SC - Mastodon

[Mordonnade]

Consider the following two recipes:

To make Paste of Pippins, the Geneva fashion, some with leaves, some like
Plums, with stalks and stones in them.
Take your Pippins, and pare them and cut them in quarters: then boil them
in faire water till they be tender; then straine them and dry the pulp upon
a chafindish of coales: then weigh it, and take as much sugar as it
weigheth, and boile it to Manus Christi, and put them together: then
fashion them upon a Pieplate and put it into an Oven being very sleightly
heat: the next Morning you may turne it, and put them off the plates upon
sheets of Paper upon a hurdle, and so put them in an Oven of like heat, and
there let them remain foure or five dayes, puting every day a Chafindish of
coales into the Oven: and when they be thorow dry you may box them, and
keepe them all the yeare.
A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen or The Art of preserving, conserving
and candying, printed for Arthur Johnson, 1608.


To make Paste of Pippins like leaves, and some like Plums, with their
stones, and Stalks in them.
Take Pippins pared and cored, and cut in pieces, and boiled tender, so
strain them, and take as much Sugar as the Pulp doth weigh, and boil it to
a Candy height with as much Rose-water and fair water as will melt it, then
put the pulp into the hot sugar, and let it boil until it be as thick as
Marmalet, then fashion it on a Pyeplate, like Oaken leaves, and some like
half Plums, the next day close the half Plums together; and if you please
you may put the stones and stalks in them, and dry them in an Oven, and if
you will have them look green, make the paste with Pippins are green, and
if you would have them look red, put a little Conserves of Barberries in
the Paste, and if you will keep any of it all the year, you must make it as
thin as Tart stuff, and put it into Gallipots.

A Queen's Delight or The Art of Preserving, Conserving and Candying,
printed for Nathaniel Brook, 1654. Both of these books are available on
microfilm, in the "English Books: 1641-1700" series.

OK, here come the questions  :-)

- - Do I use cheesecloth to strain the apples?
- - Should they fall apart (applesauce consistency)?
- - The first recipe calls for drying the pulp before weighing it. How dry
should it be? Surely not completely...
- - I could understand if it was oak leaves and acorns, but _plums_!?? Why plums?
- - When the half plums are put together, are you using real stalks and
stones from plums, or ones made of marzipan, or what?
- - Just how thin is tart stuff?
- - What were gallipots usually made of?
- - Has anyone seen recipes elsewhere for similar confections (especially
ones mentioning oak leaves)?

Thanks for any help you can give.

- -Margritte

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