[Sca-cooks] Payn puff circa 1450

Johnna Holloway johnnae at mac.com
Wed Dec 8 17:03:36 PST 2010


As Bear noted in my earlier post on this topic, pastry without sugar  
or fat can be tough.
One finds the sugar mentioned in the previous or preceding  FoC recipe  
for
Clxliij. Pety parnant in both Hieatt and in also the Rylands MS. {I  
suspect one was to read and combine the two.}

You might have better luck with this recipe below.

It's from the Bodeian MS Rawlinson D 1222 which is dated as 1450.

212. For to make Payn puffe.

Take smale floure & new ‹z›este & hete ‹y›e ‹z›este with water, & put  
hit togeder, & make

  paste with ‹y›e same ‹z›este & ‹z›olkes of eyrene & sugur, safroun &  
salt & pouder of

gynger; and make ‹y›e stuffe of ‹z›olkes of eyrene rawe & more poudre  
of gynger, sugur,

dates mycede, smal reysouns of coraunce, safroun & salt. & take ‹y›e  
forseyde paste &

  make cakys of a schapmonde brede. Take a porcion of ‹y›e same stuffe  
& put hit ynne,

and take & wete ‹y›e sydes with water & lappe hit togedyr upy‹z›t, &  
sete hit in an hote

  ovenne & loke to hit for brennynge.

 From CB Hieatt's A Gathering of Recipes.  2008. This recipe remained  
unpublished until publication of this volume.

‹z› is a yogh
‹y› is a thorn

The ‹z›este and sugur ought to make for a different sort of dough.
--
I've made pastries with date fillings before. I don't recall having
problems with the fillings. Dates are always sticky. We used to make
skillet cookies with chopped dates. If it was too hard to mix with a  
spoon, we
greased our clean hands with butter and shaped the cookies by hand.

Johnnae




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