SC - camp ovens

[Stephen Bloch]

Alys Katherine wrote:

> By the bye, I received a copy of _The Elixirs of Nostradamus_ ...
> The second part of this book contains sweetmeats:  preserved lemon 
> peel, pumpkins, bitter oranges, walnuts, bitter cherries; a transparent 
> jelly from bitter cherries and one from quinces (Who was looking for 
> documentation for jelly??); ginger water; preserving roots of eryngos, 
> welted thistle; preserving limes, quinces, unripe almonds; preserving 
> the peel or rind of alkanet; candied sugar; pine-nut kernel confection; 
> marzipan; and penide sugar.
> 
> A comment on the recipe for a confection from pine-nut kernels:  There 
> is a painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art from the Renaissance which 
> has, I am convinced, a picture of this confection.  I had been on the 
> prowl for art work with confections and spotted this in an alcove.  I 
> sketched the candy which is somewhat cube-shaped with white ovals in 
> it.  Only after I read this recipe did the picture and the recipe come 
> together.  Now I need to find pine nuts and try it out.

I don't know the painting in question, but that sounds EXACTLY like the
payn ragoun my wife and I worked out two years ago from _Forme of Cury_.
Once it cooled, we naturally cut it into cubes, which did indeed leave
the white ovals of bisected pine-nuts visible on the cut faces.


Payn Ragoun (FC 68)

Take hony and sugur cipre and clarifie ir togydre, and boile it with
esy fire, and kepe it wel fro brennyng.  And whan it hath yboiled a
while, take vp a drope therof with thy fingur and do it in a litel
water, and loke if it hong togydre; and take it fro the fyre and do
therto pynes the thriddendele and powdour gyngeuer, and stere it
togyder til it bigynne to thik, and cast it on a wete table; lesh it
and serue it forth with fryed mete, on flessh dayes or on fysshe
dayes.

Our redaction:

2 C sugar
1 C honey
1 T powdered ginger
1 C pine nuts

Heat sugar and honey to firm ball stage (c. 250 degrees).  Remove from
fire; stir in pine nuts and ginger and stir until mixture thickens.
Pour into greased 8" x 8" pan, cool, and cut into half-inch cubes (the
ginger is pretty strong, so a small morsel is plenty at once).

It was quite tasty, but sticky, the first time we made it.  The second
time we heated it a little higher, and it was quite tasty, but resembled
Jawbreakers in consistency.  (At least, when we took it in sub-freezing
weather to a potluck; after half an hour in the house it was easier to
cut and eat.)

					mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
					 http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
                                        Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University
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