DESSERTS
Which sweets were eaten in the Middle Ages?
Basically, cooks made sweets using seasonal crops. Two typical sweets were the mirós de poma and the menjar blanc. The ingredients to make the former were apples, toasted almonds, fine or powdered sugar –what we call icing sugar today, a handful of stale bread and finally the dessert was flavoured with cinnamon (all ingredients were on hand). The food was put to boil for some time, with no attention to a cooking time, until it was ready.
As for the latter, the ingredients used were raw almonds, water, sugar, starch, lemon peel and a stick of cinnamon.
How are the pedres de la resistència made?
The making of this dessert –visually, it looks like pieces of stone, consists of a base of carquinyoli –Catalan name for a type of crunchy rectangular almond biscuit. Other ingredients added are flour, sugar, egg, milk, almond, toasted almond, orange peel and a little bit of an additive called gasificant. This last substance helps the stones open.