[Sca-cooks] When does torten = pie crust?

[Johnna Holloway]

If you run through several of the other recipes that have been translated at
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Sabrina_Welserin.html
there seems to be a wide variation as to which call for pastry cases or
crusts or pastry shells and those "tart" recipes that don't mention them
at all. One way to approach this would be to
do an actual count of all these recipes and see which call for one or
the other or not at all.

I did read your discussion of this recipe at
http://www.curiousfrau.com/Food/SW_132_Cinnamon_tart.htm  and
http://mmcnealy.livejournal.com/

What happens if you bake it in a deeper earthenware (modern casserole
dish)for instance? Does it form into more of a pudding? Also why do you 
think the egg whites are whipped?
(The translation seems to mention whip only in conjunction with *49 To
make a good almond pudding *.) I suspect that it's maybe a baked 
marzipan tart myself. Is there something similar to this in Rumpolt?

Master Bogdan de la Brasov did this recipe several years back. His wife
Despina posted his version to the Middlebridge back in 2003. He 
translated the recipe
as:
Cinnamon tart (Welserin):

132 A cinnamon tart
Take a half-pound of ground almonds, more or less, depending on how large
one wants the tart. Take butterfat and the whites from seven eggs. Mix
everything together, afterwards add a half-ounce of cinnamon, the larger
part, however, sprinkled on top, and sprinkle the tart with rose water.
Also take about a half-pound of sugar and put it in. The white fat from a
leg of veal, cooked and finely chopped, is also especially good.

Interpretation: Take about 6 ounces of ground almonds and mix that with
some butter and seven egg whites. When you mix this all together, it should
be wet, but not runny. Add about a quarter of an ounce of cinnamon into the
mixture, along with six ounces of sugar. Put this mixture into a pie shell.
Sprinkle half an ounce of cinnamon on top of the tart, along with a little
rosewater. Bake at 350F until the crust is golden brown.
----
His finished dish doesn't include the egg yolks or to whip the egg whites.

Giano also doesn't beat the whites in his version that appears in the
article
Baking with Sugar in Renaissance Germany  which is in the Florilegium.

Just wondering, I guess

Johnnae



Marion McNealy wrote:
> I'm working on a new redaction of Sabina Welserin's recipe #132 Cinnamon Tart.
> Of the redactions that I have been able to find of this recipe, all of them call for it to be placed in a pie crust, yet Sabina is pretty clear in the rest of her cookbook when a torten is to be placed in a pie crust and when its not (see recipes below). 
>
> So, is this just a modern cookery thing that all tart like dishes must be placed in pie crusts, or is it possible that these were baked just in pans without crusts like a modern cake? I have tried looking up the word torten in the MHG dictionaries online, with no luck. I'm curious if anyone has done a word study to see how this word has changed in meaning?   I wonder if the word tart refers more to how it was baked than the presence of a pie crust (see recipe #136 below). 
>
> Thanks, Sophia