SC - lebkuchen

[Peldyn@aol.com]

Vika,

I just thought you should know that I believe your frustrations are
indicative of how many of us lurkers feel when trying to redact a recipe.  I
am sure that your frustrations struck a cord in many here.  We are not all
professional cooks or even experienced cooks.  What might be skewing your
perception is that most people just describe the results of their
experiments, rather than the frustrations.

Just thought you should know that you're not alone.

> Finally it was all through.  Now, Scully's recipe calls for cooking the
> remaining wine and honey together until the honey was reduced by half, and
> then putting the quince glop back in, but the translation from the 
> Florilegium I'd printed out said to add the quinces and _then_ cook until
> reduced by half.  Well, I'd strained the quinces back into the pot they'd
> come from, which had the leftover wine, so that settled it.  I put in the
> honey and stirred it up--but, several minutes later, wondered: how do you
> tell when the _honey_ is reduced by half?  What if it's the quince glop
> that's reducing?  This may be a dumb question, I'm not sure.
> 
I know from previous experiments of this type, that if you reduce the
wine/honey mixture first it tends to thicken and become very sticky and
syrupy.  If taken to extremes it will set into toffee when it cools (yes,
been there - done that).  When you add the quince in, the fruit may meld
into the syrup and eventually set like a fruit leather.  However, if your
quince mixture was "watery" then it would water down the syrup and mitigate
this effect leaving you with a "sauce-y" mixture.

How this translates to your experiment, I don't know, but I thought these
points might be worth pondering.

Meliora.
from Lochac.
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