SC - mock eggs (Lenten)

[Kerri Canepa]

On Sun, 13 Jun 1999 22:04:47 -0500, you wrote:

>I've been reading, although rathr randomly, "Fast and Feast" by
>Bridget Ann Henisch. 
>
>In there, on page 45, is a description of the Lenten egg soteltie
>which I believe has been discussed here before.

<snip>

>Has anyone made these?

Yes, and they're kind of fun. Messy, but fun.

>This sounds interesting. My question is what keeps these two colored
>egg mixtures from mixing? I would think you would get a swirl of
>yellow and white, not something that looked like a hardboiled egg.
>
The resulting almond something like paste is actually rather stiff. The hard part is actually trying to insert any of
the paste back in the shell without creating a really big hole. It's stiff but not enough to build a recessed area to
put the yellow colored part in. I think the best we were able to do was to make a yellow layer. However, if the paste is
ground fine enough and you have some sort of syringe like thing, you might be able to create a roundish "yolk" by
injection. I haven't the faintest idea if there was a medieval kitchen tool like a syringe for such a task and we didn't
try to do it that way ourselves.

>Also, I assume in a modern kitchen you would bake these. Any guess at
>what a good temperature and time would be? 125 degrees? 350 degrees?
>You want the almond paste to solidify, but not so fast you burst the
>egg shell.
>
We used a 350 degree oven. We started with cooking for 15 minutes but eventually allowed it to cook for 30 minutes
before the project got sidelined. There wasn't much expansion during cooking although it did bubble in the shell. The
high sugar content is what causes it to solidify. Given that, consider using a candy thermometer to check the
consistency at the various stages (soft ball, hard ball, etc). My guess is that there's a point where it reaches a semi
solid state to resemble a hard boiled egg. However, the paste is a dark tan so it's a bit of stretch to say it looks
like a hard boiled egg but it is a soteltie and the fact that you had to break an egg shell to get to it might be enough
of a resemblance.

One of these days we'll try it again using a more scientific approach <g>.

Cedrin Etainnighean, OL
Principality of Oertha
Kingdom of the West
Kerri Canepa -- Anchorage, AK
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