Tudor Fried Rice Cakes

In today's Tudor Cooking with Claire, I am cooking a 16th century recipe for Fried Rice Cakes.

A French Dish – Fried Rice Cakes

Blanche almonds in cold water, then beat them verie smale, then take boyled rice, and beat them together with sugar, and rosewater, then mould them in flower like flat cakes, then frie them in butter and put sugar on them, and serve them.

Modern version:
100g ground almonds
100g boiled rice
1-2 rounded tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons rosewater
Flour for dredging

Mix ingredients together to form a paste and shape into small round flat cakes. Fry them in butter.
Hilary Spurling, editor of Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, recommends serving them with Sir Kenelm Digby's sherry sauce. In his book The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, Digby gives the following instructions for a sauce to serve with puddings - "For the Sauce, you pour upon it thickened melted Butter, beaten with a little Sack [sherry], or Orange-flower water, and Sugar."

Notes and Sources

• ed. Spurling, Hilary (1986) Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, The Salamander Press, p. 84.
• ed. Macdonell, Anne (1910) The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, Philip Lee Warner, p. 177 - read at https://archive.org/details/closetofsirkenel00digb