[Sca-cooks] Digby's Small Cakes

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach 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

I also believe Master Tirloch has posited a Tablespoon for a 
"spoonful" of things like cream. People like Hillary Spurling posit a 
much larger measure for the Elizabethan and Jacobean spoonful. That 
might account for it, also.

Adamantius

>
>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
>>
>
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