SC - My first attempt at a period(ish) recipe. (Very Long!)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

WyteRayven at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I just made my first attempt at two period(ish) recipes, and would like some
> feed back if you will. :) What I did wrong, ect.
<snip>
> 'To Make Little Cakes'
> 
> Take A pound of wheat flowre twice sifted, a pound of currans, A quarter of a
> pound of sugar, A little nutmeg grated, A little saffron, ye whites of 14
> eggs beaten, A little salt, some rose water.  mingle ye flowre with a little
> sweet and thick cream, and put it into yr saffron, eggs and sugar finely
> beaten. when ye paste is made, beat it well with a rouling pin, and roule out
> part of it thin, then take your currans, nutmegg and rosewater, and lay them
> on your paste, and strow on them a little fine sugar. then roule out ye other
> piece of paste thin, and lay it on the top. then close it together, and cut
> ye superfluous past with a Jagg. thus you may make yr past all into one, or
> into severall little cakes according to yr pleasure.  when they are baked,
> you may Ice them over with a little sugar and rosewater wash'd over on ye
> top, and ye white of an egg beaten with it, and after set them a little into
> ye oven againe, and soe you may Ice your great Cakes.
> 
> This is my interpretation.
> 
> 3 cups flour
> 1 lb currants
> 1 / 2 cup sugar
> 15 medium egg whites
> 1 tsp nutmeg
> 3 strands of saffron
> 1 tsp salt
> 4 tbsp. rosewater
> 1 / 4 cup heavy cream.

Hmmm. I think perhaps the original recipe describes a drier dough than
you ended up with. It may be that the author's eggs in the seventeenth
or eighteenth century were smaller even than your medium egg whites;
maybe you need to use less cream or rosewater; primarily, though, I
suspect these issues combined with the fact that a pound of flour is
really closer to 3 1/2 cups than 3 cups, to produce a wetter dough than
will behave as the recipe describes.

I think the basic dough is more pasta-like than the soft, damp, sticky
batter you describe, and the instruction to beat it with a rolling pin
is, I suspect, the principle form of leavening, rather than the air you
beat into the egg whites. (IMO beating the egg whites till foamy was
unnecessary.) Have you ever looked at a recipe for beaten biscuits? The
technique involves whacking the dough several hundred times with a
wooden mallet, which not only incorporates air into the dough (the
finished product is satin-shiny and somewhat blistered on the surface),
but also breaks down the gluten, essentially stretching the strands
beyond their limit until the dough is tender, and the final product
brittle like a biscotti. You might look at Cariadoc's adaptation of
Prince-Bisket in the online Miscellany for a comparison; that recipe,
IIRC, sez to beat the dough for an hour. I think you're supposed to get
a very crisp cookie, somewhat hard, but brittle, filled with the nicely
contrasting fruit.

> To Make Almond [Butter ?]

I'm not sure about the almond butter; this technique is different from
anything I have direct experience with. My most obvious comment would be
that if this dish contains eggs, and the end result was like scrambled
eggs, I'd suggest some fairly basic rules for cooking eggs in dishes
like custards were broken... don't mean to be brusque by any means, but
it is eminently curable. I'll need a little more time to think about it
some more before I can comment further.

Congratulations, though, on making the Great Leap! Best wishes...

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com