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

Sandra Kisner sjk3 at cornell.edu
Tue Feb 24 10:56:53 PST 2009


>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).
>
>Respectfully,
>
>Odriana vander Brugghe

It's not just the chemical leavener that's OOP; notice the reference also 
says the pampapato was made with cocoa and had a chocolate frosting and was 
served at a banquet in 1465.  Unless the Duke had sent his own expedition 
to the western hemisphere, chocolate wasn't known, much less used, in 
Europe at the time of his feast.  Perhaps there's an older recipe for 
pampapato somewhere that doesn't include chocolate.

Sandra




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