You may touch me.

When the late Alan Davidson's massive Oxford Companion to Fud came out in 1999, I noticed an error. Under Shrewsbury Cakes, it said that "the earliest recorded recipe, given by Eliza Smith (1734) is for a sweet biscuit spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg."

I was sure there were earlier recipes (although, sadly, none before the SCA pre-1600 cutoff) and when I found them I sent them to him through his website, which had a comments area. I got a canned response thanking me for my contribution and that was that.

The newish, revised edition now has this to say: "The earliest recorded recipe, given by Murrell (1621) uses nutmeg and rosewater."

In some small way, I feel that I've added to the recorded base of knowledge.

Proscuitturgid Drama

This time 'round to make duck proscuitto, I bought cheaper duck breasts from one of the local carnicerias. Carnicerae? Anyway, this caused a few problems:

1. Instead of one largish breast the package was four small ones. Not a big deal but slightly harder to hang.
2. I think the breasts were artificially plumped via liquid injection. This caused problems when I salted them -- they weeped much more liquid than I expected.
3. I used too fine a grain of salt (in the past I have used a coarse kosher) and the excess liquid absorbed the salt to form a brine. This meant that the duck breasts were basically soaking in salt water for 24 hours.
4. Not surprisingly, the breasts are inedible as is: it's like chewing on a smoky salt lick.

They aren't a total waste, though. I can chop and shred them and use them in things like cassoulet or split pea soup, where the overwhelming saltiness can be diluted.