SC - Colored Broth without Fire

[margali]

I was just looking at Colored Broth, from 'Take a Thousand Eggs
or More' with an eye towards making it for the Gilded Pearl
potluck in a couple of weeks, and was struck by something odd.

Take a Thousand Eggs or More by Cindy Renfrew, pp 13
"
As you will note, there are some inconsistencies in this recipe.
For instance, how are we to thicken this dish with rice if we are
to prepare it with-owt fyre? Also, we are instructed to ley of
euery a leche in a dysshe, and yet the recipe is called a sew or
broth. The end result is a colored rice pudding that will set
like glue and adhere to an inverted plate, making posible its use
in food sculpture, if little else. Saffron has been added here as
a coloring agent, since we are vaguely instructed to make one
part yellow. Two similar recipes appear in Du Fait de Cuisine
[1420, #9 and #28]: both are thickened with wheat flour, instead
of rice, and use much more vivid colors than those used here -
saffron for gold, alkanet for gules [red], and turnsole for azure
[blue].

1.5 cups strained almond milk, made with water
.5 cup raw rice
2 tbsp sugar
.25 tsp clove powder
.25 tsp mace powder
2 cubebs, ground [I got a smidge less than one eighth of a tsp]
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp white wine
1 bunch fresh parsley, chopped
2 tbsp red wine
pinch saffron [about 8 threads]

Heat the almond milk to boiling in a 1 quart sauce pan. Add rice,
cloves, mace, cubebs and cinnamon. Reduce heat and cook until
rice is soft, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from heat. Process in a
blender until smooth.

Divide the mixture into 3 equal parts in 3 small mixing bowls.
Leave one part plain. To the second add saffron and white wine.
Stir

Grind the parsley to a paste in a blender. Squeeze out the
parsley juice through a strainer. Discard the pulp. Add the
parsley juice and red wine to a third of the almond mixture.
Stir. The mixture should be tinted green. Set aside.

Chill all three parts in the refrigerator for one half hour or
until set. When ready to serve, place a small slice of each in a
dish.

makes about 1 cup.
"

Here is the translation of the original she was working with:
78. Colored Broth without fire. Take 4 lbs of almonds, & lay in
Water over all, and blanch them, and on the morrow grind them
very well, and draw thereof a thick milk: then take Rice, and
wash them clean, and grind them well, & draw them up with the
Milk through a strainer, and put it in a bowl, & part it in the
vessel, and put in all white Sugar, and every vessel Cloves,
Maces, Cubebs and powdered Cinnamon: And let that one part be
white, that other yellow and that other green with parsley: and
lay of each a slice in a dish and look that Milk be mixed with
wine, and that other with Red wine.

Has anybody actually tried following the directions in the
original, and mixing the almond milk with rice flour cold? [the
part about washing and grinding the raw rice. It never mentions
cooking or cooked rice.] Another question - why the red wine with
the parsley? It never really specifies that the red wine goes to
the green bit, and you can extract saffron into a small amount of
red wine and get a slightly pinkish tinge to the yellow [I did it
in a batch of rice yesterday to see what color it comes out] that
in the right amount is pretty nominal. When I did it with the
parsley, I got khaki.
margali
Bored and equipped with too many cooking ingredients I really
shouldn't be eating right now ;-)