SC - Re: sca-cooks V1 #327

[L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt]

>Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 10:45:45 -0600 (MDT)
>From: Mary Morman <memorman at oldcolo.com>
>Subject: Re: SC - Gift Ideas
>
>On Fri, 3 Oct 1997, Christi Redeker wrote:
>
>>  How period are cookies?  Other than shortbread and gingerbread, which
>>  we have already discussed.  What are some other types of cookies, or
>>  sweetbread type items that would make good gifts for the holidays?
>
>Unfortunately, cookies, as such, are not even close to period.  They
>require the use of baking powder or baking soda - which is 19th century.
>
>You can to various sweet yeast breads.  If you go slightly out of period
>to late Elizabethan / Jacobean you have a variety of bisket breads, etc.
>that are much like biscotti.  and there's always my favorite from Kenelm
>Digbie - "Excellent Short Cakes" made to the redaction by Mistress Johanna
>of Griffenhurst.
>
>elaina
>

Whoa Nelly! Stop the train and tip the porter! What about Jumballs? What
about Macaroons (almond). What about Diet Bread (really a fruity biscotti)?
What about Bisket Bread, a pre-curser of modern english biscuits or biscotti
(ie: cookies)?
These all use baking powder today, but existed in period in perfectly
recognisable forms:

>From Huswife's Jewel, 1596   pg. 17

To make Fine Cakes.
Take fine flowre and good Damaske water you must have no other liqeur but
that, then take sweet butter, two or three yolkes of eggs and a good
quantity of Suger, and a few cloves, and mace, as your Cookes mouth shall
serve him, and a lyttle saffron, and a little Gods good about a spoonful if
you put in too much they shall arise, cutte them in squares lyke unto
trenchers, and pricke them well, and let your oven be well swept and lay
them uppon papers and so set them into the oven. Do not burne them if they
be three or foure days olde they bee the better.

This is clearly a square short-cookie enriched with egg yolks and spices,
baked on parchment.

To make fine bisket bread. page 19
Take a pound of fine flower, and a pound of sugar, and mingle it together, a
quarter of a pound of Annis-seeded, foure eggs, two or three spoonfuls of
Rosewater put all these into an earthen panne. And, with a slyce of Wood
beate it the space of two houres, then fill your moulds half full: your
mouldes must be of Tinne, and then lette it into the oven your oven, being
so whot [hot] at it were for cheat bread, and let it stande one houre and an
halfe: you must annoint your moulds with butter before you put in your
stuffe, and when you will occupie of it, slice it thinne and drie it in the
oven, your oven beeing no whot-ter [hotter] than you may abide your hand in
the bottome.

Although the directions are out of order, this is clearly a recipe for an
Anise Seed Biscotti-type confection that gets a drying in the oven, just as
modern biscotti does. An alternative interpretation would be that they are
cut so thin before the drying that they are like modern english tea biscuits
(ie: fine digestive biscuits).

No offense, my Lady Eleana, But I do love my cookies. As they say, there is
nothing new in this world. Perhaps the word Cooky had not been invented yet,
but they did have small cakes and pastries, which would definately qualify
as cookies by today's standards. 1596 is smack in period to me.


Aoife

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