In the two days I've had off since the holidays. . .

. . .I've gotten into an Ancient Cookbook Frenzy.One thing I can say for people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: they had one hell of a collective sweet tooth. Make a pie of artichoke bottoms? Strew it with sugar before you serve it to table. Boil a calve's chaldron (which I just found out is entrails) and spice it with mace and nutmeg and cinnamon? Sprinkle a little sugar over that mofo before you serve it up in a pasty. Roast a rooster? Sugar. Making a nice (meaning exacting) recipe for biskit? Sugar. Sheep's feet? Sugar.When a recipe starts with "Take a pound of sugar, seirced, and lay it onto four pounds of butter, add enough flower to make a past with rosewater and fresh Milk," you know you're really on to something.My goal is to find recipes that don't involve too much sugar, like roasted capon with a cream/anchovy/egg yolk sauce, and try to make them. The trick is deciding when "enough" is really enough, as most of the recipes say to bake, boil, or chafe something until it is enough or is meet.The best instructions I've found so far are for Makeing a Caudle After the French Manner, in which you are directed to Seethe as much Milk as is fit on the Coals of the Fyre, and when little Pimples appear, you are to Take It Off and Coole It by the Fyre until it is Hardened, which, ew.In that vein, I offer two recipes, primarily for Friend Penny The Lotion S., but also for anybody who needs soup. Non-vegetarian alternatives for the first are given in parenthesis.Aunti...
Source: Head Nurse - Category: Nurses Authors: Source Type: blogs