Cinnamon sticks

This dish is a wonderful and delicious soteltie which works well as a sort of renaissance breathmint.

The original recipe is from Ouverture de Cuisine by Lancelot de Casteau, published in 1604. The recipe is in French. I have provided a transcription of the French and a translation.

The recipe has two parts. The first is to make sugar paste and then in the second part you incorporate cinnamon and form cinnamon sticks.

The recipe 

Pour faire paste de succre.

Prennez du fin succre bien tamizé par vn fin tamier, puis ayez gomme d'aragante bien trempee en eau de rose passée par vn estamine aussi espes que vous le pouuez passer, puis mettez vostre gomme dedans vn mortier de cuiure ou autre & estampez bien vostre gomme, y mettant tousiours vn peu de succre tant que vous faictes vne paste maniable. Notez tant plus est il battu tant plus blanc deuient il: de ceste paste vous pouués former ce que voulez, comme faire en formes cauees, ou des trenchoirs, ou plats, ou tasses ce que vous voulez, & le mettez suer dedans vn four qui ne soit pas trop chaud, vous le pouuez aussi dorer aussi fort que les voulez auoir: gardez bien que le four ne soit point si chaud qu'il face leuer la paste par bontons, cela ne vaudroit rien, car il faut que la paste demeure ferme.
Pour faire Caneline.

Prennez vne libure de ceste paste & deux onces de canelle tamizee bien fine, & battez vostre paste dedans vn mortier tant & si longuement que le canelle soit bien encorporee avec le succre, puis vous ferez des couuertures bien tendres la largeur d'vn demy quartier, prennez adonc des bastons la grosseur d'vn doigt, & rollez la paste dessus comme on faict les galettes, puis estant vn peu ressuyé tirés le hors du baston, & le mettez sur le papier, & le mettez suyer dedans le four.

Translation

To make sugar paste.

Take fine sugar well sifted through a fine sieve, then take gum tragacanth well tempered with rose water passed through a strainer as thick as you want it to pass, then put your gum into a mortar of copper or other & grind well your gum, and put therein a little of the sugar until you make a workable paste. Note that the more it is beaten the whiter it will be: of this paste you can form that which you want, like to make in hollow molds, or trenchers, or plates or cups as you want, & put it into an oven that is not too hot, you can also gild it and make it as strong as you want to have: watch well that the oven is no longer so hot that it makes dough rise, that would be worthless, because it is necessary that the paste remains firm.

To make Cinnamon Sticks.

Take a pound of this paste & two ounces of cinnamon ground well fine, & beat your paste in a mortar then & long enough that the cinnamon is well incorporated with the sugar, then make the covers well thin the size of a half quarter, take then sticks the size of a finger, & roll the paste like one makes little galettes (crepes), then once a little dry, slide off the end of the stick, & put it on the paper, & put it into the oven.

My version

250g icing sugar
1 teaspoon powdered gum tragacanth
3 teaspoons rosewater (add more if required)

I didn't want to make as much as a pound of paste, and was working in metric. I decided to use 250g of icing sugar, being the size that a packet of icing sugar comes in, in Australia. Sugar wouldn't have come in this form in the period, however the sugar that was available would have been ground until it was this fine.

There is no guidance as to how much gum tragacanth to use in the recipe. I looked at modern gum paste recipes to see if they would provide any guidance – a typical modern gum paste recipe might use gum tragacanth but with the addition of gelatin, egg whites or maybe corn or glucose syrup. That said I did find a recipe (Lindy's cakes in the UK) that simply said that she used 1tsp of gum tragacanth added to 250g sugar paste.

So I used a teaspoon of gum tragacanth powder, and added about three teaspoons of rosewater. I discovered that what happens when you add rosewater to gum powder is that the gum gels immediately into lumps, not easily dissolved by stirring.

But as the original recipe indicates, passing it through a strainer helped to turn it into an amorphous gel, which could then be mixed with the sifted icing sugar to make a paste.

For 250g of my newly made sugar paste, I kneaded in 31 grams of cinnamon (the proportion in the recipe is 1 pound of paste to 2 oz of cinnamon ie. one eighth). To add verisimilitude to the look, I added a few drops of brown food colouring (this is not in the original recipe – I have found that how dark the paste will be is dependant on the cinnamon – the quality of it, and how newly-ground it is).

Using a rod rolling pin, I rolled the mixture out into thin strips and then rolled them up over skewers, and once dry enough, slid them off on to a rack. Rather than curing in a low oven, I placed them in front of the heater to dry.

