[Sca-cooks] What to do with 55 egg whites?

[Huette von Ahrens]

I am really surprised that no one suggested "To Make a Dissh Full of Snow"

To make a dissh full of Snow 
>From "A Propre New Booke of Cokery" 1545.

Take a potell of swete thicke creame and the whites of eight egges & beate them al togider with a spone / then put them in youre creame and a saucer full of Rosewater and a disshe full of Suger with all / than take a sticke & make it cleane / and than cutte it in the ende foure square / and there with heate all the aforesayde thinges togither / & ever as it ryseth take it of and put it into a Collander / this done / take one apple and set it in the myddes of it and a thicke busshe of Rosemary and set it in the middes of the plater / then cast your Snow upon the Rosemary & fyll your platter therewith. And if you have wafers cast some in with all and thus serue them forth. 

When I made this years and years ago, I did a ratio of one egg white to one cup of whipping cream to 1 tablespoon of sugar to 1 tablespoon of rosewater.
Any more sugar and it became cloyingly sweet.  Any more rosewater and it tasted like soap.  I beat the egg whites with the sugar until stiff.  I beat the cream with the rosewater until it peaked.  I then folded them together.  I had intended to replace the apples with strawberries because I was serving 300 people.  Unfortunately, the strawberries I so carefully froze when they were fresh, turned to mush. So instead of serving a dish full of snow, I served strawberry mousse.  Everyone gobbled it up and nothing returned to the kitchen.  I learned that day, that no matter what the books say, no matter how carefully you freeze your strawberries, you will never get anything but mushy strawberries when they are defrosted.

Huette

--- On Fri, 2/6/09, lilinah at earthlink.net <lilinah at earthlink.net> wrote:

> From: lilinah at earthlink.net <lilinah at earthlink.net>
> Subject: [Sca-cooks] What to do with 55 egg whites?
> To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
> Date: Friday, February 6, 2009, 6:56 PM
> On another list Elewyiss the Jew <elewyiss at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Is meringue period? I 55 left over egg whites and no
> idea what to 
> > do with them.
> 
> She's not on this list, so she asked me to ask here...
> --
> Urtatim (urr-tah-TEEM)
> the persona formerly known as Anahita
>