Sugar Cakes
Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

Picture of Hannah Woolley Recipe Book

 

Sugar Cakes
Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

  • Ingredients for Sugar Cakes - an Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

  • Cooking method for Sugar Cakes

  • Free Sugar Cakes  - Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

Old Elizabethan Recipes

Elizabethan Era Index

Sugar Cakes
Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

Sugar Cakes

To make Sugar Cakes
Take a pound of fine Sugar beaten and searced, with four Ounces of the finest Flour, put to it one pound of Butter well washed with Rose-water, and work them well together, then take the Yolks of four Eggs, and beat them with four Spoonfuls of Rosewater, in which hath been steeped two or three days before Nutmeg and Cinamon, then put thereto so much Cream as will make it knead to a stiff Paste, rowl it into thin Cakes, and prick them, and lay them on Plates, and bake them; you shall not need to butter your Plates, for they will slip off of themselves, when they are cold

 

Sugar Cakes Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe
The above Old dessert recipe for Sugar Cakes is written in totally different way to today's recipe books!

  • There were no lists of ingredients - these were included as part of the text

  • Food and ingredient measurements were extremely basic - quantities were not often specified!

  • Temperature control was difficult and therefore not specified!

  • Cooking times were vague - and left to the cook to decide!

  • It was assumed that the reader would already have some knowledge of cooking

The History of the Recipe Book

  • Some of the language might be referred to as 'Olde English'

  • The art of cooking and the recipe was passed verbally from one generation to the next

  • The first printed book ever to be published in English was in 1474!

  • Most Elizabethan women were unable to read!

  • The idea of a Recipe Book was an entirely new concept

  • The first Recipe Books to be printed in England which included many old Elizabethan and Medieval recipes were called:

    • 1545 - 'A Propre new booke of Cokery'

    • 1588 - 'The Good Huswifes Handmaid for Cookerie in her kitchen'

    • 1596 - 'The Good Hyswife's Jewell'

    • 1610 'Mrs. Sarah Longe her Receipt Booke'

Sugar Cakes Old Elizabethan Recipe
The above Old recipe is taken from the book by Hannah Woolley (1622-1675) printed at the White Lion in Duck-Lane, near West-Smithfield, London in 1672 and entitled:

The Queen-like Closet
OR
RICH CABINET
Scored with all manner of
RARE RECEIPTS
FOR
Preserving, Candying and Cookery

Sugar Cakes
Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

  • Ingredients for Sugar Cakes - an Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

  • Cooking method for Sugar Cakes

  • Free Sugar Cakes  - Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

  • Have fun reading this Sugar Cakes old dessert recipe

  • What food people ate during the Renaissance era

  • The cooking instructions used

  • The different types of food used in old dessert recipes

Sugar Cakes
Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

 

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