Here are some collected comments and notes on the dishes which people made for our Culinary Night last week: Caterina &tc.: “Tarim Basin flatbread (gluten free adaptation). Based on archaeological finds in east central Asia dating to the first millennium CE.” Information on Caterina &tc.’s Tarim Basin Flatbread can be Read more…
Blessed Eid! We’re back from our summer break, and we had a fantastic turnout for our Culinary Night last night! In honor of the season, we decided to do a Turkish, Ottoman, and Persian Theme. We ended up getting dishes from ancient Carthage, India, Iraq, England, and all over the Read more…
42. 43.
I’ve been putting this sugar paste post together for about three months now and have done four attempts, two successes, one mostly successful and one abject failure. I entered a version of this for commentary at the Unfinished Projects at Bitter End’s Harvest Feast, and I’ll be using that feedback to make my next attempt. I also brought the most successful version, with a functioning plate made out of sugar paste, to Culinary Night. My apologies for how long this one is but I wanted to be thorough and I plan to enter this in competition in the future.
There’s quite a history of sugar paste (modernly called gum paste), with recipes in English going back to at least 1558 when Alessio’s Secreti (1555) was translated into English. Recipes originating in English start appearing in 1567. Most of the recipes for sugar paste come out after the 1590s.
Updated April 4, 2017.
I was inspired to look back at some of my coffin work by a question from Don Caiaphas. Wow, has it been six years since I did this at Tir Righ A&S? Ok, I think it’s time to go back to this, especially since I have a bunch of research that I did in 2013 on it and never got around to writing up.
Coffins, as discussed in my previous work, are a pastry case which has a bottom, sides and a top (with exceptions where referred to in the recipe) which is able to hold its shape without supports in the oven and can be filled with other items.
The earliest I’ve found a coffin recipe is in Fourme of Curye from 1390 and the recipes continue throughout the SCA time period all the way to the 17th century, though they change in composition.