[Sca-cooks] Torta reform

[Alexander Clark]

Over the weekend I went back to an Italian recipe I started working on
a while ago, and made a good bit of progress. Now I have some loose
ends to try to tie up, and would like to know what thoughts you all
might have.

The recipe is "Torta in balconata per dodeze persone" from the Libro
di cucina/ Libro per cuoco/ Anonimo Veneziano

As transcribed in The Medieval Kitchen by Redon, Sabban, and Serventi, it reads:

Toy farina più biancha che tu poy avere in quantità de tre libre e toy
do onze de zucharo e toy una libra de mandole e XXXVI noce bone e meza
libra de uva passa e XXV datali e mezo quarto de garofali e toy bona
quantità de late de mandole, toy la farina che tu ay destruta con aqua
sì che sia ben spesso e toy ta padella e onzella ben de olio e de
questa farina fassi crosta ad una polverizata de zucaro e delle dite
specie, e toy la noce possa li datali minuzati e l'uva passa ben
lavata e garofali russi e tute queste croste su chaschauna la suva
parte e poni crosta sopra tute queste cose e sì che sia torta.

In case you can't read the accented letters, the words are "piu",
"quantita", and "si", all with grave accents.

I had difficulty identifying some of these words to translate them
(since I have only a smattering of Italian), so here are some glosses
or standardized modern spellings, to the best of my ability, for some
words:

zucharo: zucchero
mandole: mandorle
garofali: garofani
onzella: ungi la
polverizata: polverizzata (apparently as a noun)
specie: spezie
minuzati: minuzzati
russi: rozzi(?)
chaschauna: ciascuna
suva: sua

ISTM that "rozzi" is the most likely standardization of "russi" for
this context. I doubt that either "russi"=Russian or "rossi"=red could
work here. And "rossi"=red seems especially bad, because I expect that
any writer who thought in Italian would immediately have recognized it
as a phrase that mean "red carnations". Unless they were used to
getting fresh cloves (which I doubt), in which case this description
ought to have been in the ingredients list; when you're preparing
ingredients it's too late to turn your dry cloves into fresh ones.

Next, here is my translation. I used periods for the commas in the
original, and left two words untranslated because I couldn't identify
them. It seems from context that "destruta" has to refer to some means
of mixing, and my best guess is that "possa" has to do with
crushing--it might be a cognate of "pesto", but that's only an
unconfirmed guess. I have done little to incorporate English idiom as
such; this is mostly a literal word-for-word translation.

Take flour, the whitest that you may have, in the amount of three
pounds, and take two ounces of sugar, and take a pound of almonds and
36 good walnuts, and half a pound of raisins, and 25 dates, and half a
quarter of cloves, and take a good quantity of almond milk. Take the
flour, which you have /destruta/ with water that it is good and thick,
and take the frying pan, and oil it well with oil, and of this flour
make a crust, [putting thereto] a ground mixture of sugar and of the
said spice. And take the nuts /possa/, the dates in small pieces, and
the raisins well [rinsed or plumped], and cloves [coarse or whole],
and all these crusts upon each its part, and put crust over all these
things, and it is a tart.

So now for some loose ends and questions. Where can I find the
standards of weight for these measurements? Is a half a quarter a
fraction of an ounce or something else? Can anyone here positively
identify the words that appear here as "destruta" and "possa", with
definitions that make sense in context? Does it seems like "ben
lavata" is a likely description for plumped raisins? And is there any
better gloss for "russi"? Any other comments on the translation?

And the big one: How is this thing really made? I've seen modern
adaptations that add various ingredients to the pastry, including the
one in The Medieval Kitchen, which adds butter to make the pastry
flaky even though much of it is baked in the middle where it can't
cook to flakes. But I've just figured out that the original never says
that the torta is either assembled in the pan or baked in the oven.
What if it isn't?

The pan is a "padella", and the only sense I've found for this is
"frying pan". If it's used as a frying pan, then the crusts have to be
cooked in the oil without the filling. I would guess that the result
should resemble either a tortilla, or a medieval English cruste rolle
(croûte roulé). Then you can stack up the cooked crusts, mix the
filling, and layer the filling with the crusts with a crust at the
bottom and at the top. And whatever the translation in The Medieval
Kitchen implies, the original never says anything about a sequence for
putting in the different filling ingredients. It says nothing about
whether or not the filling is mixed. In fact, after the part about how
to have the filling ingredients prepared it only refers to the filling
once, briefly and elliptically, to imply that it goes between the
crusts. So by default I infer that the same mixed filling is put in
between any number of crusts.

So what are your thoughts? Oh, and by the way, is there any sense of
"balconata" that would explain what the name of this dish refers to?
Anything, for instance, that refers specifically to Lent?

-- 
Henry of Maldon/Alex Clark