G8906 Historical Culinary Recipe Reconstruction Assignment
Participants: Ana Matisse Donefer-Hickie & Charles Kang

[FOR THE POWERPOINT SLIDESHOW, CLICK HERE]

Purpose: To approximate the process de Mayerne describes for creating “paste of flowers and colour of Marble.”
Venue: Upper East Side
Meeting Time(s): 09/16/16 11:30AM-1:00PM; 09/17/16 4:00PM-7:00PM
Temp: Both meetings outside temp. between 69-75F. Room temp. ~70F. Quite Dry.


Recipe
(p. 85) "134. To make paste of flowers and colour of marble, that which way soever you break it, it shall be like marble, and betwixt the light, it shall look very clear, and shall in eating taste of the natural flowers."
From Sir Théodore Turquet de Mayerne (1573-1655, attr.), Archimagirus anglo-gallicus: or, Excellent & approved receipts and experiments in cookery. Together with the best way of preserving. As also, rare forms of sugar-works: according to the French mode, and English manner. Copied from a choice manuscript of Sire Theodore Mayerne Knight, Physician to the late K. Charles. [London]: Printed for G. Bedell, ad T. Colins, and are to be sold at their shop at the Middle-Temple-Gate, in Fleet-street, 1658.
Chapter Heading: "Experiments in Sugar-works."

“Take all sorts of pleasant flowers, as violets, Cowslips, Roses, Gilly-flowers, Mary-golds, or any other pleasant flowers, and beat them in a mortar every flower by it self, with sugar, untill the sugar be turned to the Colour of the flowers, then put a little gum-dragon to the beating thereof and so beat it out into a perfect paste, and when you have made six pieces of paste of several colours with them, every flower will taste of his nature, then rowl your paste thin, and lay every piece of paste one upon another in mingling sort; then roule your paste into a small rowle as bigge as your finger, then cut it into little pieces overthwart, as big as small nuts, then rowle them thin, that you may see through them; dry them before the fire, and when they be drye, you may box them, and keep them all the year.”


Ingredients
  1. “All sorts of pleasant flowers, as violets, Cowslips, Roses, Gilly-flowors, Marygolds, or any other pleasant flowers”: i.e. variable, but “several colours”
    • Dried roses, dried lavender, fresh sunflower petals, fresh blue sage, fresh white nasturtium, fresh orange nasturtium. All fresh flowers are from the Windfall Farms stall at the Union Square Greenmarket (Wednesdays and Saturdays, year-round), purchased on September 17, 2016 at around 2:30 p.m.
    • Notes: All are edible. Difference between dried and fresh- de Mayerne does not specify. Would these flowers have the same properties as 17th c flowers? We have different varieties - will the variety of flower used impact the outcome of the recipe?
  2. “Sugar”: no amount indicated
    • White castor sugar.
    • Notes: What are the differences between modern sugar and 17th c sugar? We used loose sugar scooped up with a measuring spoon. 17th c sugar was stored in cones and would likely have been scraped off for consumption. (Source: __http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodcandy.html#aboutsugar__)
    • Would this impact its texture? Moisture content?
  3. “Gum-dragon”: “a little”
    • LorAnn Oils Gum Tragacanth - a powder that is safe for consumption and commonly used in modern sugarwork - purchased from Amazon.com.
    • Notes: How much is “a little”? Gum-dragon, also known as gum tragacanth, is a “__natural gum__ obtained from the dried sap of several species of Middle Easternlegumes of the genusAstragalus, including A. adscendens, A. gummifer, A. brachycalyx, and A. tragacanthus (Source: Wikipedia).” “Tragacanthum, commonly called Gum Traganth, and Gum Dragon, helps coughs, hoarsness, and distillations upon the lungues (Source: Pharmacopoeia Londinensis).” A search for “gum dragon” in EEBO between 1648 and 1668 shows many contemporary recipes, in which it was steeped, dissolved, or boiled in water, rose water, or vinegar.
  4. Water
    • NYC tap water
    • Notes: PH of water is likely different than PH of 17th century English water. How might different water additives (chlorine, contaminants) affect the results?


