[Sca-cooks] sugar and flour in 16th c Italy (was the thread on pasta)

[Louise Smithson]

I had to get involved in this thread. The interesting thing is that the posted redactions are accurate to the recipes. However, the choice of brown sugar and semolina are ones I would not have made based on my understanding of both the sugar trade in Italy and both the current production of home-made pastas in Italy and recipes from various 16th and early 17th century manuscripts. 

On sugar: by the 16th century Venice was the center of the sugar trade for all of Italy.  They had extensive processing facilities both in Venice and in Sardinia.  Sugar cane was actually grown in Corsica too.  They were using the sugar to make trionfi.  Incredible works of boiled sugar.  What was prized was white sugar, clean sugar and what was often referred to as fine sugar.  The recipes all refer to it as a white food.  They had mastered the art of producing sugar without molasses in it.  Sugar with molasses will not work to make sugar paste, it just won't set, neither can you get it to candy properly to make confits.  There may have been lower grades of sugar but a high class household, one serving food to nobility would pride itself on serving the whitest (and therefore healthiest) foods.  So consequently the appropriate choice for sugar in most if not all 16th century recipes is actually pure white cane sugar.  There are also a lot of posts on this on the florilegium .
www.florilegium.org/files/ FOOD-SWEETS/sugar-sources-msg.html 
www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/sugar-msg.html

Flour in pasta: interestingly enough very little of the pasta made at home by Italians is made from Semolina flour.  I lived there and I don't remember it ever being used once.  In Giuliano Buglialli's book "Classic techniques of Italian cooking" he gives 6 recipes for pasta used commonly in Italy, only one has semolina.  The remainder are made with common or garden all purpose flour.  In Italy today the flour used is commonly Farina typo O, which is still a low protein flour (compared to a hard wheat durham).  It is mostly the dried commercial pasta which is made with Durham wheat. If you look at the pasta recipes from 16th century sources what they call for mostly is fior di farina, which the flower of flour.  Or the finest, whitest, most bolted wheat.  When you cook it it will have a softer consistency than al dente pasta made with semolina.  But considering that some of the early pasta recipes call for the pasta to be cooked for 30 minutes and more, al dente may not be a desired
 texture.  

>From Scappi: habbiasi uno sfoglio di pasta alquanto sottile, fatto di fior di farina, acqua di rose, sale, butiro, zuccaro, & acqua tepida, 
 Have a sheet of pasta that is relatively thin, made from flour, rose water, salt, butter, sugar and warm water

>From Giovanni del Turco (1636). Epulario e Segreti vari.
Si piglia fiore de farina, dua ova et sale secondo la quantità che ne vorrai fare e si fa pasta con aqqua fredda bene dimenata e distendila sottile. 
One takes flour, two eggs and salt, dependent on the quantity that you want to make, and one makes the pasta with cold water, knead it well and stretch it out (roll it out) to a subtle (thin) sheet. 

>From Messisbugo: 
poi farai la pasta con farina, e zaffrano, e un’uovo, e farai le spoglie ben sottili
Then make the pastry with flour, saffron and an egg, and make a sheet that is nice and thin

Helewyse


 

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