[Sca-cooks] OOP: Praline recipes from La Varenne, part 1

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

Ok, here goes.  I trust y'all will forgive me if I don't transcribe the
French.  If you want to read the original, go to this URL:
http://www.bib.ub.es/grewe/showbook.pl?gw023
Type '395' (without the quote marks) in the search window, and
click 'anar a'.  Click 'endavant' to go forward one page; click 'enrera'
to go back one page.


From: Le Cuisinier François (The French Cook), by François Pierre
La Varenne, 11th ed., 1680.

Cook a pound of sugar almost to the feather stage, in which a
pound of sweet almonds with their skins have been placed, and stir
them.  When you see that the sugar is cooked to the feather
stage, take them off the fire and let them cool -- stirring constantly,
to make them absorb sugar -- and when they are cool, put them on
a table.  Remove the sugar which did not stick to the pralines, and
set it aside; put the pralines back into the basin in which they will
be cooked over the fire, and stir them constantly with the spatula.
When they give off their j[uice?], put in the sugar which was set
aside, stir them to cover them with sugar, and when they give off
their juice, put them on the bottom, and stir them until they are
cold; put them back on the fire once or twice to make them red,
stirring constantly, and remove them when they give off their water;
you can give them amber and musk.

note: the word with the question mark appears in the facsimile as
the letter 'j' followed by a blank space.  Based on the size of the
blank space, and the similar phrase that comes a little later in the
text, I think this is meant to be the word 'jus' (juice).  The last
phrase in the recipe would translate literally as "you can amber
them and musk them," but English doesn't verbify those nouns.

In our next installment, pralines of citron, and assorted flowers.

Brighid, amateur word-wrangler


Brighid ni Chiarain *** mka Robin Carroll-Mann
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
rcmann4 at earthlink.net