Tools
  1. “Mortar” - the only tool mentioned in the recipe
    • Small ceramic mortar and pestle, previously used for grinding spices.
  2. Prep surface
    • Wooden cutting board, wooden table.
  3. Rolling pin
    • Wooden rolling pin
  4. Knife
    • Small paring knife, precise material composition unknown.
  5. Cooking surface
    • Baking sheet covered in parchment paper.
  6. Heating apparatus
    • Toaster oven.


Instructions Breakdown & Commentary
  1. “Beat” each variety of flowers with sugar “until the sugar be turned to the Colour of the flowers.”
    • Add sugar and flowers to mortar and pulverise them until the petals break up and the sugar takes on their color.
    • What motion does “beat” indicate? Grinding? Pounding? Moving the pestle in a circle or just up and down?
  2. “Put a little gum-dragon” and continue “beating” the mixture “out into a perfect paste. Make six pastes in several colors."
    • Add tragacanth gum to the flower-sugar mixture.
    • How? Dry? Mixed with liquid? With liquid added after?
  3. Roll out each paste “thin” and layer them “in mingling sort.”
    • Roll out each paste separately as thin as possible without breakage and then layer them on top of one another so they may be, in turn, rolled up together.
    • What does “mingling sort” mean? Presumable some kind of overlap. This is where marbling begins, but it is difficult to know exactly what effect de Mayerne is looking for and how to achieve it.
    • Different meanings of “roll” reflected in de Mayerne’s spelling: “rowl” for rolling out flat with a rolling pin vs. “roule” for rolling all the thin paste disks into a log.
  4. Roll up the layered pastes “into a small rowle as bigge as your finger.”
    • Roll the different colors of paste together like you would a swiss roll or a spiral ice-box cookie dough.
    • Here is an indication of the amount of ingredients we should be using. That all six layers end up in a roll as big as a finger (though whose finger is another question) indicates that the amount of flowers and sugar shouldn’t be that large (i.e. - a pound of sugar and bouquet of flowers, even if rolled very thin, would make way too much.
  5. “Cut it into little pieces overthwart, as big as small nuts.”
    • Cut the log into smaller pieces width-wise along the length of the log. Again like cutting off ice-box cookies from a log of dough.
    • “Overthwart” - OED: placed or lying crosswise or across something else; transverse. What kind of nuts? Further research into what kind of nuts were commonly available to de Mayerne (or his audience) might be necessary for an accurate indication of size.
  6. Roll out each piece thin “that you may see through them.”
    • Roll out the multi-colored pieces flat with a rolling pin so the colors mix together and the resulting disk is thin enough so that light passes through.
    • How to roll them so thin? Will they be too delicate to roll that thin?
  7. “Dry them before the fire.”
    • Expose the flat disks to heat until they no longer have any of the effects of moisture, i.e. stickiness, wetness, flexibility, etc.
    • Should the sugar be cooked so that it becomes hard and shiny or simply dried out so that it is still matte but hard and inflexible? Recipe 132 (for casting sugar) in the same book specifies “sugar being boiled to a candy heigh,” which indicates that the shiny, hard effect one gets when cooking sugar is described as candy, and that by “drying” de Mayerne meant something different.
    • Recalling Albala’s recounting of the “Roasting” reconstruction: dry them on a flat surface in front of a toaster oven and rotate them regularly for even heating.
  8. “Box them, and keep them all the year.”
    • They will be durable and storable, kept in some kind of box.


Trial One, September 16, 2016
  1. “Beat” each variety of flowers with sugar “until the sugar be turned to the Colour of the flowers.”
    • 12:12PM 1 level wooden spoon of sugar (approx. 1tbs, but not exact) and 1 dried rose, dipped in water added to the mortar.
    • Beating started, about 2 minutes after, 2 drops of water added. 12:17PM mixture is taking on the color of the roses. Sugar seems to be crushed more finely, granules are smaller, broken into something approaching powdered sugar. Beginning to look feathery. Sugar has taken on the pink color, but rose petals have also been broken into smaller pieces that add color on their own.
  2. “Put a little gum-dragon” and continue “beating” the mixture “out into a perfect paste. Make six pastes in several colors.
    • 12:19PM. Decision made to add gum
    • 12:21 1/8 teaspoon dry gum powder added. Beating resumed, no immediate difference, the sugar is very powdery. The crystals are now a lot smaller. Starting to clump a little bit. Crystals are sticking together near the rim/edges. Not really cohesive: “lightly damp sand.” Smells very strongly of roses.
    • 12:23 1/8 teaspoon water added. After 2 passes, immediate clumping
    • 12:24 More paste-like
    • 12:25 Another 1/8 teaspoon water added. The mixture starts to cohere.
    • 12:26 Beating completed - a homogenous paste. Mixture is quite sticky. Scraped out of the mortar onto a wooden cutting board.
  3. Roll out each paste “thin” and layer them “in mingling sort.”
STEPS 3 to 6 SKIPPED
7. “Dry them before the fire.”


