[Sca-cooks] Re: Information_and_History_of_Cannelés

[Louise Smithson]

The website that I found the first hint of cannelés being period is the
following.  There is also a picture of what they look like.

http://www.dianasdesserts.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/recipes.recipeListing/filter/dianas/recipeID/1307/Recipes.cfm

As for the pans...originally they were individual copper crowns, but 
i've
ordered a silicon one that makes 18.  www.William-Sonoma.com has the 
pans
on sale for $11.99.

Thank you all for the help with my little project.


Emma Dandelion
Drachenwald


I looked at these cakes and the only thing I can think is, it looks a little like a rum-baba.  Now as to the assertion on the website that these cakes were "First made by French nuns in the early 14th century" I have to say I am skeptical.  The modern recipe is a cake.  I have lots and lots of european cookbooks (mostly Italian) covering everything from 14th through 16th centuries.  There is little resembling a cake recipe in any book.  There are biscotti, wafers rolled into horns or straws (caneli), sweet bread dishes, pies, pastries, but no cakes.  And the earlier in the recipe index you go the less baked goods (other than pies) you see.  Probably due to the fact that the oven is a relatively modern invention.  (Sure they had bread ovens but they were being used for bread and pies only, given the amount of those dishes they had to turn out did they do "cakes").  

There may have been a dish named Cannelés made by French nuns in the 14th Century.  Question is did it bear any resemblance to modern Canneles.  After all there are recipes for Pizza in Scappi (16th C Italian).  Of course it involves none of the following: bread dough, tomato sauce, cheese or pepperoni.  In fact it is sheets of thin pastry which are layered with melted butter, sugar and dried elderflowers.  The pizza in the title essentially refers to a flat pastry in both cases.  The Italians also had lasagna - sheets of pasta with cheese, sugar and nutmeg layered between.  Nothing like "lasagna" with meat and tomato sauce and cheese in layers.  The name of the dish here refering to the pasta sheets themselves.  

I would make the argument that the Canneles in question could have been made in a completely different fashion, yielding the same shape but tasting and in effect being something completely different. 

Just my two cents. 

Helewyse

		
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