[Sca-cooks] hello there

[Terry Decker]

If you take a look in the Florilegium (www.florilegium.org), you should find
a discussion of "fine cakes" with a recipe from John Partridge's The Widowes
Treasure (1585).  It is fairly obviously a cookie recipe, individually baked
on parchment.  The word cookie derives from the Dutch for "small cake"
around the end of period.

Being small and indivdualized are not criteria for exclusion for
preparation.  That is why cooks were hired,  The primary reason cookies
don't appear until around the 16th Century is most likely that sugar was not
available in quantity until then.  Expansion into the New World expanded the
available European sugar crop and cut into the Arab sugar monopoly reducing
prices.

Bear


>While it is probable that cookies were not done much in period (too small
and individual of an item),
>
>Samrah