Tourte with Various Ingredients: Pizza – a Nut and Dried Fruit Pizza

Translations:

Get six ounces of shelled Milanese almonds, four ounces of shelled, soaked pinenuts, three ounces of fresh pitted dates, three ounces of dried figs and three ounces of seeded muscatel raisins; grind all that up in a mortar.  Into it add eight fresh raw egg yolks, six ounces of sugar, an ounce of ground cinnamon, an ounce and a half of crumbled musk-flavored Neapolitan mostaccioli and four ounces of rosewater.  When everything is mixed together, get a tourte pan that is greased and lined with a sheet of royal pastry dough; into it put the filling, mixed with four ounces of fresh butter, letting it come up to no more than a finger of depth, like.  Into that pizza you can put anything that is seasoned.  (Scappi p. 488, R. 121)

Ingredients:

1 C. Almonds

¾ C. pine nuts

½ C. dried figs, dates and golden raisins.

8 egg yolks

1 C. sugar

1 Tbs. cinnamon

1/8 tsp musk

2 Tbs. plain breadcrumbs (or musk flavored mostaccioli pastry)

¾ C. Rose water

¼ C. melted butter

1 tsp butter

1 sheet royal dough

Redaction:

I gathered up all the ingredients. 

I did substitute pistachios for pine nuts.  They aren’t in the same flavor wheelhouse, but they taste amazing with figs and dates. Plus, I’d used the last of my pine nuts on pest and forgot that when I started cooking this.  Feel free to add pistachios (or walnuts) if you don’t have pine nuts on hand.  Try this with pine nuts, if at all possible, once, then do as you please.

The musk is affordable if you use the plant based.  I did not include the mostaccioli.  For this recipe, it would be musk cooked into a flaky pastry/crust.  I didn’t make any as I didn’t have musk on hand, even though I’ve included it into the recipe ingredients.  Grind up the musk mostaccioli like breadcrumbs.

Grind everything up.  I used a small hand grinder.  You can use a mortar and pestle.  If you go this route, get a large mortar and pestle or you’ll be pounding all night long.

Add in your sugar, egg yolks, cinnamon, breadcrumbs, rose water.

Here is where I talk about how rosewater can overpower even the most flavor full dish.  That is true, however; ½ to ¾ C. in this instance blends incredibly well.  As for the Tbs. of cinnamon, that was NOT a mistype.  1 ounce is actually a bit more, then 1 Tbs.  Start with 1 Tbs. and see if you want to add more.  I used the really good Saigon cinnamon and felt 1 Tbs. was more than enough to balance with the other flavors present.

Grease your pan.

Then roll out your dough and put it into your greased pan. 

As you can see, I didn’t use the recommended tourte pan.  I used a springform pan for visuals on the website.  Even with the springform pan, the “dough” did not exceed a finger length in depth, per Scappi’s instructions.

I tucked in the extra that ran over the mixture. I had a few scrapes of dough left over and added a small dough rose.  Just for looks.

Fresh out of the oven. Now for the slicing.

This is amazing. Great taste and rich. A small piece is all you need. Lovely, sweet, smelling of roses and spice.