[Sca-cooks] Starch was Turkish delight

[Johnna Holloway]

Just ran a search in EEBO-TCP and found 2291 matches in 1067 records for starch, so it turns up often in England prior to 1700.

Starch is also mentioned in a number of early English cookery books.

John Murrell in A daily exercise for ladies and gentlewomen in 1617 even uses it in his recipe for sugar plate paste… "TAke a pound of double refined Sugar, put thereto three ounces of the best starch,…"

Johnnae

On Feb 1, 2014, at 6:08 PM, Terry Decker <t.d.decker at att.net> wrote:

> 
>> This is what Europeans thought for centuries, since outside of a few rare medieval recipes wheat starch was not used in cooking. Hans Dernschwam in 1553 called it "strong flour" since there was no German word for it. In the 18th century wheat starch was known as "hair powder", since its only use was for powdering wigs. By the 19th it was used for stiffening linen and eventually returned to uses in cuisine.
>> 
>> Urtatim (that's oor-tah-TEEM)
> 
> 
> This may be a questionable assertion about Dernschwamm.  The German word for starch is "Sta:rke." The German word for strong is "stark."  Both words derive from the Old High German "starchi."  Modernly, starch powder is "Sta:rkemehl"  and strong flour is "starkes Mehl."  Since the German of 1553 is not  standardized, it may be difficult to determine precisely what is being stated.  1553 is also roughly 100 years after the noun starch comes into use in English.  Before I accept the assertion that there was no word for starch in German, I'd really like to see the evidence presented.
> 
> BTW, the terms Amelmehl (emmer powder)  and Kraftmehl (strong or powerful powder) have also been used to refer dialectically to starch.  Amelmehl is sometimes translated as amidon.
> 
> Bear