[Sca-cooks] Period Flour Query

[Elaine Koogler]

I'm about to do/say what we're all told not to do...but I do believe that
shortbread is such an ubiquitous dish in Scotland that there are no really
period recipes for it.  To be truthful, I've never really even seen a period
Scottish cookery book at all!  But I do have a book from the Rural Home
Women's organization in Scotland that has a section on "traditional"
recipes, two of which are versions of shortbread...neither of which contain
rice flour!  But rice was used in Europe in period...after all, just about
every cuisine has a version of blancmanger.  So it really isn't such a
stretch to imagine that the Scots might have used rice flour to make
shortbread...in period.

Kiri

On 2/8/07, Aldyth at aol.com <Aldyth at aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> In a message dated 2/7/2007 8:33:30 P.M. Mountain Standard Time,
> t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net writes:
>
> If you  have some specific questions, I'll try to give you a more thorough
> answer.
>
>
>
> Thanks so much for the first answers. They help a lot.  In the  archives I
> found references to semolina-sourdough being 13th
> century  Andalusian.  That
> must be just the type of bread, not the flour per  se?  And I would think
> that
> from cultivated crops I could get what was  available in which area when.
> Is
> there anything written about what was naturally  occurring as far as the
> grain/grass/nut in a particular area?
>
> In one of the shortbread discussions it mentions adding rice flour to the
> (see list of flour) for making it crumbly.  At the risk of being
> really  dumb,
> did shortbread originally have rice flour in it? I just have a hard time
> visualizing rice paddies in Scotland.  :-))
>
> Aldyth
>
> If it is not  any fun, stop doing it. Find something that is fun, and
> start
> doing it. Life is  too short not to have fun.
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