[Sca-cooks] online glossary

[James Prescott]

At 18:52 -0400 2001-05-23, Kirrily Robert wrote:
> In lists.sca.sca-cooks, you wrote:
> >
> >Fine Powder - A spice mixture of what spices? Where is it used?
>
> a.k.a poudre douce?  A mixture of "sweet" spices, usually heavy on the
> ginger and cinnamon and also containing cloves, nutmeg, etc.


There seems to be a difference between Fine Powder and Sweet Powder.

Menagier (circa 1395) has for Fine Powder:

  Grind white ginger (9 parts), selected cinnamon (2 parts), lump
  sugar (2 parts), cloves and grains of paradise (1 part each).


and for Sweet Powder (within his recipe for Hippocras):

  Take four ounces of very fine cinnamon, two ounces of fine cassia
  flowers, an ounce of selected Mecca ginger, an ounce of grains of
  paradise, and a sixth [of an ounce] of nutmeg and galingale
  combined.  Crush them all together.  Take a good half ounce of
  this powder and eight ounces of sugar ...


In Viandier (also circa 1395) Fine Powder is used in the recipes:

  Soup of red deer testicles in deer hunting season
  Quiche flans
  Gilded chickens with quenelles
  Parma tarts
  Paupiettes
  Hedgehogs and Spanish pots
  Stuffed mutton shoulders

and Sweet Powder in the recipes:

  Hippocras


Thorvald