I also took the extra step of using some brown food colouring to paint the sticks just lightly to give them more texture and make them look more realistic.

I am delighted with the final look and flavour of the cinnamon sticks, and have served them at a feast where they were received with much pleasure (and some confusion as people thought they were real).

Fine Cakes 2 - from the Good Huswife's Jewell

Here is an old recipe from "The Good Husewife's Jewell" published in 1596:

Take fine flowre and good Damaske water you must have no other liqueur but that, then take sweet butter, two or three yolkes of egges and a good quantity of Suger, and a few cloves, and mace, as your Cookes mouth shall serve him, and a lyttle saffron, and a little Gods good about a sponfull if you put in too much they shall arise, cutte them in squares lyke unto trenchers, and pricke them well, and let your oven be well swept and lay them uppon papers and so set them into the oven. Do not burne them if they be three or foure days old they bee the better.

My redaction:

• 2 cups flour
• 175g butter
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 cup sugar
• 1tsp saffron, ground
• ½ tsp cloves
• 2 tsp mace, ground
• 3 tablespoons rosewater
• 1 tsp baking powder

Mix dry ingredients, and rub in the butter to make something resembling fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolks and rosewater, and mix to make a dough. Wrap in plastic wrap and keep in the fridge for an hour or so to settle. Roll out to 5mm and cut out shapes. Bake for about 20 minutes at 175 degrees until lightly golden.

Fine Cakes - English spiced shortbread

This recipe is from "The Widowes Treasure" which was published in 1639. It is pretty much a spiced shortbread, but made, interestingly, with pre-baked flour. This gives them a really beautiful crisp texture.

The original version:
Take a quantity of fine wheate Flower, and put it in an earthen pot. Stop it close and set it in an Oven, and bake it as long as you would a pasty of Venison, and when it baked it will be full of clods.Then searce your flower through a fine sercer.

Then take clouted Creame or sweet butter, but Creame is best: then take sugar, cloves, mace, saffron and yolks of eggs, so much as wil seeme to season your flower. Then put these things into the Creame, temper all together. Then put thereto your flower. So make your cakes. The paste will be very short; therefore make them very little. Lay paper under them.
My version:
1 cup plain flour
90 g butter
1 generous pinch of saffron
3 cloves
1/8 tsp mace
1/4 cup caster sugar
1 egg yolk

Bake flour for 15-20 minutes at 180 degrees, in a closed casserole dish. The flour shouldn't brown, but you will see that it clumps together if you stir it with a spoon.  Allow to cool, then sift.

Grind spices with sugar. Cream butter, sugar/spice and egg yolk till the consistency of thick cream. Fold in flour.  Do not knead the dough. 

I pressed small amounts of this mixture into molds to make flour shapes, which popped out of the mold easily.  One of my apprentices forms them in to small balls and then presses them flat. As the original recipe says, the paste is very short! Bake on baking trays lined with paper for 10-15 minutes at 180 degrees.

*Note: be careful with the mace - depending on the particular mace you have, it can be very strong!

Bizcochos - Renaissance Spanish Biscotti

This recipe is from a book by Diego Granado, "Libro del Arte de Cozina", 1599 trans. by Lady Brighid ni Chiarain

Take twelve eggs, and remove the whites from four of them, and with a little orange-flower water beat them a great deal, and grind a pound of sugar, and cast it in little by little, always beating quickly, and cast in flour, or powdered wheat starch, and beat it with force. Having cast in the said flour, when they see that it is necessary, and very fine, and the dough must remain white, just as for fritters, and then cast it in your pots, and carry them to the oven, and when half-cooked remove them, and dust them with well-ground sugar, and cut them to your taste, and return them to the oven, and let them finish baking a second time: and if they wish when they beat them, cast in as much white wine as an eggshell, it will be good.

My version of the recipe (shrunk down somewhat!):

3 eggs
1 egg yolk
2/3 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1/8 tsp orange flower water
1 tsp wine
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees

Beat the eggs, wine and orange flower water till fluffy but not dry. Add the sugar slowly while continuing to beat. Once well blended and dissolved, add 2 cups of flour gradually, continuing to beat. This will make a sticky dough.

Put this into a loaf tin and bake in a moderate oven for about 15 minutes till the loaf is set and firm to the touch but not browned. 

Allow to cool. Slice thinly.

Drop the oven temperature to 140 degrees. Lay the slices of cake on oven trays and put back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes until lightly browned.

 These strongly resemble modern biscotti minus almonds, and are crisp and light and would be great with coffee.