SC - Three Questions (one of them oop)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

melc2newton at juno.com wrote:
> 
> Going through my cookbooks lately, I found a recipe for Vinegar Taffy
> which was fairly simple and which I thought would make a good children's
> activity during an inside event. (Although if the weather keeps behaving
> this nicely, we may not have any indoor events in Calontir this year: ) )
> Does anyone know when taffy was first (documentable) made?

Not documentable taffy in name, but here's something that seems to come
very close indeed, even down to the pulling. See Curye on Inglysch, Book
V (Goud Kokery), #14, To mak penydes. I'm in a bit of a rush at the
moment, so I'm not able to type it in just now, unless someone else has
it on disk already, but it involves boiling sugar (whether dry or as a
syrup isn't really clear because it discusses clarification sort of at
the same time) to either a hard ball or one of the crack stages (my best
guess), and then poured on an oiled marble slab, cooled slightly,
kneaded into a mass, and pulled just like taffy on an iron hook, until
"fair and white", then formed into sticks and cut into portions. I
suspect hard ball stage would give you a more viable taffy texture when done.

The vinegar, BTW, in your modern recipe, is probably there to create
some invert sugar or glucose molecules, which should help keep the taffy
from becoming a rock-hard crystallized mass, either immediately on
cooling or upon storage. 

> On shortbread: I found a modern shortbread recipe that calls for cutting
> the fat into the flour (as in pie crust) rather that creaming the fat and
> sugar together and then adding the flour (as in cookies). Several people
> at the business meeting came up to me later and said that although they
> really didn't like shortbread, they really liked mine. My question is,
> which way would it been made in period? Is there a recipe which tells the
>  way to mix up the ingredients?

I've never seen a period shortbread recipe. The oldest documentable
shortbread recipe I've seen is probably late 17th century, unless I'm mistaken.

Ah, well, have fun with the penydes.

Adamantius
Østgardr, East
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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