SC - Recipe: Mirrauste de Manzanas

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

Someone asked me for this recipe, so I thought I might as well post it to 
the list.

Source: Ruperto de Nola, _Libro de Guisados_ (Spanish, 1529)
Translation: Lady Brighid ni Chiarain (Robin Carroll-Mann)

MIRRAUSTE DE MANZANAS -- Mirrauste of Apples

You must take the sweetest apples and peel off their skin, and quarter 
them.  And remove the core and the pips, and then set a pot to boil with 
as much water as you know will be necessary.  And when the water 
boils, cast in the apples and then take well toasted almonds and grind 
them well in a mortar.  Dissolve them with the broth from the apples, 
and strain them through a woollen cloth with crustless bread soaked in 
said apple broth.  And strain everything quite thick, and after straining it 
cast in a good deal of ground cinnamon and sugar.  And then send it to 
the fire to cook and when the sauce boils remove it from the fire.  And 
cast in the apples which remain, well drained of the broth, but see that 
the apples should not be scalded, so that you can prepare dishes of 
them, and when they are made cast sugar and cinnamon on top.


Notes:

This is a Lenten version of Mirrauste.  The meat day version has no 
apples.  It is a sauce made with toasted almonds, broth, bread crumb, 
sugar and cinnamon, and is served with roast birds.

De Nola always specifies when almonds are to be blanched, so I 
assume that these almonds are not.

I would be inclined to cook the apples in just enough water to cover, so 
as to make a more intensely flavorful broth.

The direction not to scald the apples probably means not to overcook 
them, so that they will retain their shape and not turn into applemoyle.


Brighid, who has the stomach flu right now, and is not going to 
redacting anything more interesting than oatmeal for a while...


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