Trial Two, September 17, 2016
Method: Since we had access to more flowers for this trial, we attempted the full recipe. Steps 1 and two were completed for each flower, and the resulting balls of “perfect paste” were stored in a glass bowl under a damp towel to keep them from drying out until we reached step 3. Mortar and pestle were cleaned with soap and warm water between each flower. Also note, we forgot to keep track of the time on this trial.
  1. “Beat” each variety of flowers with sugar “until the sugar be turned to the Colour of the flowers.”
    • Blue Sage 1 tbs sugar and 2 flowers added to mortar.
    • Easier to pound/grind than rose in trial one. Sugar takes the color very easily.
    • “Beaten” until sugar is sticking to the side of the mortar in loose sheets and coming off.
  2. “Put a little gum-dragon” and continue “beating” the mixture “out into a perfect paste. Make six pastes in several colors.
    • This time, we made a mixture of 1tbs dragon and 2 tbs water in a small glass bowl. This resulted in a gummy paste that formed small clumps when stirred.
    • ¼ tsp of the tragacanth/water mixture added to the sugar/flower mixture. Tragacanth runs smoothly but doesn’t quite mix in with the sugar easily - immediate reaction is to add more water. We don’t. Tragacanth is slowly being incorporated into the sugar but it is not homogenous, still clumps of tragacanth jelly. Like bloomed gelatin not incorporated at the right temperature. attempts to grind more to break up little clumps of gum. Not forming a dough. Not clumping as well as yesterday. Color is more homogenous than yesterday. Little bit smoother than yesterday but little clumps of gum are still visible.
    • ⅛ tsp dry tragacanth added. The mixture is more difficult to maneuver. The sugar is adhering more to the sides than before. A paste is forming more quickly. More like a paste, but there are still little granules of sugar falling off.
    • Another 1/8 tsp dry tragacanth added. The mixture became more crumbly/dry
    • 1/8 tsp water added. The mixture is adhering but quite sticky. Not uniform: the water has not been incorporated homogeneously throughout the mixture. Mixture is “beaten” for longer. Becomes thicker in consistency and more homogenous as the water is beaten in. Forms clumps that adhere to each other.
    • Mixture is scraped out of mortar, formed into a ball, and put in a glass jar under a damp paper towel.


  1. “Beat” each variety of flowers with sugar “until the sugar be turned to the Colour of the flowers.”
    • Orange nasturtium 1 tbs sugar, 1 orange flower added to mortar.
    • The flower disintegrates very quickly. It turns the sugar more red than orange. Smells peppery like nasturtium. The sugar is very quickly taking on the color of the flower.
  2. “Put a little gum-dragon” and continue “beating” the mixture “out into a perfect paste. Make six pastes in several colors.
    • From the experience with blue sage, we decided that the pre-mixed dragon-water mixture was not effective. Instead, we added the tragacanth and water separately in the same ratio (since that ratio did result in a gummy consistency when it was just dragon and water)
    • 3/8 tsp dry tragacanth added. Very quickly indistinguishable from the sugar. More grainy and less crystaline. Nothing is adhering quite yet. Now we are getting clumps of sugar sticking togetheer. The whole mixture is sticking to the side of the mortar more consistenty. We will def need more water.
    • ⅛ tsp water added. More jelly like where the water hits. Not immediately incorporated homogeneously. Bits stick to the side and others stick to the pestle. Definitely cohering more. Have to scrape some off the pestle to incorporate the mixture better. The trick is getting it fast enough so that the mixture does not form clumps. Still, this is a better mixture than the blue sage/salvia.


