Spanish Paps Creamy Desserts - Antique Recipies

Paps - Original Recipes from 16th to18th Century

Jun 19, 2008 Christine Fadhley

Spanish Paps - Authentic Tudor & Georgian recipes taken from antiquarian Cookery Books

Spanish Pap is a creamy dessert, rather like a blancmange, but flavored with sugar and rosewater. For a banquet they were made in molds and then, when set , would be turned upside down on the dish, with a cherry placed on the top. This made them look rather like small breasts.

The name is in fact a pun on the word pap, which could mean either Pope (as in the leader of the Catholic church) or nipple / breast! This touch of humor reflects the fact that the Catholic church was still outlawed in England and Wales, following Henry VIII’s Reformation of the church.

Basic Cooking Facilities in Tudor Times

It will be noted that the instructions in the Tudor recipes are given are without precise measurements or cooking temperatures. This reflects the rather basic cooking facilities available at the time. In Robert May’s Cookery book, The Accomplished Cook, published in 1685, the recipe is given as follows:

To Make Pap

Take milk and flour, strain them, and set it over the fire till it boil, being boil’d, take it off and let it cool; then take the yolks of eggs, strain them, and put it in the milk with some salt, set it again on the embers, and stir it till it be thick, and stew leisurely, then put it in a clean scowred dish, and serve it for pottage, or in paste, add to it sugar and rose-water.

1670 Version of the Apanish Paps Recipe

Another recipe taken from an early cookery book entitled ‘ The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet’, by Hannah Woolley (1670), gives a richer and spicier version;

Boil a quart of Cream with a little whole Spice, when it is well boiled, take out the Spice, and thicken it with Rice Flower, and when it is well boiled, put in the yolks of Eggs, and Sugar and Rosewater, with a very little Salt, so serve it to the Table either hot or cold, with fine Sugar strewed on the brims of the Dish.

Georgian Version of Spanish Paps' Recipe

A later recipe, Lady Leicester’s Spanish Pap is found in Hannah Glasse’s ‘The Compleat Confectioner’ published in London in 1760. It goes as follows:

Take a quart of cream, coil it with mace, then take half a pound of rice, sifted and beat as fine as flour, boil it with the cream to the thickness of a jelly, sweeten it with sugar, and turn it into a shallow dish; when cold you may slice it and eat it like flummery, with cold cream.

REFERENCES:

Classic Home Desserts: A Treasury of Heirloom and Contemporary Recipes, By Richard Sax, Published 1999 by Houghton Mifflin Cookbooks, ISBN:0618003916

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