Subject: Eggs

From: [email-masked] (Stephen Bloch)
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1993 02:00:27 GMT

I'm making a dish for an SCA feast in a week and a half that calls for
around four dozen eggyolks, and I would very much like something to do
with the whites.  When I think of egg whites, I think of meringues and
similar puffy things like macaroons -- but I don't know of any evidence
that anybody made meringues before the development of rotary eggbeaters.
On the other hand, there are an awful lot of medieval recipes calling
for eggyolks, and I can't believe they just threw out all the whites.
Can anyone help?

The feast in question, by the way, is 12th-century Andalusian.  The
dish with the four dozen eggyolks is 13th-century Andalusian, and 
although I would of course prefer a documented Andalusian use for the
whites, I'd be willing to make "traditional Sephardic" almond macaroons,
or something similar, if I knew the technique was period.

-- 
					Stephen Bloch
				    [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (John Wexler)
Date: 30 Jun 93 12:10:11 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Stephen Bloch) writes:
|> but I don't know of any evidence
|> that anybody made meringues before the development of rotary eggbeaters.
You can hand-beat eggs with a whisk made of twigs, or even with a fork. 
I know people who still prefer to do this.  Meringue and all sorts of
whipped-egg-white products existed long before rotary beaters.  In fact,
there's an old wive's tale that eggs beat better in a copper bowl. 
Every so often, somebody investigates this and discovers that it really
is true, but the prevalence of rotary beaters with glass or plastic
bowls means that the copper trick is soon forgotten again.

Another use for spare egg whites would have been for binding all sorts
of mixtures, from pastry to ground nuts to minced meat.

    John Wexler
    Edinburgh

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From: [email-masked] (Stephen Bloch)
Date: 1 Jul 93 20:06:01 GMT

[email-masked] (John Wexler) was one of several people to inform
me that meringue can be made with a hand whisk.  And indeed, there is
no doubt that meringue could have been made in medieval Europe, or for
that matter thousands of years earlier.  But my question is different:
WAS it made in medieval Europe?  Of the half-dozen or more responses
I've received so far, not one has mentioned a medieval or even
Renaissance recipe that calls for meringue.  And meringue is such a
magical thing that I can't imagine the spectacle-loving medieval
European cooks knowing about it and not using it heavily.

The fact that it could have been done doesn't mean it was.  The
ingredients for a roux-based white sauce are butter, flour, and milk,
all of which have existed for thousands of years.  But according to
Rudolf Grewe, the earliest documented roux-based white sauce is from
the late 18th century.  And roux takes a lot less elbow-grease to make
than does meringue.

-- 
					Stephen Bloch
				    [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Lena Bolander)
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1993 06:31:06 GMT

> the late 18th century.  And roux takes a lot less elbow-grease to make

Can meringues be made with honey instead of sugar? 
Anyone who knows when refined sugar was started to be used?

Eggwhites may also be used for Spanish or French white nougat. I do not know how old this sweet is but from what I have heard, the Spanish nuns prepared it from left over egg-whites  which they privately could use. The main ingredients are egg-white, honey and almonds. I have no recipe so I do not know what else is required. 
The French type is soft and slightly tough while the Spanish type is hard.

	            Lena Bolander

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From: [email-masked] (Stephen Bloch)
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1993 15:40:09 GMT

>Can meringues be made with honey instead of sugar? 

I don't know.

>Anyone who knows when refined sugar was started to be used?

The distinction between "sugre blake" and "sugre whyte" shows up in
English cookbooks in the 15th century, I believe, if not earlier (I'm
at work, and all my cookbooks are in boxes for moving anyway).  The
13th-century Andalusian cookbook from which I'm working has numerous
references to sugar; I don't remember whether it mentions its color
specifically.  I've seen pictures of conical loaves of white sugar
(in sources related to medicine and pharmacology) from fairly early,
but I don't remember the exact date.

>Eggwhites may also be used for Spanish or French white nougat.
>I do not know how old this sweet is but from what I have heard,
>the Spanish nuns prepared it from left over egg-whites  which they
>privately could use. The main ingredients are egg-white, honey and almonds.
>I have no recipe so I do not know what else is required. 

Sounds reminiscent of "hulwa", which David Friedman mentioned in his post.
(Aside: I think "hulwa" is an Arabic cognate for "halvah", although the
recipes are only vaguely similar.)  It wouldn't be surprising if the
Spanish nuns acquired the recipe from the Moslems of al-Andalus.  Anyway,
there's no suggestion in the recipe I have that the eggwhite becomes
anything other than a slightly frothy liquid.

-- 
					Stephen Bloch
				    [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Terry Nutter)
Date: 3 Jul 93 04:19:42 GMT

Hi, Terry here.  Lena Bolander writes,

>Anyone who knows when refined sugar was started to be used?

White sugar is already more common than honey in 13th Century
Anglo-Norman recipes (see Constance Hieatt's edition of two
Anglo-Norman collections, one 13th C and one 14th, in _Speculum_,
1986).  I don't know how early it came into use, but far 
earlier than Stephen needs for his purposes.

BTW, I have just finished entering all the ingredients of that
13th C collection plus several 14th C and one 15th C (629 recipes
in all, if I remember the numbers rightly). Sugar is one of the
three most common ingredients for all collections (and is in more
than half the 15th C recipes).  In all those recipes, only two 
specify black sugar; all the rest call for white.

I don't know where they were getting it, but they certainly
took it for granted.

Cheers,

-- Terry Nutter

Blacksburg, VA     [email-masked]     (703)552-1598