  1. “Beat” each variety of flowers with sugar “until the sugar be turned to the Colour of the flowers.”
    • Sunflower Petals 1 tbs sugar, 6 petals added to mortar.
    • Mixes in very easily. The petals are not amalgamating as easily as the other flowers. The petals are probably more fibrous. Doesn’t really smell like anything.
  2. “Put a little gum-dragon” and continue “beating” the mixture “out into a perfect paste. Make six pastes in several colors.
    • 3/8tsp dragon added and mixed.
    • 1/8tsp water added and mixed. Similar reaction as before. but the mixture is too crumbly.
    • Approx. 1/16tsp of water added. Coming together more easily. The mixture begins to resemble the others.


  1. “Beat” each variety of flowers with sugar “until the sugar be turned to the Colour of the flowers.”
    • Light/white nasturtium 1 tbs sugar and 1 flower added to mortar.
    • Slightly harder to beat in. Peppery smell, typical of nasturtium. More moisture than in sunflower petals.
  2. “Put a little gum-dragon” and continue “beating” the mixture “out into a perfect paste. Make six pastes in several colors.
    • 3/8 tsp dry tragacanth added. Forming the powdery mixture again.
    • 1/8 tsp water added. The mixture is coming together immediately. The paste is ready much more quickly than earlier flowers.


  1. “Beat” each variety of flowers with sugar “until the sugar be turned to the Colour of the flowers.”
    • Rose (dried) 1 tbs sugar, 1 dried rose, moistened lightly added to mortar.
    • Difficult to break down the flowers. Little bits of flower still visible.
  2. “Put a little gum-dragon” and continue “beating” the mixture “out into a perfect paste. Make six pastes in several colors.
    • 3/8tsp gum dragon added.
    • ⅛ tsp water added. Turns into paste on the pestle immediately. Sticking to the pestle more than it sticks to the mortar.
    • Approx. 1/16 tsp water added. The mixture is coming together.


  1. “Beat” each variety of flowers with sugar “until the sugar be turned to the Colour of the flowers.”
    • Lavender (dried) 1 tbs sugar and about ½ tsp lavendar added to mortar.
    • Difficult to break down the buds. Lots of pieces still visible. We decide to leave the buds in.
  2. “Put a little gum-dragon” and continue “beating” the mixture “out into a perfect paste. Make six pastes in several colors.
    • 3/8 tsp of dry tragacanth added. Tragacanth dilutes the color of the mixture.
    • 1/8 tsp of water. Mixture is coming together, but still crumbly.


Taste Test
Raw flowers vs. paste
Will “every flower… taste of his nature” when made into a sugar paste?

1. Blue sage/salvia: subtly pepper but sweet.
Paste: sweetness subsumed by the sugar. pepperiness gone.

2. Sunflower: a little bitter, tastes greener than blue sage, no sweetness
Paste: still green and bitter

3. Orange nasturtium: peppery and little bit sweet, round taste in the back, a hint of sweetness, reverberates
Paste: the bite is gone but the flavor is there

4. White nasturtium: very peppery, astringent, sweet aftertaste, round taste, reverberates
Paste: sweetness is enhanced, the pepperiness passes away.

