SC - Rur-Rur

[margali]

At 9:52 PM +1000 8/23/00, Drake & Meliora wrote:

>  >  I whipped the egg whites to soft peaks *, with 1 cup of sugar,  beaten in
>  > slowly
>  > Mixed the almonds &  2 cups sugar together**, then slowly blended
>  > this into
>  > the meringue.
>  > put about 1/4 cup into cupcake papers (2 dozen)  and dropped by
>  > tablespoons
>  > onto waxed paper on cookie sheets ***  Baked in preheated 250F oven for
>  > approx 1 hour until edges were brown.
>  >
>  > *  Shoulda been stiff  -- egg whites may have been too cold still,

...



>If this is this recipe: To make French Bisket Bread (macaroons)
>Take one pound of almonds blanched in cold water, beat them verie smale, put
>in some rose water to them, in the beating, wherein some musk hath lien,
>then take one pound of sugar beaten and searced and beat with your almonds,
>then take the whites of fowre eggs beaten and put to the sugar & almonds,
>then beat it well altogether,
...

If this is the correct original, doesn't it seem very unlikely that 
it corresponds to what is described above? Note the contrast between 
"slowly blended this into the meringue" and "beat it well together." 
Beating egg white until it is stiff is a fairly striking effect, and 
the stiff egg white then requires rather gentle treatment (as "slowly 
blended into" suggests). I would expect that a recipe which depended 
on stiff egg white would say so--signal the fact in the way the 
process was described.

I would be inclined to interpret the recipe literally. Beat the eggs, 
but not until stiff, add the sugar/almond/rose water mixture, beat it 
all together, bake it. Has anyone tried that to see how it comes out?

Incidentally, is the "(macaroons)" in the original, or is that a 
parenthetical added by the editor?

David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/