[Sca-cooks] Spirits of hartshorn

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius:
>Also sprach ranvaig at columbus.rr.com:
>>More on Hartshorn,
>>
>>from A Miscellany by Cariadoc and Elizabeth
>>http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/miscellany_pdf/Miscellany.htm
>>
>>Hartshorn (Ammonium Carbonate) was used for stiffening jellies by 
>>about the end of the sixteenth century (Wilson) but we have found 
>>no reference to its use as a leavening agent prior to the late 18th 
>>century.
>
>Um, I'd bet this is actual hartshorn, chemically similar to 
>isinglass, that was used for stiffening jellies, and not ammonium 
>carbonate.
>
>I have a friend who's one of the best-known research chemists in the 
>world, and the history of chemistry is a hobby of his. I just called 
>him; he's gonna call me back... apparently I interrupted his dinner, 
>and having eaten his wife's cooking, I'd call me back later, too ;-)
>
>I'm guessing, from not doing too well in my high-school chemistry, 
>that hartshorn-the-salt/nitrogen compound was derived from 
>hartshorn-the-gelatin-source (among other things) because of its 
>high protein (and therefore high nitrogen) content, but I assume it 
>took a good deal more processing to get it to that state.

Well, an hour later and without much more comprehensible [to me] 
information, it seems that Marvin Charton agrees with me: he can't 
figure out how actual hartshorn, which is pretty nearly pure 
collagen, could be used as a leavening agent, while it _could_ be 
used to set jellies in the same way isinglass can be. However, when 
properly processed, it seems likely to him that hartshorn (if you 
have an hour he can talk about the different amino acids that might 
be present in the horny parts of deer antlers, and the possible 
qualities of each, when burnt to varying degrees of efficiency, with 
and without oxygen, and everything else you never wanted to know) 
could be processed to get some stuff which, when mixed with water and 
heated, could produce carbon dioxide gas, ammonia gas, and some 
salts. He professed bewilderment over why anyone would want to do 
this, but said that, in theory, it oughtta be possible. I explained 
that tradition seems to support its use for things like cookies, 
whose surface-area-to-mass ratio is such that the ammonia leaks out 
of the cookie, while bread made with the stuff could be toxic on some 
level.

A small funny on the plight of the professional chemist with an 
insufficiently well-rounded education: when I mentioned hartshorn as 
being chemically similar to isinglass, he pooh-poohed this 
suggestion, saying essentially that little babies in their cribs know 
that isinglass is sodium silicate (academics are some tactful folks, 
as we in the SCA know). I countered that babies in their cribs ought 
to know that "isinglass" is a clear, proteinaceous gelling agent 
_derived from sturgeon's swim bladders_, that "ising" is Anglo-Saxon 
for "sturgeon", and silicates are merely called isinglass because 
they look like actual isinglass. I told him to put that one in his 
Bunsen burner and smoke it... he thought about it, looking for the 
comeback he was sure he could come up with, and I heard, over the 
phone, his mouth snapping shut. It seems this chemist had _never 
heard_ of the kind of isinglass used as a fining agent, source of 
gelatin for confectionery work, extensively used in the early 
pharmaceutical industry, etc. He only knew it as the chemical some 
people preserve eggs in...

I've known this man for 28 years, and the number of times I've been 
able to do that can be counted on the fingers of one hand...

Adamantius