Comfits – Medieval Candied Spices & Seeds (A Sweet Treat from the Past)

Comfits—candied spices & seeds—served as sweet digestives and table decoration in late medieval & Renaissance feasts.

Comfits – Medieval Candied Spices & Seeds (How to Make Historic Comfits)

Please note this correction: gum arabic and gum tragacanth are not the same substance. I originally conflated them—mea culpa, and thank you to the reader who flagged it.

Baronial 12th Night Comfits

Comfits were often served at the end of a feast as a digestive, to perfume the breath, and to decorate subtlety dishes and table settings. Aromatic seeds such as anise, fennel, or caraway were built up with repeated coats of sugar syrup—sometimes tinted with beet, spinach, or saffron. Almonds, ginger, and cinnamon splinters appear in later sources as well. You can still buy descendants of these sweets today (think Jordan almonds and pastilles), but handmade comfits are more delicate and—yes—tastier.

Medieval Finger Food: These bite-sized nibbles are perfect for our Medieval Finger Food series.

Kitchen Adventures – Sekanjabin (Persian Mint Drink)

Sekanjabin is another popular drink that can be found at events. It is simple and easy to make. This is another recipe from "An Anonymous Andalusian cookbook of the 13th Century" as translated by David Friedman.

Syrup of Simple Sikanjabîn (Oxymel)

Take a ratl of strong vinegar and mix it with two ratls of sugar, and cook all this until it takes the form of a syrup. Drink an ûqiya of this with three of hot water when fasting: it is beneficial for fevers of jaundice, and calms jaundice and cuts the thirst, since sikanjabîn syrup is beneficial in phlegmatic fevers: make it with six ûqiyas of sour vinegar for a ratl of honey and it is admirable.

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... and a ratl of sugar; cook all this until it takes the consistency of syrup. Its benefit is to relax the bowels and cut the thirst and vomiting, and it is beneficial in bilious fevers (Friedman, 2000).

Sekanjabin Recipe (Courtesy of David Friedman)

Dissolve 4 cups sugar in 2 1/2 cups of water; when it comes to a boil add 1 cup wine vinegar. Simmer 1/2 hour. Add a handful of mint, remove from fire, let cool. Dilute the resulting syrup to taste with ice water (5 to 10 parts water to 1 part syrup). The syrup stores without refrigeration.

Sekanjabin refers to the "family" of drinks made with vinegar, sugar and water (Meade, 2002).  I prefer to use red wine vinegar as the base of my drink.  I have also used flavored vinegars and omitted the mint.  I prefer a stronger drink, so I usually dilute 5:1 ratio of water to syrup.  

Works Cited 

Friedman, D. (2000, September 4). Chapter One: On Drinks. Retrieved 14 2015, September, from An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Andalusian/andalusian10.htm#Heading506

Meade, R. H. (2002, October 25). Non-Alcoholic Beverages of the Middle Ages. Retrieved September 14, 2015, from Medieval Brewers Homepage: http://mbhp.forgottensea.org/noalcohol.html#_ftnref5

Kitchen Adventures – Spiced Pomegranite Drink (Spiced Pomegranate Syrup)

Ale, beer, mead and wine were very popular beverages in the middle ages, but most sites are dry or semi dry, or for personal reasons, folks will choose not to drink alcoholic beverages. There are several different drinks that I turn to that are documentable to within period in the SCA. These have gone over very well at banquets I have served in the past.

I will start with one of the more popular beverages, spiced pomegranate drink. This drink is easy to make and very refreshing. This is very similar to Grenadine syrup, but please don't buy the commercial product when this drink is so easy to make.

Syrup of Pomegranates 

Take a ratl of sour pomegranates and another of sweet pomegranates, and add their juice to two ratles of sugar, cook all this until it takes the consistency of syrup, and keep until needed. Its benefits: it is useful for fevers, and cuts the thirst, it benefits bilious fevers and lightens the body gently (Friedman, 2000).

Recipe

1 quart pomegranate juice
4 cups of sugar
1-2 cinnamon sticks*
Up to a tablespoon of cloves*

**One of the recipes I located while researching (Non Alcoholic Beverages of the Middle Ages by HL Ronan Meade) suggested the addition of cinnamon and or clove as well as other "warmed spices". 

As the recipe from Al-Andulus suggests, equal parts of juice to sugar, heated until it boils and then lower the heat and cook until it becomes thick syrup. I dilute my syrup with a 4:1 ratio of water to syrup.

 This syrup can be kept nonrefridgerated and prepared in advanced. 

Works Cited

Friedman, D. (2000, September 4). Chapter One: On Drinks. Retrieved 14 2015, September, from An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Andalusian/andalusian10.htm#Heading506

Meade, R. H. (2002, October 25). Non-Alcoholic Beverages of the Middle Ages. Retrieved September 14, 2015, from Medieval Brewers Homepage: http://mbhp.forgottensea.org/noalcohol.html#_ftnref5

Kitchen Adventures – To Make Callishones (Marzipan flavored with Coriander)

Callishones dryiing on the stove top

Baronial 12th Night 

I am working on putting together an Elizabethan Banqueting Course this week. I have candied fruits, roots and flowers, made comfits of anise seed, fennel, caraway and cinnamon and fruit paste of peaches, quince and berries. Today I started working on other items that you might have found laid out for the banqueting course.

What is the banqueting course? It is the culmination of a feast, and it usually consisted of an assortment of sweetmeats and other delicacies served with a spiced wine known as hypocras. Sugar and spices were very expensive to purchase. Sugar was thought to be medicinal. To close a meal with a banqueting course served a three-fold purpose. First, it was an indication of the host's wealth, secondly, it also was a display of status and lastly, it showed off the artistic skills of the lady of the house.
Now you know, I'm not artistic. I'm very good with molds and cutters!

To Make Callishones

Take halfe a pound of Marchpane paste, a thimble-full of coriander seeds beaten to a powder, with a graine of Muske, beat all to a perfect paste, print it and drie it.

John Murrell, A Daily Exercise for Ladies and Gentlewomen, 1621

Recipe

10 ounces almond paste
1 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
up to 1/2 cup confectioner sugar
1 tsp. rosewater

This works best if the almond paste is cold, so I put mine in the refrigerator overnight. I grated it into a bowl and added 1/2 tsp. ground coriander to the grated paste. I then added the remainder of the coriander to the sugar, and put a small handful of it onto a piece of wax paper. I took 1/3 of my almond paste and pressed it on both sides into the sugar/coriander mixture. I rolled it out to approximately 1/4" thick and cut it out with cookie cutters. I got about 80 pieces of candy from this.

To finish, I mixed gold luster dust with ground coriander and painted the edges of the callishones with rosewater before running the edges through the coriander/luster dust mix, before setting it out to dry.

To make the almond paste I used a mix of equal parts almond flour to confectioner sugar and then add 1-2 tsp. almond extract, a tsp. of orange flower or rose-water plus an egg white. I know, I should be worried about salmonella, but these were super fresh eggs purchased at the market that morning.