Payn Ragoun: Medieval Candy

 

Payn ragoun 

We often are guilty of believing that food in the medieval period was inedible by today’s standards. However, many of the foods they ate were not so different from what we eat today. Here’s a recipe for a dessert that sounds a lot like a brittle, as in peanut brittle.

Here is the original recipe (see if you can read it! Hint þ stands for th:

Take hony sugar and clarifie it togydre. and boile it with esy fyre, and keep it wel from brennyng and whan it hath yboiled a while; take up a drope þerof wiþ þy fyngur and do it in a litel water and loke if it hong togydre. and take it from the fyre and do þerto the thriddendele and powdour gyngener and stere it togyder til it bigynne to thick and cast ito on a wete table. Lesh it and serve it forth with fryed mete on flesh dayes or on fysshe dayes.

 

Here’s my best translation:

Take honey and sugar and clarify it together. Boil over a low fire and keep it from burning. When it has boiled a while, drop a little bit into water and if it hangs together, remove from the fire. Add powdered ginger and stir until it begins to thicken. Spread on a wet table. Leave it to cool.

The recipe leaves out a key ingredient, found in other recipes. A thriddendele means something like third part, best described as one part honey, one part sugar and one-part pinenuts. Because the sugar mixture is cooked to the ‘soft ball’ stage of candy making, the finished consistency is likely more akin to toffee than brittle.

Serve with fried meat on meat days or on fish days. (based on the Catholic custom of eating fish on holy days.)

If anyone tries making it, let me know!