[Sca-cooks] Digby's Small Cakes

[Johnna Holloway]

There's also the real possibility that the "add ale barm"
got left out and this is supposed to rise.
That would account for the missing liquid that Master
Tirloch has noted in his redaction.

Johnnae

Page 185 of The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened, (edited by Jane 
Stevenson and Peter
Davidson, Prospect Books:Wiltshire:1997),
Excellent small cakes:
Take three pound of very fine flower well dryed by the fire, and put to 
it a pound and a half of loaf Sugar
sifted in a very fine sieve and dryed; Three pounds of Currants well 
washed, and dryed in a cloth and set
by the fire; When your flower is well mixed with the Sugar and Currants, 
you must put in it a pound and a
half of unmelted butter, ten spoonfuls of Cream, with the yolks of three 
new-laid Eggs beat with it, one
Nutmeg; and if you please, three spoonfuls of Sack. When you have 
wrought your paste well, you must
put it in a cloth, and set it in a dish before the fire, till it be 
through warm. Then make them up in little
cakes, and prick them full of holes; you must bake them in a quick oven 
unclosed. Afterwards Ice them
over with Sugar. The Cakes should be about the bigness of a hand breadth 
and thin; of the cise of the
Sugar Cakes sold at Barnet.


> Also sprach AEllin Olafs dotter: snipped
>
>> In the original, you mix your ingredients, and then > When you have 
>> wrought your paste well, you must put it in a cloth, and set it in a 
>> dish before the fire, till it be through warm
>>
>> and then go on to form your cakes. All the redactions seem to 
>> blithely skip over this step. (I was skimming - it's possible I 
>> missed one.) Anyone know why, other than the fact that it makes no 
>> sense to our modern bakers eye, well trained to chill dough? has 
>> anyone tried it, and found a problem?  Has anyone tried it, period? 
>> Does it get soggy, or does this make it possible to make the cakes 
>> thin, as directed? Or both?
>
>
> Looking at the recipe, I'm guessing it allows the cakes to be rolled 
> fairly thin, and to make the aromatics (nutmeg, etc.) more aromatic 
> (not that baking won't do the same). But between the specific 
> instruction to make them thin (most SCA cooks seem almost to make a 
> drop-cookie), the warning to bake them in a hot, _open_, oven, and the 
> instruction to prick them full of holes, all seem to suggest these are 
> more like biscotti in texture. It may also  be that they're intended 
> to be chemically rather than structurally shortened by all that butter 
> and cream. IOW, made tender without the flakiness and air bubbling 
> associated with buttery pastry.
> We normally chill pastry to make it easier to work and to speed up the 
> relaxation of gluten, but when things are rolled out thin, they don't 
> necessarily become tough, especially with that amount of fat.
> Adamantius
>