
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