[Sca-cooks] Candied horseradish

[Stefan li Rous]

Mistress Brighid gave her translation of a period candied horseradish 
recipe:
> Chapter VIII -- To Conserve Horseradish
> Take the horseradish and pare it and clean it very well with water.
> And then cut it very small, and then set it on the fire with water and
> put there a good fistful of salt, and boil it until it is quite soft.
> And then remove it and place it in cold water for 9 days, changing the
> water every day.  And when it is well de-salted, have your honey
> prepared, and well-skimmed as has been said, cast it [the horseradish]
> in the honey or syrup and boil it hard until a syrup is made which
> forms threads.  And for one pound of horseradish, one pound of honey is
> needed.

Interesting. I made this recipe a few months ago using the translation 
provided by Vincente (which can be found in the horseradish-msg file in 
the Florilegium).
> Chapter Eight To Candy Horseradish
> Take the horseradish and scrape it and make it clean with water.  And 
> then
> chop it all finely, and then put it on the fire with water and add a 
> good
> handful of salt and boil it enough so that it is very soft.  And then 
> take
> it and put it in cold water for nine days, changing the water each day.
> And, once all the salt is removed, have your honey made, and, well 
> skimmed
> as it is said before, add it all to the honey or syrup and boil it 
> rapidly
> so that the syrup is done when it makes threads. And for one pound of
> horseradish one pound of honey is enough.

A little bit different in wording and perhaps thus affecting the 
interpretation. I took "chop it all finely" to mean finely diced, about 
1/16 inch cubes.

> The boiling and soaking process took almost all of the "bite" out of
> the horseradish.  I had expected something similar in intensity to
> candied ginger, but the result was much milder.  It could well have 
> been
> candied turnip, or some other such root vegetable, though there was a
> discernable horseradish taste.  The honey flavor was quite distinct,
> and I would like to try the recipe again with a sugar syrup.

I too, expected the resulting horseradish to have more bite. I was 
running short of time, so I don't think i even soaked and changed the 
water for nine days. However, I got very little horseradish taste. It 
may be that your larger cubes meant the proportion of horseradish to 
sugar was higher than with my smaller cubes. I think I may try the 
larger cubes next time. I also was a bit uncertain how long to cook the 
honey. I've not done that much candy making and the temperatures for 
the different candying stages are a bit different for honey compared to 
sugar, so I didn't try to refer to those, just using my guess as to 
what "when it makes threads" meant. Yes, substituting sugar for the 
honey would make a big difference in the taste. The honey taste does 
cover the horseradish taste a bit, so with sugar it would probably come 
through more.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****