SC - weekend cooking trials

[Drake & Meliora]

Caointiarn,

> >From  a llooooooonnng ago post  (feb 16 1998) between Rebecca Tants &
> Meliora de Curci,  about French Biscuit Bread from  Elinor Fettiplace, how
> it reselmbled almond cookies from an italian cookbook,  and their
> redactions
> as well as Spurling's.

Oh my God, that *was* a while ago !! Which particular recipe are you
referring to?

>     So, since I had leached out almonds, and frozen egg whites,
> and *TIME *
> I gave this a go.
>
> So:  2 cups (maybe less) of egg whites   2 cups of almonds ground
>         3 cups of sugar (divided 2 & 1)        a tad of almond extract
>
>  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, I was
> hurrying
> **  almond & sugar mixture was very wet  -- drier  *may*  have been better
> ***  Learned my lesson about subsituting  wax paper for parchment
>  -- could
> have greased the cookie sheets  as stated for the italian cookie recipe.
>
> All in all,  there are only 3 cupcake survivors, and 1 cookie this am.
> Maybe the ratio of egg to almonds should be less  -- this was very  chewy
> macaroon-ish.   There was no way I could have  molded/ rolled this stuff
> with my hands.  (as meliora says she did)   It's a great way to use up egg
> whites, when the Head Cook only needs the yolks,  and it is
> perfect for the
> gluten free diet.

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, then heat the oven as hot as you doe for other
bisket bread, then take a paper, & strawe some sugar upon it, & lay two
spoonfulls of the stuf in a place, then lay the paper upon a board full of
holes, & put them into the oven as fast as you can, & so bake them, when
they begin to looke somewhat browne they are baked inough.

The proportions I use are:

200gms (or one American cup?) almond meal or freshly ground almonds
200gms (or one American cup?) icing sugar (what you guys call powdered
sugar - but without anti-caking agents)
2 eggs whites.
some rosewater.

I am working on the theory (that I think I first read this in Cariadoc's
miscellany) that medieval eggs are smaller that our modern ones.

I find that the oil in freshly ground almonds can sometimes upset the
mixture and I end up with almond brittle!  Maybe the rosewater was to be put
in the almonds when beating to stop them from becoming excessively oily?

I have experimented with using caster sugar (superfine I think Americans
call it) and dark brown sugar (I think this is called muscovado - has
molasses added but <shrug> oh well).  I found that the coarser the sugar
crystals the chewier the macaroons became.

I have used lightly beaten eggs and eggs whipped to soft peaks and it
doesn't seem to make a difference to the final product.  I have not tried
whipping them to stiff peaks with the sugar and then folding the ground
almond in.

Hope this helps

Meliora.