Sweet Patinae

Translation:

An inverted patina: Roast pine nuts and chopped walnuts and grind with honey, pepper, and garum; milk and eggs and a bit of oil

(Giacosa, pg 161)

Turnover as a sweet.  Toast pine-kernels and broken and clean nuts, and pound with honey, pepper, liquamen, milk, eggs a little wine and oil  (cook in a shallow pan) and turn out on to a round serving-dish.

(Flower, pp. 103)

Nut custard turn-over (patina versatilis vice dulcis)

Pignolia nuts, chopped or broken nuts are cleaned and roasted and crushed with honey.  Mix in pepper, broth, milk, eggs, , a little honey and oil.  (Thicken slowly on fire with out boiling, fill in moulds, take care that the nuts do not sink to the bottom, bake in hot water bath when cold unmould.)

(Apicus, pp. 103/#143)

Ingredients:

1 cup pine nuts 1 cup walnuts               1 cup almonds

5 Tbs honey                 ½ tsp ground pepper    1 tsp garum

3 eggs                          1 cup half and half         1 Tbs oil

½ cup wine

Giacosa, pg. 161.

Redaction:

First I gathered the ingredients together.

The nuts were probably roasted either on a clay sheet in an oven or on top of an oven in a frying pan.  (Flower/Giacosa) I roasted these nuts in the oven on a cookies sheet.

Here are the roasted walnuts and unskinned roasted hazelnuts.

And the roasted pine nuts.  Pine nuts roast a lot faster then walnuts or hazelnuts, so keep an close aye on them!  Pine nuts are waaaay to expensive and tasty to waste burning.

Here the roasted nuts are all gathered in individual bowls.

When they were done, I ground them in a small electric grinder,

though I am sure that if labor and time were not an issue, kitchen slaves could have ground the nuts into as fine a paste. Since I had no kitchen slaves, I settled for an automatic grinding this time.  I have found that grinding by hand (or at least my hand) that using a mortar and pestal that the nuts do not come out fine.  I believe this is due to user error and not the grinding potential of the mortar and pestle.

Once the nuts were roughly ground I mixed them with the honey, pepper, and red wine.

The eggs were combined with the half and half and oil.  Once the egg mixture was well blended, I combined this with the nut and spice mixture.  This mixture was poured into a casserole and bake for around 20 minutes at 350.

I added a sweet red wine on hand, not having a white wine available.  The commercially available white wines would have been a good addition; however I find I do not like the chemical tastes and with several gallons of home made meads etc on hand I decided to deplete my stock of home made non chemical wines.

The half and half used is from a cow.  There was an option to use goat milk which would have been just as likely as milk from a cow to have been used, possibly more so.  The option to use regular milk, I do not believe would have been as good a choice as the milk would not have had full body of cream as straight from the animal milk would have.  The addition of half and half gives this dish a very rich and creamy taste. Peppercorns were ground in a mortar and pestle.  The eggs used were organic farm raised, closer to period; however regular store bought eggs would have worked with the same results.

The finished desert.  Very tasty and very firm!  This is not nearly as soupy as the pear patinae (probably due to the fruit being softer and gushier)  sort of a firm crunchy oatmeal but much tastier!