our-future-is-up-to-us-2 reblogged
Topics List: Sweets
Word lists may be helpful for some people to overcome writer's block.
CAKES
CANDY
CHOCOLATE
CONFECTIONS
COOKIES
Adding Context (for a few of these, as requested)
PLACENTA CAKE
- An ancient Roman cake of goat’s cheese and honey layered between a dried semolina pastry (called tracta, which some consider to be an early form of pasta) and an outer wheat pastry shell with a central knob of dough.
- Other sources state the cake was also flavored with bay leaves before being baked, and then covered in honey.
- Descended from the Greek plakous, which is normally understood to mean a flat cake, although some scholars believe it was named from the fact that it was “full of individual flat sheets.”
- The name survives in many European languages, particularly the Rumanian platchynta, which resembles the ancient cake, and the Hungarian palacsinta, which now refers to crepes.
- At some point in the Middle Ages, the word placenta came to be used for the human afterbirth, which has a coincidental resemblance to the ancient cake.
- Throughout history the human afterbirth has been cooked and consumed by new mothers; it is said to resemble liver in texture.
- Currently, the placenta may be dried and rendered into pill form so that new mothers may benefit from the recognized reduction in the incidence of postpartum depression in those who consume the organ.
BIRD'S MILK
- Small, chocolate-enrobed bars with a soft, marshmallow-like interior, colored white for vanilla, or egg-yolk yellow for lemon.
- First produced in Poland by the famous E. Wedel company in the mid-1930s; in 2010 the company received a trademark for them from the European Union.
- From Poland, the candy spread in popularity throughout Eastern Europe, especially Russia, where during the Soviet era of food deficits, obtaining a box of bird’s milk candies was considered a coup, nearly as unlikely as milking a bird.
EGG YOLK SWEETS
- The most basic form of Portuguese egg confectionery is a sweet, thick sauce of cooked egg yolks and sugar called ovos moles (soft eggs) used as a custard-like filling for tarts and cakes, as a dessert sauce or topping, or as a filling for marzipan sweets.
- Although egg sweets are also made in Spain, particularly in the Castilian region that shares much of its culinary heritage with Portugal, it is the Portuguese who elevated the egg sweet to iconic status, developing an extraordinarily extensive repertoire of recipes.
In Portugal during the Middle Ages:
- Food was scarce, and eggs provided an important source of protein. Eggs (from hens, ducks, and other fowl) were readily available, relatively inexpensive, and, at a time when most Europeans spent more than half the days of the year in religious fasting, the devoutly Catholic Portuguese regarded eggs as permissible Lenten foods.
- Egg whites were widely used in sugar refining (which the Portuguese had learned from the Moors), thus an abundance of yolks were sent to convent nuns, a practice said to have been initiated by the pious king Philip III of Spain.
- One effective method of preserving so many eggs was to cook the yolks with a large quantity of sugar.
- Many nuns found experimenting with confectionery a welcome distraction from the routine of contemplative life.
Today:
- A resurgent interest in traditional Portuguese egg sweets has developed, particularly in the many regional variations that are once again being made in convents throughout the country.
- Egg sweets and other convent desserts (doces conventuais in Portuguese), often adapted to make use of regional ingredients such as coconut milk and rice flour.
