[Sca-cooks] Pancakes and Fruitcakes was Happy Shrove/Fat Tuesday

[Elaine Koogler]

This sounds like it might be the origin of the King's Cake served at Twelfth
Night.  I've always wanted to cook a Twelfth Night feast so that I could do
a King's cake...but so far, it hasn't happened!

Kiri

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 11:58 AM, <jenn.strobel at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>

>
> Mistress Rachaol MakCreith found a reference to pampapati in Waverly Root’s
> "The Food of Italy", sent it to me, and I ran with the information.
>
> The reference is: “The Christmas-New Years holidays are marked by the
> appearance in pastry-shop windows of pampepato di ciccolato, a very old
> Ferrarese sweet. It is a cake made of flour, cocoa, milk, honey (sugar if
> honey is not at hand), pepper, spices, almonds, and lemon peel with
> chocolate frosting powdered with sugar and tiny candies. It is of ancient
> lineage. Duke Borso d’Este served pampapati at a banquet on November 11,
> 1465, making them exceptionally appetizing by inserting a gold piece in
> each."
>
> Even in my own creation of a pampapato recipe includes baking soda,
> something that our medieval counterparts would not have had access to. What
> I need to do is go back, not use any levener whatsoever in one batch and use
> baking ammonia (which would be more appropriate for our period of study as
> far as chemical leveners go).
>
> If anyone else has done any research on fruitcake, or has points that I
> missed/failed to get/totally screwed up, please contact me. This particular
> subject is (obviously) one near and dear to my heart, but I haven't had the
> time to revisit what I did lo those many years ago. New and better
> information is always welcome.
>
> Thank you to all who got this far in reading.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Odriana vander Brugghe
>
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