SC - shortbread/-cakes & salad

[Cindy M. Renfrow]

Hello! Yes, sugar is heavier than flour, and yes, the baked flour is
lighter and grainier to the touch than the unbaked.

There is also the problem that not all flours are equal. Karen Hess deals
with this question of different flours in her intro to the American edition
of English Bread and Yeast Cookery. "Flours vary astonishingly in weight
and absorbency.  And I am able to make the very same pound of American
flour fill from 2 1/2 to 4 1/2 cups simply by sifting or tamping..." She
goes into some detail. It's an interesting read.

In the Prince Biskit recipe (in Martha Washington's CB) she uses 3 cups of
American flour to equal 1 pound of English flour. She also speaks here
about different kinds of flour.

Here's the recipe again. It just says "a quantity of flour", so we're
supposed to already know the correct proportions.  I don't know whether Mr.
Partridge would have weighed his flour or used a volume measure.  Both were
available to him.

>From The Widowes Treasury by John Partridge, 1585.
To make fine Cakes. Take a quantity of fine wheate Flower, and put it in an
earthen pot. Stop it close and set it in an Oven, and bake it as long as
you would a Pasty of Venison, and when it is baked it will be full of
clods. Then searce your flower through a fine sercer. Then take clouted
Creame or sweet butter, but Creame is best: then take sugar, cloves, Mace,
saffron and yolks of eggs, so much as wil seeme to season your flower. Then
put these things into the
Creame, temper all together. Then put thereto your flower. So make your
cakes. The paste will be very short;therefore make them very little. Lay
paper under them.


Regards,

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