[Sca-cooks] Poudre Forte and Other Spicy Thoughts

[Elaine Koogler]

You are going to share this paper with the rest of us, right??

Kiri

lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:

> First, I'm polishing up my documentation for the Fine Powder 
> competition Saturday. I wandered through the bowels of the UC-Berkeley 
> library last night and found a seventh recipe within period and an 
> interesting recipe called A Spice Powder for Patissiers in _Le 
> patissier francois_ by LaVarenne from 1652 that is BIG on pepper with 
> other spices added (the ones typical for Poudre Fine). There's even a 
> spiced salt - you make the spice powder up and mix it with an equal 
> quantity of salt.
>
> So now my paper is a whole page longer - now it's seven pages - sigh, 
> and i was trying to make it shorter (and it's single spaced and in 9 
> point Palatino, so i've got it set up as small as i can :-) I've got a 
> couple introductory paragraphs, seven recipes in their original 
> languages with their translations, a couple alternate translations of 
> two of them, some commentary on them, a chart comparing the 
> ingredients and recipes at a glance, a conclusion, with an "epilogue" 
> of the LaVarenne recipe and a bibliography that completely fills one 
> whole page (and which includes the names of several people on this 
> list for their personal help).
>
> I thought it was odd that the recipes for spice powders from 1555 and 
> 1607 both included long pepper, which i thought was out of fashion by 
> that time. If this thought of mine is right, then i would suspect the 
> recipes were copied from an older cookbook. Additionally, both recipes 
> use both "round pepper" and long pepper.
>
> Second, now i've been thinking about Poudre Forte... Besides the 
> recipe in the Anonymous Venetian cookbook, reproduced in Redon, 
> Sabban, and Serventi, are there other period recipes for Poudre Forte?
>
> LXXV. Specie Negre e Forte per Assay Savore.
> Specie negre e forte per fare savore; toy mezo quarto de garofali e do 
> onze de pevere e toy arquanto pevere longo e do noce moscate e fa de 
> tute specie.
>
> LXXV. A Strong Black Spice for Enough Sauces.
> A black and strong spice for making sauces; take half a quarter of 
> cloves and two ounces of pepper and take as much of long pepper and 
> two nutmegs and make of all a spice.
>
> Ludovico Frati, ed., Libro di Cucina del Secolo XIV, Livorno: 
> Raffaello Giusti, Editore, 1899, p. 40.
>
> Third, i have a fondness for Cubebs, although the ones i get now are 
> nowhere near as delicious as the ones i got in the mid-1970s. Do any 
> spice blends call for cubebs or are they usually added on their own?
>
> Anahita
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Learning is a lifetime journey…growing older merely adds experience to knowledge 
and wisdom to curiosity.
					-- C.E. Lawrence