Thursday, June 26, 2014

Little Sugar Pies


(Maestre Robert "Libre del Coch" 1520, translation from "Original Mediterranean Cooking" B Santich) - redaction is my own.

Take a pound of almonds and blanch them. And grind them without adding either water or stock, so that they become very oily, and the oilier they are, the better. And take one and half pounds of white sugar, well pounded, and mix it with the almonds. And when these are mixed, if it is still a bit stiff, add a little rosewater. And season it with a little ginger, to your taste. Then take pastry made with flour and eggs and sweet oil, and fill the pastry with the sugar and the almonds. Then take oil and put it on the fire in a frying pan. And when it boils, put in the little pies, and cook them until they take on the colour of gold. And when you take them from the fire, pour over melted honey. And then sprinkle them with sugar and powdered cinnamon. 

You will see that I put less sugar in than the original recipe 

350g ground almonds
350g icing sugar
1 tsp rosewater
2 tsp ginger

½ cup wine
½ cup oil
1 egg
flour; about 2 and ½ cups
Caster sugar
Cinnamon

Mix the almonds, icing sugar, rose water and ginger to make a firm paste like a marzipan.

While the original recipe for once does in fact give ingredients for the pastry, I played a little with it, and used a little wine in the pastry, as this gives it a wonderfully crisp texture. Mix the oil, wine and eggs, and gradually add the flour, to make a soft sticky dough. Sprinkle a board with flour, and lightly flour a rolling pin. Roll out the dough and cut out rounds. Place a little of the marzipan mixture on a round, fold in half and pinch closed (you may find that wetting the edges lightly with water will help them stick together) or run a fork around the edge.
Deep fry at 170 degrees until golden. Immediately after removing them from the oil, put them on a plate and drizzle honey over the top.
Move to drain on a draining rack (over a tray of some sort!) and then sprinkle with cinnamon and caster sugar.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Duke's powder, powder douce, powder forte - medieval spice mixtures

I thought I should type up some of the notes I have taken on this matter, rather than keeping them on a rather scrappy piece of paper.    This is simply a list of the spice blends from a number of medieval cookbooks, and will hopefully grow.  The first one from Le Menagier is one of my favourites.

Le Menagier de Paris 

14 oz cinnamon
1 oz ginger
1 oz grains of paradise
1/6 oz nutmeg
1/6 oz galingale
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1 oz and 1 drachma (1/8th of an oz) white ginger
1/4 oz cinnamon
1/8 oz grains of paradise
1/8 oz cloves
1/4 oz sugar

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Duke's powder

To make powdered hippocras, take a quarter of very fine cinnamon selected by tasting it, and half a quarter of fine flour of cinnamon, an ounce of selected string ginger, fine and white, and an ounce of grain of Paradise, a sixth of nutmegs and galingale together, and bray them all together. And when you would make your hippocras, take a good half ounce of this powder and two quarters of sugar and mix them with a quart of wine, by Paris measure. And note that the powder and the sugar mixed together is the Duke's powder.


Frati 15th century Italy

1/4 cloves
1 oz ginger
1 oz cinnamon
same quantity bay leaf

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Libro de Guisados:

Spices for common sauce

3 parts cinnamon
2 parts cloves
1 part ginnger
1 part sugar?? (I can't read my own notes there... must check)
and a little ground coriander and a little saffron

Spices for Clarea
3 parts cinnamon
2 parts cloves
1 part ginger

Dukes Powder
1/2 oz cinnamon
1/8 cloves
1 pound sugar
a  little ginger

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Powder Blanche (Haven of Health)
2 oz sugar
1/4 oz ginger
1/8 oz cinnamon