SC - Help! To the Queen's Taste

[Cindy M. Renfrow]

>Salut!
>I have a bit of a problem with which I hope SOMEONE can help.  I am
>putting together the last of my notes for the class I am teaching at
>Stargate this weekend and I am missing a recipe...
>
>There is, I hope, a recipe for marzipan in "To the Queen's Taste."  If
>someone could PLEASE email me the original (I don't need the redaction)
>before Friday 2pm CST I would GREATLY appreciate it.
>
>Cu dragoste,
>Bogdan
>

Hi!  As someone already pointed out, Sass doesn't have a recipe for
marzipan in either Queen's or King's Taste.  Here is the recipe from Robert
May's Accomplisht Cook.  You will note that marchpane and marzipan, at this
time,  were not the same thing. What we call Marzipan was the basis of an
elaborate cake made of marzipan and wafers, iced and garnished with
comfits; but the recipe starts out with how to make the almond paste we
call marzipan.

"To make Marchpane.
Take two pound of almonds blanch't and beaten in a stone mortar, till they
begin to come to a fine paste, then take a pound of sifted sugar, put it in
the mortar with the almonds, and make it into a perfect paste, putting to
it now and then in the beating of it a spoonful of rose-water, to keep it
from oyling; when you have beat it to a puff paste, drive it out as big as
a charger, and set an edge about it as you do upon a quodling tart, and a
bottom of wafers under it, thus bake it in an oven or baking pan; when you
see it is white, hard, and dry, take it out, and ice it with rose-water and
sugar, being made as thick as butter for fritters, to spread it on with a
wing feather, and put it into the oven again; when you see it rise high,
then take it out and garnish it with some pretty conceits made of the same
stuff, stick long comfets upright on it, and so serve it." The Accomplisht
Cook, 1685 edition, ed by Alan Davidson.

Note:  Alan Davidson notes that May omitted the eggwhite necessary to make
this rise.  He was copying a recipe from The Queen's Closet Opened, p. 68.
I don't have that here.

I have others. If this is unsuitable, let me know.

HTH,


Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu
cindy at thousandeggs.com
Author & Publisher of "Take a Thousand Eggs or More, A Collection of 15th
Century Recipes" and "A Sip Through Time, A Collection of Old Brewing
Recipes"
http://www.thousandeggs.com