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

[margali]

The almond butter sounds like you cook up a 'pudding' or 'custard
pudding' or sometimes also called a 'cooked custard' which is cream and
egg cooked over a double boiler and stirring constantly to a consistency
like Jell-O pudding. Hanging it in a bag would be a good way to separate
out the water component of the eggs and cream, leaving essentially
butterfat, an yolk solids. When you beat up the almonds, rosewater and
sugar, you are taking essentially almond paste and thinning it out with
rosewater into a creamy consistency like that of the cooked custard.
Mixing the 2 should give you something like blending together almond
paste made creamy and Jell-O pudding, or a slightly more solid and
slightly grainy pudding. I would use it to smear onto a sheet of paste
[pastry] or place as the bottom layer of a pie, or to fill choux
pastries. Think how you would use creme anglaise or something of the
sort. I think if properly made it would be quite yummy filling beignets
or little choux pastries, or filling some part of a sotletie. Maybe
something rather elizabethan decorated with candied violets or roses.

Does anybody have any recipes on hand that almond cream is a component
of?
margali

- --

MarilynTraber at FictionForest.com
HTTP://WWW.FictionForest.com
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The Quote Starts Here:
To Make Almond [Butter ?]

Take a pinte of cream and ye youlks of 15 eggs and beat them well
together.
then let them boyle, and stir them continually till they are thick. then
put
them in a cloth and hang them up to let ye whey run from them, then take

halfe a quarter of a  pound of almonds and beat them well in 3
spoonfulls of
rosewater. then take ye butter out of ye cloth and heat ye almonds
therwith
upon a soft fire with a quarter of a pound of beaten sugar.

1 pint heavy cream
15 egg yolks
2 ounces almonds
3 tbsp rosewater
1 / 2 cup sugar.

I was able to follow the recipe on this pretty closely, and I think I
got
what the recipe intended. It is very much like sweetened very finely
scrambled eggs, with almonds and roses. I had been envisioning something
with
the texture of yogurt. But the author's description of the recipe does
say
"It is properly a recipe for curds with almonds". I am a little at a
loss as
to what to do with it. I had been thinking that it would be good as a
spread,
but the texture isn't right for that.... and a little goes  a long way.
Its
not something that you would want to make a meal of.