SC - Making Comfits

[Bethany Public Library]

Adamantius wrote:

*Kewl! As I recall, I also could mingle them with my hands (kinda like
*handling warm gravel), and used a small ladle the mountaynence of *an unce,
as the recipe specifies. In other words, I happened to have *a
one-fluid-ounce sauce ladle on hand. I also experienced rough and *ragged
comfits, and after a certain size was achieved after multiple *coatings, I
had the experience of forming sugar lumps without seeds *in the middle;
essentially the comfits refused to grow larger (the *recipe says they should
be the size of peas) after a certain point, no *matter how much sugar I
added.

Well, I found that I could get "very large" comfits, because if I let the
syrup "soak in" a second or two, that's what I got. "Very Large" comfits are
not good, however, dure to the flavor intensity. It might be like eating a
tic-tac the size of one of those "dinosaur egg bubble gum" balls. So three
coats was about it for me. After that, we dried the mass in a slightly warm
oven, and then sifted out the gold from the silt, packaging them for later
serving.

We experienced  the phenomenon that a light hand makes better comfits by
this method. You don't have to mash the sugar in, you simply lightly toss
the mixture repeatedly, and break up any enormous bits.

*Also worthy of noting is the fact that I never actually had a real
*syrup, so to speak. The fifteenth-century recipe never actually *mentions
water in any way, and what I had done was melt the dry *sugar, slowly and
gently, so what I had was essentially a hard-crack *syrup from the very
start. This may have been the source of my *problem.

Possibly. Elise Flemming reccomended that the syrup never get to soft-ball
stage. I used mostly sugar, and enough water to barely moisten it. This made
it easier to form the comfits, but they took a tiny bit longer to dry (they
dried better in a regular oven thanin a convection over, BTW, though I am
boggled). After the syrup had heated sufficiently to be clear, there was
almost no water left in it. I still got gravel-like lumps (the colored ones
did look a bit like fish-tank gravel ;). I colored the syrup. Next time I
may flavor the syrup with cinnamon or such, and do a "no seeds" batch.  I
found that the colored syrup also colored the loose sugar.

*So mine ended up looking a bit like ground-up concrete pellets, a bit
*like Post Grape-Nuts cereal. They tasted like Good-N-Plenty *candies.
*People enjoyed them; I'm just not sure how close to the genuine *article
they were.

Well, Hugh Plat's recipe as quoted in the new C.A. mentions rough comfits,
and that is, apparently, what we both made. The anise version does indeed
taste like good-n-plenty candies. I also made fennel and caraway. I found
that two .9 ounce jars of the seeds made enough for eveyone to have several
at the 120 person feast. We made three such batches, to offer some sort of
visual substance to the offering (and to flaunt our purported wealth) but a
lot were left over. Just one flavor served in small bowls would have been
OK, but we didn't have small enough vessels and didn't want to look
parsimonious. Various folks seemed to take a liking to one or other variety
but I couldn't get a general concensus as to one favored flavor. So I think
that making a variety of flavors is a good thing, and coloring them to
differentiate between the falvors is also a good thing. The orange and lemon
peel ones sounded good, as well. That's an experiment for another day,
though.

I also experienced a recyclable aspect to the whole process. Some of the
seeds that did not adhere could be recycled along with the leftover sugar.
In fact my apprentice ragnar Ketilsson took three such batches home with
them to do precisely that, and I think we will have found that with the
recycled batches, the seeds will have flavored the sugar, and so it won't be
so crucial that a seed appear in every comfit (like we flavor sugar with
vanilla beans, fer instance).

Thanks for your commentary. It was a very cool experiment. I'm definately
doing that one again, but now i need to study how to make smoother ones.

*Adamantius

Aoife----and I hope that some of you that attended got a good look at the
soteltie----a "scroll" cake by another apprentice, lady Rowan of Ashebrook,
made from a period fruitcake recipe and decorated in squashed
bug-illumination style, with gold-leaf backround, the scroll part (in praise
of the crown tourney winners) in edible scarlet ink on sugarpaste, and the
borders of bugs and flowers cast in sugar paste and then painted to be
life-like. It was incredible. I am a lucky a woman, at risk of looking
stoopid in front of her apprentices, and not caring one whit.