SC - ONCE AGAIN: PRECEDELLA MADE OF ALMONDS

[david friedman]

Phillipa Setonasked about:

>PRECEDELLA  MADE OF ALMONDS   (Rumpolt 1581, fol. 169b, #57)
>
>[57]     Take sugar and rosewater, boil up [together], so that it becomes not
>too thick, stir grated almonds into this boiled sugar, take it from the fire
>when it is well dried. When you take it away, take one to three spoons of
>good white pounded sugar, stir it into the almonds, make this almond dough
>longish with your hands, strew white sugar onto it on the upper and the lower
>side, so that nothing sticks to your hands. And when you have made it
>longish, form small pretzels from it, put them into a warm oven and bake them
>quite slowly, they will get a fine white color.

I haven't much experience with this kind of thing, but I note that 
the only ingredients are sugar, rosewater, and grated (ground?) 
almonds. Have you tried looking at marzipan recipes for comparison? 
The person I know of who has worked most on this sort of stuff is 
Alys Katherine; I know at one point she was experimenting with 
pounding white sugar (I think in a mortar) to get very fine sugar 
that was not the modern conrstarch-containing confectioner's sugar.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook