[Sca-cooks] Orange Flower Water

[Lilinah]

From: Suey <lordhunt at gmail.com>
>     As pointed out in Jadwiga Zajaczkowa's reply Sent Sovi I have also
>found it used in the recipe for Sweet and Sour Grape Sauce. Rose water
>is used in the Sweet and Sour Recipe and in Blancmange and Amidon.

If these are recipes from Sent Sovi, could you please share them in 
both the original Catalan and modern English? I can with some 
struggle make my way through Spanish recipes, but i find Medieval 
Catalan much more difficult. So seeing them in both Catalan and 
English will help me.

>I do not see
>that Nola used orange flower water but on innumerous occasions he does
>call for orange juice.

My memory error. The recipe is from Diego Granado's Libro de Arte de 
Cozinha (1599). I'm afraid i don't have the original Spanish

BIZCOCHOS - Biscuits

Take twelve eggs, and remove the whites from four of them, and with a 
little orange-flower water beat them a great deal, and grind a pound 
of sugar, and cast it in little by little, always beating quickly, 
and cast in flour, or powdered wheat starch, and beat it with force. 
Having cast in the said flour, when they see that it is necessary, 
and very fine, and the dough must remain white, just as for fritters, 
and then cast it in your pots, and carry them to the oven, and when 
half-cooked remove them, and dust them with well-ground sugar, and 
cut them to your taste, and return them to the oven, and let them 
finish baking a second time: and if they wish when they beat them, 
cast in as much white wine as an eggshell, it will be good.

>     It does make sense that other flowers were distilled to flavor water
>as we see with medieval salads.- If it grows in the garden use it.

I don't like to jump to conclusions. It would be like the mayonnaise 
dust-up recently on another SCA food list. Just because a culture has 
the ingredients for something doesn't mean they made it. So i won't 
assume that just because the Arabs have the technique and technology 
for distilling, just because they distilled rosewater, i won't assume 
they distilled orange flower water. Could they? Sure. Did they? I 
don't know.

-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita