Is There a Nutmeg in the House? (39 page)

Monsieur’s bill for sweetmeats.

A point which we don’t now always grasp when reading of the meals of the seventeenth century is that in those days, the dessert of sweetmeats and marchpanes, fresh and candied fruits, little
cakes and biscuits, was known as the bankett or banquet course, and laid out in a room quite apart from the dining hall where the main meal was served. Sometimes there was even a separate building for the banquet room, perhaps in the garden, after the manner of a summer house, or even on the roof. There the party would proceed after dinner, to find the tables spread with ‘banketting stuffe’ as the Elizabethans and early Jacobeans had called the dessert. There would be sweet and spiced wines, the candles would be lit, the musicians would play, and if the banquet room was large enough, there would be dancing.
Danser, chanter, vin et espices et torches à allumer
, as the enchanting
Ménagier de Paris
³
had put it over three centuries earlier.

It was from Italian sources that the English had first learned of the art of sugar confectionery, our early recipes being based on those given in a translation of the French version of an Italian work first published in 1557 by a certain Girolamo Ruscelli, otherwise known as Alexis of Piedmont. This was one of those
Books of Secretes
popular in the sixteenth century, the secrets being at that time mainly medical and cosmetic, and written more for the benefit of professional apothecaries, alchemists and physicians than for the amateur household practitioner. Given, however, the Elizabethan passion for novelty and for knowledge of every kind (the translation appeared in 1558, the year of Elizabeth’s accession), it was inevitable that such publications should find their way into many educated households, and the ‘secrets’ be frequently copied out into the recipe books kept by almost every family cultivated enough to read and write.

So it was that the handful of confectionery recipes contained in
The Secretes of the Reverende Maister Alexis of Piedmont
, translated out of French into English by Wyllyam Warde in 1558, reappear in several little household compilations which found their way into print later in the century. It was a period when sugar was fast replacing honey as the main sweetening and preserving agent for fruit. Everybody wanted to know how to manage sugar, which required different techniques from the old ones used for honey. Alexis of Piedmont dealt with both, which makes his confectionery recipes – there were only a dozen of them – particularly interesting to us, as no doubt also to his original readers.

There were directions for clarifying both honey and sugar, for candying citrons, for candying peaches after the Spanish fashion,
for making the conserve or confiture ‘of quinces as they dooe in Valence, which also the Genovoyes dooe use’. (This was the French
cotignac
or Italian
cotognata
, the solid quince conserve for which the Genoese were particularly renowned. Under various names such as chardequince or quince meat it had long been familiar as an imported luxury in royal and rich households. It was now being made with sugar instead of honey.) There were methods of conserving melon, pumpkin and marrow rinds in honey, and others for candying green walnuts with spices, cherries preserved in honey, and orange peels also in honey.

Most interesting of all perhaps, to the original readers of the book, were the instructions for making a ‘paste of sugre, whereof a man maye make all maner of fruites, and other fyne thynges, with theyr forme, as platters, dishes, glasses, cuppes, and such like thynges, wherewith you may furnish a table; and when you have doen, eate them up. A pleasant thing for them that sit at table.’ The recipe is a detailed one for a sugar paste stiffened with gum tragacanth, but still pliable enough to be shaped into ‘what things you will’ and ‘with suche fine knackes as maye serve a table, taking heede that there stand no hote thing nigh unto it. At the end of the banket they may eat al and breake the platters, dishes, glasses, cuppes, and all thinges: for this paste is verie delicate and savourous.’

This was just the kind of fantasy to catch the imagination of the Elizabethans. The pastry cooks must have set to work with great excitement, learning how to model those dishes, glasses and cups in sugar paste, for the amazement and amusement of the ladies and gentlemen who were to banquet off them, and for the pleasure, at the end of it all, of breaking and eating the plates and glasses – always provided that these hadn’t already melted in the heat of the candles and the flambeaux.

There was yet another way of devising pretty confections with the sugar plates
⁴
and dishes, of ‘moore finesse’ than just straightforward sugar imitations of glass or earthenware. This was to make almond and sugar tarts, ‘of like sorte that march paines be made of’. These were to be sandwiched between two sugar paste dishes. In this way there would be a double surprise for the company.

There was no end to the edible pyramids you could build up in this way. From such modest beginnings grew the art of the sugar confectioner, an art which in the Italy of the mid-seventeenth
century had already soared to such ambitious heights that the most eminent artists, woodcarvers and sculptors were involved in the design and execution of the ornamental
trionfi
,
⁵
the triumphs or centrepieces in sugar work made to adorn the feasts given by popes and prelates, princes and noblemen of Rome, Florence, Naples, Mantua, Milan. From Italy this extraordinary art form spread to France, to find its apotheosis in the extravaganza designed by Anthonin Carême, the nineteenth-century chef who is said to have declared that architecture was nothing more than an offshoot of the pastrycook’s art.

In less grandiose vein here is one of Alexis’ banketting sweetmeats, in shape an early version of Naples biscuits or sponge fingers, but in content more like spice or pepper cakes. The directions give several interesting insights into the techniques of the period.

To make little morsels as they use in Naples, an exquisite thinge, for they be very savourous, do comforte the stomacke, and make a sweet breath.

Take thre pound of fine sugre, yn flower of male vi. pound, of Sinamom thre onces, Nutmegs, ginger, pepper, of eche of them halfe an once, but let the quantitie of the pepper be greater than of the residue, raw white honny, not clarified, three onces. Firste make a round cyrcle with the saide flowre, in the middle whereof, you shal put the sugre, and upon it a pound of Muskt Rose water, bray and breake well all these things with your handes, so longe, untill you feele no more sugre. This done, you shall put in the saide spices, and than the hony, mixinge well all together with your hande.

After this mengle it againe among the flowre, and kepe some of it to flower the tile or other thinges that you must bake it upon. And when all is well broughte and made into past, you shall cut the little morsels in sunder with your handes, making each of them thre onces weight, or there aboute, than turne and make them in to the fourme of a fyshe, dressinge them with youre instrument meete for the same purpose. Than heate your oven and laye them upon little tiles of copper or earth, makinge first upon the tiles a good thicke bed of floure, you must bake them the mouth of the oven open, keping evermore a fire at one of the sides of the mouth of the oven, ye must also touche them often times, to se if they be baked ynoughe, and whether they hange
sure, and holde together betwene youre fingers: You may also bake them in the fire in ovens of copper covered, suche as tartes be made in, then when you have taken them out you must gilt them.

The Secrets of the Reverende Maister Alexis of Piedmont
: Translated out of French into English by Wyllyam Warde. Imprynted at London by John Kingstone for Nicholas Inglande, dwellinge in Poules Churchyarde. Anno 1558, Mensa Novemb.

References

1
. The Bedford Historical Series viii, London, Cape 1940.

2
. William Russell, the 5th Earl and first Duke.

3
.
Le Ménagier de Paris, Traité de morale et d’économie domestique composé vers 1393 par un bourgeois parisien
: Published for the first time by La Société des Bibliophiles françois 1847. p. 108.

4
. Flat sugar discs or lozenges, variously coloured, had been known certainly since the fourteenth century but it was only in the mid-sixteenth century that sugar refining became common in Europe, making sugar both more accessible and more possible to work into complex confections. Printed instructions in English were also now accessible for the first time, Alexis however had almost certainly copied them from an earlier Italian work, probably
Deficio di Ricette
, or
Edifice of Receipts
, published in Venice in 1541.

5
. Georgina Masson:
Food as Fine Art
, Apollo, May 1966, and Bartolomeo Stefani,
L’Arte di Ben Cucinare
, 2nd edition, Mantua 1671.

Petits Propos Culinaires
No 3, November 1979

Caramel Desserts

Caramel creams, caramel ices, caramel soufflés and mousses, caramelised apples are all delicious light puddings, simple enough to make. Once you know how to cook the sugar for the caramel, there are plenty of variations to be made on the original recipes. Why anybody should think it difficult to caramelise sugar is hard to understand, yet I’ve heard many people say that a caramel cream for example is ‘far too much of a nuisance’; and one must
believe that they find it so, or would there be such a ready sale for packets of caramel custard and bottles of ready-made caramel syrup?

CARAMELISED SUGAR

For coating a mould of 1-litre (1¾-pint) capacity, use 6 tablespoons each of white sugar and water. The saucepan is quite a crucial point. On no account use a tinned or enamelled one. The sugar reaches a very high temperature, higher than that of the melting point of tin, so a tinned saucepan will be ruined, while an enamelled one will certainly craze and probably burn. If you have a heavy copper pan lined with stainless steel that would do. I use a small – ½-litre (1-pint) capacity – cast aluminium saucepan, but the professional sugar-boiling pan is made of untinned copper and has a pouring spout.

Put the sugar and water in your saucepan, set it over steady heat. Keep a sharp watch. There is no need to stir, but the quantities are so small that the transformation from sugar and water to caramel happens very quickly. The sugar bubbles, turns pale gold then rapidly goes through several changes of colour until, in a minute or two, it looks like bright, clear butterscotch. This is the moment to snatch the pan from the heat – a few seconds longer and the caramel turns black and bitter. Throw a few drops of cold water into the pan to arrest the bubbling, pour the caramel at once into your mould, tilting and turning this so that as much as possible of the sides as well as the bottom are coated with the caramel, which sets almost instantly.

APPLE CARAMEL
(1)

This is a lovely dessert, not expensive and certainly not difficult to make. Quantities given are for 4 servings.

Apart from the caramel made as above, ingredients are 6 apples – say 750 g (1½ lb) – 6 tablespoons of sugar, a vanilla bean, 3 whole eggs.

The mould I use is the kind known as a charlotte mould, made of heavy, tinned steel, with plain, sloping sides. The capacity is 1 litre (1¾ pints), the diameter at the top 14 cm (5½ in), the depth 8.5 cm (3½ in). It has its own cover. Alternatives would be a cake mould or a porcelain soufflé dish.

To make the apple mixture: peel, core and slice the apples. Put them in a wide saucepan with the vanilla bean, the sugar and just enough water to moisten them, say 4 to 6 tablespoons. Cover the pan and let them cook fairly quickly until they are quite soft and transparent. Don’t overdo the cooking. Half the charm of this pudding is the cool, fresh taste of the apples. This will disappear if they are stewed to a viscous mass.

Have the caramelised mould ready. (It can be prepared while the apples are cooking, or it can be done well in advance if it happens to suit you.)