The Recipe: Jumbles, from a c.1500 cook book, translated into modern terms by Historic Royal Palaces [2 eggs, 100 g sugar, 1 tsp caraway or anise, as much flour as makes a paste; form into twists, boil, then bake.]
The Date/Year and Region: English, c.1500
How Did You Make It: Ground star anise. Beat 2 eggs, added 1/2 cup of granulated sugar, and 1 tsp of the ground anise. Added flour (~2 cups) until a workable paste was achieved. Divided the dough into ~ 20 pieces, rolled each in hand to make a short rope, twisted it around itself, and dropped into boiling water. When a piece started floating, it was removed to a paper-lined cookie sheet, and the lot baked at 350F for ~20 minutes.
I also did a batch flavored with 1 tsp caraway seed, but accidentally doubled the sugar--either due to this or because they went first, the caraway batch didn't bake well, ending up with a slimy texture.
Time to Complete: About 30 minutes to make up (set the water to boil before mixing dough), and 40-60 minutes to bake two pans.
Total Cost: All ingredients were on hand.
How Successful Was It?: The flavor was nice for both (the anise being like my favorite Christmas cookies, while the caraway reminded me of many Victorian receipts). The texture was a bit odd--dense and rather chewy on the last of the four pans, slimy for the first three (after which I decreased the size of each jumble to 10/egg and then increased the baking time to 20 minutes). I'll probably experiment with these in the future, because they are portable and keep pretty well (that is, they would be good for events if I can get them palatable in texture).
How Accurate Is It?: I used an electric stove/oven. The recipe was already adjusted for modern egg sizes, though I could always do more research on sugar varieties...
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