[Sca-cooks] Comfit Making
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius1 at verizon.net
Tue May 29 21:08:23 PDT 2007
On May 29, 2007, at 11:33 PM, Stefan li Rous wrote:
> Why did you raise the temperature? Was this a trial and error sort of
> thing? Or did you find some medieval description or recipe that lead
> to this?
The earliest recipe I've seen appears to actually involve melting
sugar without water, so a somewhat different sugar-working technology
than the modern fixation with temperatures and cooking heights for
syrups may be at work. That recipe (which you probably already have;
it's 15th century, as I recall) refers to things you should not do if
you want to avoid ragged comfits, so presumably it was possible to
get smooth ones (the language is kind of vague and it's possible you
add water and cook it all more slowly to get them smooth). I've just
never succeeded in doing so. Luckily, the ragged ones are good, too.
Adamantius
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