SC - Oculis Exciditis Porcus Dimidius Facti

[CorwynWdwd]

Greetings from Tibor!

Nice work, Adamantius. As a fun aside, I'll tell a story on myself.  It's
about my early days as a cook, and earliest days as an SCA Cook.  We won't
learn much cookery from it: but it may amuse.

You wrote:
    I must try this again with sugar and honey as a substitute for the
    corn syrup, and let you know the results.

A friend had given me a recipe "which coulda been period"  (Sigh) for a
pound cake like dessert.  I was autocratting a dessert and dance revel, and
I wanted to bring something kinda period.  (Actually, we made lots of real
period foods as well....)

The recipe called for a cake to be dunked in a sauce made by spicing and
heating corn syrup.  I knew that was bad, and decided to substitute honey
for corn syrup one for one.  (They tasted about the same in my mouth...)  Of
course, I'd made the corn syrup version a few times, first.  The syrup would
quietly burble on the stove, on a back burner near the controls, until I
wanted it.

The day I switched to honey, I was running rather late.  I threw the sauce
on the back of the stove, and raced into the shower to get ready.  As I shut
off the water, I thought I smelled something.  And I ran, without delay,
into the kitchen.

What I discovered is that, while a corn syrup based solution will burble
quietly, a honey solution will foam up, and spit and spatter.  Do recall
that I was fresh (!) out of the shower, and the controls for the stove were
in the rear, and honey syrup was boiling over onto the stove.

Needless to say, the burns were not serious, but they were dramatic.  And I
couldn't show them to anyone.  (:-)

There are many morals to the story, I am sure.  The cooking relevant one is:
when substituting honey for corn syrup, expect very different behavior at
higher temperatures.

	Tibor
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================