5. Lavender: bitter, but very fragrant
Paste: strong fragrance combined with sweetness of sugar

6. Rose: bitter, rosy, texture of dried petals unpleasant.
Paste: sweet, strong taste of rose with no bitterness.


Rolling
  1. Rolling out each paste.
    • Roll out each paste “thin”...
      1. Starting with the Blue sage. It rolls out nicely and does not stick to the pin.
      2. White nasturtium, stuck to the block a little more.
      3. Orange nasturtium, sticking to the board and the rolling pin a little more than the other ones
      4. Sunflower feels drier, has a crumbly texture - more sugar granules are visible in this one than the others. Edges are lacier.
      5. Lavender is harder to roll. mixture feels thicker. has the consistency of dry dough. more dificult the move with the roller. does not stick. very resistant.
      6. Rose - very hard to roll, harder than the lavender. the color is very good. very pink. Also resistant paste, thicker, dry consistency.
      7. All have rolled out fairly smoothly to about 1-2 milimeters thick.
    • … and layer them “in mingling sort.”
      1. Each paste layered on top of each other so that they overlap, and then all are rolled together. This technique to avoid a “spiral” effect. Pieces rolled together well, creating a roll about 10 cm long and 3 cm thick. Maybe bigger than a finger. Some water was added to the exterior of the roll to keep it from crumbling.
  2. Roll up the layered pastes “into a small rowle as bigge as your finger.”
    • See step four video on wiki for record and commentary.
  3. “Cut it into little pieces overthwart, as big as small nuts.”
    • Slight resistance but cuts through fairly easily.
    • End piece cut off and rolled as a test - the layering of color creates veins as the mixture is rolled thinner and thinner. The colors do not mix together totally. Rolled thin enough to let the light go through.
  4. Roll out each piece thin “that you may see through them.”
    • Colors come through nicely when the slices were laid on their sides. Layers do appear sort of spirally but resemble marble remarkably. de Mayerne was probably able to roll them thinner than we can.
    • Generally, when rolled out these pieces stick to the board a bit, but we are trying to get them thinner than the earlier ones.
    • The different pieces cohere quite well when rolled out - the different pieces stick together. Looks more like granite than marble though.
    • The paste continued to dry while exposed to air. Even the cut pieces are more resistant to the rolling pin.
Note: We used the same procedure for the second batch as well, with nearly identical results.Second batch, however, (halves of the gum-sugar-flower mix) dried while exposed to air. Had to be sprayed with an atomizer for moisture in order for us to roll them out. Also, we spritzed the second roll before we rolled it up so the pieces would adhere. This worked well, as there was little breakage during the second second rolling.


Drying

  1. “Dry them before the fire.”
    • Q: Is the sugar supposed to melt and become “candy” with a smooth, shiny surface? Or are they, as the recipe suggests, just supposed to dry? How to achieve this without the sugar crumbling?
    • Drying trial 1 (four pieces)
    • Four rolled out pieces are placed side by side on a piece of parchment, which is placed on a baking sheet just outside the open toaster oven.
    • 200F, timer set for 10 minutes
    • Min 4 - bit of lifting at the edges closest to the heat. rotated for even heating.
    • Min 8 - wafers are hard to the touch. lifting is visible at the edges closest to the heat.
    • Drying trial 2 (two pieces)
    • Same arrangement as trial 1, but this time with only two pieces.
    • 200F, 10 minutes
    • Min 5 - pieces rotated for even heat.
    • Min 10 - again pieces are lifting at the edges. Easy to remove from parchment.
    • Drying 3 and 4
    • Same.
  2. “Box them, and keep them all the year.”
    • Pieces layered in paper towel and placed in an airtight glass box with a plastic lid.


