Standard Culinary Powders & Sources for Exotic Spices
Powder forte | Powder douce | Fine Powder | Spice Sources
Powder forte
Powder forte or 'strong spice' was a generic spice-mix, commonly used by cooks in medieval and renaissance cuisine for
seasoning food. It is rather like today's curry powder or five-spice powder, which are blends of several different herbs and spices.
The components of powder forte varied from country to country and kitchen to kitchen, but were basically strong spices such as black pepper, long pepper, cloves, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, ginger, etc. There could be as few as two or three ingredients or as many as a half dozen or more.
We do have an extant C.14th Venetian recipe for powder forte.
Personally, my favorite and the basic mixture I use in my kitchen, is:
1 part cloves
1 part fresh nutmeg
1 part mace blade
1 part black pepper
1 part grains of paradise
3 parts long pepper
All ingredients are freshly ground.
Powder douce
Powder douce is basically 'sweet powder', another standard spice-mix used by medieval and renaissance cooks, and this
time composed of sweet spices.
It usually contains approximately 2 parts cinnamon to 1 part sugar (sugar being considered a spice in those times). Other components can be cloves, ginger, galingale, nutmeg, bay leaf, malabathron (curry leaf) and occasionally also fennel, anise, cubebs and grains of paradise, depending on taste and spice cupboard contents.
Powder douce can also contain saffron, but I don't use that as saffron seems to be a more common allergy and/or dislike than other spices.
One of my friends, Mistress Filippa di Lucignano says she usually uses "about 2 parts cinnamon: 1 part nutmeg: 1/2 part ground cloves (depending on your taste): 1 part ground sugar. It can or not contain 1 part ground ginger/galingale."
Here are a couple of other recipes:
"1/4 oz cloves, 1 oz ginger, 1 oz cinnamon, and 1 oz malabathron (substitute bay leaves and a little more cinnamon, or go to the Indian store and ask for "tejpat")." - Francesco Sirene, SCA Spicer
The powder douce mixture I use is this:
1 part cloves
1 part ginger
2 parts malabathron (curry leaf)
2 parts ground sugar
2 parts grains of paradise
3 parts cinnamon
Fine Powder
Fine Powder, or 'fine spices', is the third typical powder in the medieval and renaissance cook's spice cupboard. Whether this is actually different from powder douce is debatable.
The famous medieval food historian, Terence Scully in "Art of Cooking in the Middle Ages", equates sweet powder with fine powder, and says it contains ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and grains of paradise.
He gives a redaction from Le Menagier de Paris, and includes sugar. The quantities are not the same,
but vary from manuscript to manuscript. Experiment with your own version. He says:
3 tsp ground ginger, 1 1/2 tbsp
cinnamon, 1 tsp grains of paradise, 1 tsp ground cloves, 2 tbsp sugar.
Other recipes include:
"Take a quarter of cloves and an onza of good ginger, and take an onza of fine cinnamon, and take the same quantity of <bay or malabathron> leaf; and pound all these spices together as you like; if you want to make more, use the ingredients in the same proportions; this is wonderfully good." [Frati, C.15 Italy]
"FINE POWDER of spices. Take (probably: Ed.) an ounce and a drachma of white ginger, (probably: Ed.) a quarter-ounce of hand-picked cinnamon, half a quarter-ounce each of grains and cloves, and (probably: Ed.) a quarter-ounce of rock sugar, and grind to powder." J. Hinson (translator) Le Menagier de Paris [France, C.14th]
.
UK & Europe
The Spice Shop
1 Blenheim Ave, off Portobello Road
Portobellote.1 Blenheim Crescent, London W11 2EE
Tel: 020 7221 4448 Fax: 020 7229 1591
Send A5 or A4 SAE for catalogue.
Payment: major credit/debit cards.
Postage & packing: normally £2.65, more for extra large or heavy orders.
This is the shop I frequent. The owner, Sonja, is very knowledgeable and
helpful and I always come away with much more than I intended!
US, Canada & rest of the world
Francesco
Sirene, Spicer
Box 1051
Peachland, B.C., Canada V0H 1X0
sirene@silk.net
Francesco Sirene (SCA Spicer) sells a huge range of high quality herbs and spices, as well as powder forte.
His website is very educational, and has a spice dictionary.