[Sca-cooks] Re: Spun Sugar

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jul 13, 2005, at 7:34 PM, Elise Fleming wrote:

> Greetings.  There are documented, period recipes for items made  
> from a boiled sugar syrup which is then poured into a moled  
> (usually in two or three parts).  This is then rolled around in the  
> hand or swung overhead to coat the mold and leave the center  
> hollow.  I wouldn't call this spun sugar, but it does produce a  
> hollow sugar item which can be colored (in the initial syrup) or  
> painted afterwards.  The thin strings that one might call "spun"  
> don't seem to be in period, and to my knowledge, blown sugar item  
> are OOP, unfortunately.  If they were to be in period, one might  
> find them in Italian references.

I'm pretty sure the thread-spinning technique was used to determine  
sugar-boiling temperature / candy state in some 15th-century English  
recipes, but whether that was used in period as a construction  
material, I don't know.

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

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