SC - shortbread/-cakes & salad

[david friedman]

At 4:06 AM +0200 9/3/00, TG wrote:
><< ... how period is shortbread? >>
>
>I have no idea whether or not the following recipe is pertinent to the
>question... Anyway: From the good huswifes handmaide for the kitchen
>1594:
>
>To make short Cakes.
>Take wheate flower, of the fayrest ye can get, and put it
>in an earthern pot, and stop it close, and set it in an
>Oven and bake it, and when it is baken, it will be full
>of clods, and therefore ye must searse it through a
>search: the flower will have as long baking as a pastie
>of Venison. When you have done this, take clowted Creame,
>or els sweet Butter, but Creame is better, then take
>Sugar, Cloves, Mace, and Saffron, and the yolke of an
>Egge for one doozen of Cakes one yolke is ynough: then
>put all these foresaid things together into the cream, +
>te{m}per the{m} al together, the{n} put the{m} to your flower and so
>make your Cakes, your paste wil be very short, therefore
>yee must make your Cakes very litle: when yee bake your
>cakes, yee must bake them upon papers, after the drawing
>of a batch of bread.


I don't see any sugar there, and I think sugar is one of the defining 
ingredients in modern shortbread.

>
>***
>Re: salad: from the menue section:
>
>The first course at Supper.
>A Sallet, ...

I think the question was not whethe salad existed but how common it 
was. For moderns, a salad is a more or less standard part of dinner, 
at least in many contexts. My not very expert impression, from menus 
and such, was that it was much less common in medieval meals.
- -- 
David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/