SC - Comfits, recipe diagrams and foiles

[Ian van Tets]

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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