SC - Sweet Potato Recipe

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

This is the other recipe I mentioned.

Source: Libro del Arte de Cozina (Spanish, 1599)
translation: mine

CARNE DE LIMON, Y BATATAS -- Flesh of Lemon and Sweet Potatoes

The lemons must be mature, and divided in the middle, and cast them 
in brine, which should be temperate, and after eight days have passed, 
remove them and have boiling water, and without washing off the brine, 
cast them in, and cook them with much fire, until they are extremely 
tender, and when they are so, set them aside from the fire, and lower 
them in another [change of] tepid water, and not that in which they were 
cooked, and hence in a little while, remove them from the water, and 
wash them very well, and if they should not be very tender, give them 
another boil, and if it should not be necessary, take them out, and 
squeeze them, and pound them in a mortar of stone.  The sweet potato 
must be washed in two [changes of] water, and have on the fire a boiler 
of boiling water, and cast them in, and cook them well, until they are 
easily peeled, and then clean and pound [them], and then weigh out a 
pound of sweet potatoes, and another of lemon, and to those, two and a 
half of sugar, and if you wish them cast in two dozens of almonds, and 
very well pounded, it will be smoother.  When this meat is combined, 
the sugar must be very clarified, and instantly, not in the manner as for 
peaches, and it being so, cast it within, and cook on a mild fire, and 
when the bottom of the kettle is made white, it is cooked, and set it 
aside from the fire, and cast in your musk, and let it cool a little, and 
cast it in your boxes, and set them in the sun three or four days, and if 
you have to make morsels, you do not have to cook it as much as for a 
box.


Note: the mention of peaches seems to refer to an earlier recipe for 
peach preserves, in which the clarified sugar is allowed to become tepid 
before the fruit is added.  I understand this to mean that you must add 
the lemon-sweet potato mixture promptly to the clarified sugar while it is 
still hot, rather than allowing it to cool as it does in the peach recipe.

The mention of cooking until the bottom turns white discredits my earlier 
speculation.  When the phrase appeared in the citron recipe, I thought it 
might be partial proof that the potatoes in question were white.  Since 
the phrase also appears here, in a sweet potato recipe, perhaps it only 
refers to the syrup turning opaque?  Any preserve makers care to 
comment?  This is not an area of cooking I have ever dealt with, in the 
SCA or in mundane life.

Brighid


Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
mka Robin Carroll-Mann
harper at idt.net
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