Context/Additional Research
  1. Archimagirus…cookery
    • Begins with a section titled “Receipts for Cookerie”: divided into “Pyes,” “Boyled and rost meats,” “Creames,” “Cakes, White-pots, Puddings, and Almond-works, &c”
    • “Experiments in sugar-works” begins on page 69. Divided into “Cakes” and “All kind of Sugar-works.” Ends on page 93.
    • “The best way of preserving, &c. of preserves” begins on page 95 and ends on page 112.
  2. Mayerne, Théodore Turquet de, Sir. Lost Secrets of Flemish Painting: Including the First Complete English Translation of the De Mayerne Manuscript, B.M. Sloane 2052. Floyd, VA: Alchemist, 2001.
    • Introduction by Donald C. Fels, Jr.: (p. xii) “de Mayerne, often referred to as the father of modern pharmacology”
    • Sloane 2052 starts with “Painting, sculpting, coloring and was is pertinent to the other arts. …written in accordance with the statements of Peter Paul Rubens, van Dyck, Somars, Greenbury, Janson etc.”
    • It includes recipes and records of studio practice
    • Also included: discussion of varnishes for a wide variety of objects (paintings, musical instruments, parchment & leather, etc.)
    • See scan of a recipe for Turkish Paper (f.58r): note the use of gum tragacanth (“gomme tragacanthe”) & marbling
  3. Payne, L. M. “Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, 1573-1655.” The British Medical Journal 1, No. 4916 (March 26, 1955): 783.
    • Father was a French protestant and writer of history; medical degree in Montpellier (1597); appointed one of the king’s physicians; settled in England in 1611 and appointed first physician to James I and elected Fellow of the College of Physicians; involved in the preparation of the first edition of the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis; appointed first physician to Charles I and physician to Queen Henrietta Maria (prepared cosmetics for her); brought calomel (mercury(I) chloride, or dimercury dichloride) into use for producing purple for enamel painting [need to check this]; appointed nominal first physician to Charles II
  4. Search on EEBO: keyword “gum dragon,” date 1648-1668. Results: 63 hits in 28 records. In almost all records, gum dragon is steeped, dissolved, or boiled in liquid (mostly rose water, one mention of vinegar).
  5. Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, or, The London dispensatory further adorned by the studies and collections of the Fellows…, 1653. (p. 29) Section on “Tears, liquors, and rozins”: “Tragacanthum, commonly called Gum Traganth, and Gum Dragon, helps coughs, hoarsness, and distillations upon the lungues.”
  6. The Queen’s closet opened. First published in 1655, republished in 1656, 1658, 1659, etc.
    • Only in the 1659 edition does a similar recipe appear: “To make Paste of flowers of the colour of Marble, tasting of natural flowers. / Take every sort of pleasing flowers, as Violets, Cowslips, Gilly-flowers, Roses or Marigolds, and beat them in a Mortar, each flower by it self with sugar, till the sugar become the colour of the flower, then put a little Gum Dragon steept in water into it, and beat it into a perfect paste; and when you have half a dozen colours, every flower will take of his nature, then rowl the paste therein, and lay one piece upon another, in mingling sort, so rowl your Paste in small rowls, as big and as long as your finger, then cut it off the bigness of a small nut, overthwart, and so rowl them thin, that you may see a knife through them, so dry them before the fire till they be dry.” Note that gum dragon is steeped in water in this version. Perhaps do a side-by-side comparison with the original recipe?
    • After the opening epistle, the section “The Prescribers and Approvers of most of these rare Receipts, their following names are in several Pages of this Book inserted and annexed to their own experienced Receipts” includes “Dr. Mayhern [sic], Physician to the late King” and refers to a recipe on p. 180. This is not the paste recipe, but “A Purge by Dr. Mayhern.”
  7. [SECONDARY SOURCE] Knoppers, Laura Lunger. “Opening the Queen’s Closet: Henrietta Maria, Elizabeth Cromwell, and the Politics of Cookery.” Renaissance Quarterly 60, No. 2 (Summer 2007): 464-499.
    • 483: “Theodore de Mayerne, physician to James and Anne and, later, to Henrietta Maria—to whom he was especially close—is credited only with a ‘A Purge by Dr. Mayhern.’ But a number of the culinary recipes in ‘The Compleat Cook’ are close to, or even duplicate, those in Mayerne’s later Archimagirus.” [CK: Note that Knopper seems to have analyzed only the earlier editions—see below.]
    • 483n71: “Recipes in ‘The Compleat Cook’—the third part of The Queens Closet Opened (1656 edition)—that appear in identical or nearly identical form in Mayerne’s Archimagirus (1659) include ‘To make a Pudding of a Calves Chaldron,’ ‘To make Chickens fat in four or five dayes,’ ‘To make a Bisque of Carps,’ ‘To boyle Ducks after the French fashion,’ ‘To dresse a Fillet of Veale the Italian way,’ ‘ To boyle a rump of Beefe after the French fashion,’ ‘To boyle Cream with French Barly,’ ‘To make a Steake Pye with a French Pudding in the Pye,’ and ‘To make the best Sausages that ever was eat.’ Other recipes—for example, ‘To boyle a Capon larded with Lemons’—appear in expanded form in Mayerne, perhaps indicating that the two printed collections shared a common source, or that Mayerne was the prior source for the queen’s recipe.”
    • 490: “In November 1659, John Beale wrote to Samuel Hartlib that, ‘Our Stationers shops have lately swarmed with bookes of Cookery, Some in our Late Queenes name, Some from the Countese of Kent, as if Selden had imployd his Antiquityes in her Kitchin, & lately the Famous Sir Theodore Mayerne is at the Middle Temple gate under the name of Archemagirus Anglo-gallicus.’
  8. On sugar: __http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodcandy.html#aboutsugar__
  9. Definition of “overthwart” from OED: placed or lying crosswise or across something else; transverse.