[Sca-cooks] Re: Manus Christi --

[Johnna Holloway]

I pulled my facsimile of Dawson from the shelf and looked at
the actual text from 1596.
There it's "Rie flower" which I suspect as you do is rice flour and not 
rye.
That combined edition that Southover Press put out in 1996 does
use the word rye in her transcription.

One of these days when the weather is not humid,
I am going to turn to candy making. I could do a batch of these
with what I have at hand except for the gold leaf. Think I am out of that.
Will they be Manus Christi without the gold? Have to see and compare.

Laura Mason also goes into Manus Christi in her Sugar-Plums and Sherbert
volume. I forgot to mention that earlier.

On an OT Op note, I will mention that the reason spurring us onto to do 
candy
is this just drop dead gorgeous candy book that's just mouthwatering.
A Baker’s Field Guide to Holiday Candy and Confections by Dede Wilson.
http://www.dedewilson.com/
It's the first cookbook that Patrick has ever gone through page by page 
and marked
which ones we will be making. The pictures are just that tempting.

Johnnae

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:

>>
>> from the Florilegium file Gd-Huswfs-Jwl-msg - 7/29/02
>>
>> Johnnae
>
>
> Thank you! So, if I'm reading this correctly, you're making a sort of 
> medicated rosewater with the ambergris and pearls, then boiling a 
> heavy syrup from it and the pounded and sieved sugar for three 
> "walms", then pouring a pool of the stuff out onto some sieved flour 
> (I suspect Rice, and not Rye, but I could be wrong). This is then 
> worked into a paste as it cools, and then cut and flattened into 
> smaller cakes, which are then moistened with more of the same 
> rosewater to make the cakes sticky again, and gilded with gold leaf... 
> presumably, then dried. And somehow, the specific gravity of the syrup 
> produced this way, using specific measurements for sugar and 
> rosewater, brought to a boil, allowed to cool from a boiling state, 
> then boiled and cooled twice more, and probably after absorbing as 
> much flour as it'll "soak up", approximates a fairly consistent candy 
> density, a.k.a. reproducible results. So, "Manus Christi height" is a 
> meaningful term.
> We just need to make Manus Christi to figure out what it is ;-)
> Adamantius
>