[Sca-cooks] Re: Historic Cheesecake in the papers this past week

[Elaine Koogler]

Susan Fox-Davis wrote:

>The fine folks at Plimoth Plantation sent back a response, citing the period
>source they used.  Oh well, it¹s the right century anyway.
>
>May, Robert. The Accomplish¹t Cook. 1666. Reprint. Totnes, Devon: Prospect
>Books, 1994.
>
>To make Cheesecakes otherwayes.
>
>Take a good morning milk cheese, or better, of some eight pound weight,
>stamp it in a mortar, and beat a pound of butter amongst it, and a pound of
>sugar, then mix with it beaten mace, two pound of currans well picked and
>washed, a penny manchet grated, or a pound of almonds blanched and beaten
>fine with rose-water, and some salt; then boil some cream, and thicken it
>with six or eight yolks of eggs, mixed with the other things, work them well
>together, and fill the cheesecakes, make the curd not too soft, and make the
>past of cold butter and water according to these forms.
>
> 
>
>To make cool Butter Paste for Patty pans or Pasties.
>
>         Take to every peck of flour five pound of butter, the whites of six
>eggs, and work it well together with cold spring water; you must bestow a
>great deal of pains, and but little water, or you put out the millers eyes.
>This paste is good only for pattypan and pasty.
>
> 
>Yours in Service,
>Selene
>  
>
Actually, I use recipes from Robert May when I cook a late-period 
feast...and Digby, who's not that much earlier, is used on a regular 
basis by cooks in the SCA.  We've said, in the past, that recipes in a 
book dated around this time probably contains recipes that were in use 
during our actual period....

Kiri