welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen welcome back to sunday morning in the old
cookbook show uh this past week or maybe two weeks ago i got an email from a viewer in scotland
asking me if i could make scottish tablet or tablet depending on your pronunciation
my scottish grandmother said tayblet um just like she never said father she always said fayther her
particular accent or scottish accent that's what it was and so i thought oh i'm gonna make that
then and i looked at my grandmother's recipe and then the recipe that this viewer sent and realized
they're completely different my grandmother was pretty old school so i'm not going to make
scottish tablet i'm going to do that in another episode because my grandmother's recipe is
pre-1850 which is just cream and sugar whereas in 2020 most tablet recipes call for condensed milk
and butter and and all kinds of other things so i'm not going to wade into that just today
i'm going to make a canadian version out of one of these Québécois cookbooks called Sucre À La
Crème which is just sugar and cream so i've got cream in here and i'm going to put it into a pot
the pot is on fairly low heat right now i don't want to get it too hot too quickly so in front
of me i have two versions of la cuisine raisonnée which is a very famous Québécois cookbook this is
the 1936 version looks very much like a hymn book or a bible and i think that's probably by design
and i also have the 1967 version and the recipe is in both of these books pretty much exactly
the same recipe just the instructions in the 1967 version are much more precise and spell things out
in a way that we would understand today whereas the 1936 version assumes that you know a lot
and so this recipe for Sucre À La Crème can be found going right back to the first settlers
in new france so in with the cream i'm putting in sugar just plain old white sugar which is
pretty much exactly how it would have come to new france or quebec
from old france in the beginning in the 1600s but shortly after the settlers arrived they would
have started using maple syrup so this recipe gets a healthy dose of maple syrup all right
two cups of maple syrup in fact and now for everyone screaming that maple syrup is really
expensive and in 1936 during the depression they wouldn't have had access or would have been able
to afford maple syrup in quebec in a rural setting this maple syrup would have been way
cheaper than white sugar which is why it probably switched at some point to maple sugar because it's
it's available it comes out of trees so i'm going to put that in as well now at this point i'm going
to turn up the heat and i'm going to stir it until the sugars are dissolved into the cream
once the sugars are dissolved i'm not going to stir it anymore
if you want to make a concession to a modern day recipe
and get your sugars to not crystallize and be much smoother i would add some invert sugar in
the form of corn syrup two tablespoons of corn syrup will make that happen your sugar won't
crystallize you'll get a much smoother texture at the end you could use any invert sugar in fact
you don't have to use corn syrup but corn syrup is a really readily available invert sugar
so i'm going to bring the temperature up recipe says i want to boil this
to a softball stage the 1967 recipe tells me that that temperature is 236 degrees fahrenheit
so i am going to put a temperature probe in and keep careful watch on the temperature
now when this comes to a boil watch it closely
um make sure you've got it in a big enough pot because it's going to bubble up and
this one might almost boil over we're at 215 degrees fahrenheit right now
and i think i've got it just right although i'm ready to lift it off if i need to
i think we're gonna be okay so there we go we're 213 degrees fahrenheit and we need to get to 236
so the boiling took quite a while a little bit longer than i thought to reach this
temperature i've set the alarm to go off at 235 so i don't miss 236
and i've been standing here looking at that beef in the dry ager and it looks amazing
i think on the day that i'm making this i've got about a week and a half until i can
pull the first piece of beef out of that okay 236 off this comes from the heat now the 1936 version
of this recipe tells me just to let it cool a while not like cool a while doesn't really tell
you how long a while is or what the temperature is the 1967 version though does tell me
don't stir this don't touch it don't do anything to it until the temperature drops to 110 degrees
fahrenheit and that has to do with allowing the sugar and the crystal structure of the sugar to
reach a point where when we start stirring it together it's going to be smooth so i'm going to
let this sit here to 110. you could use a memory in order to drop the temperature my understanding
is you don't want to drop the temperature too quickly so don't use ice water just use room
temperature water if that's what you want to do so now we just wait to the next step and while we're
waiting this is the point where you would add flavorings if you want to the 1936 version doesn't
give you any indication about flavorings or nuts the 1966 version does tell you that you can put in
flavoring if you want it doesn't say what kind of flavoring i imagine vanilla would be the go-to and
nuts if you want them it also says that you can add in a little bit of butter if you want to i'm
not going to do any of those things i think the maple flavor all on its own should carry this so
we wait okay we've reached the right temperature so i'm going to pull out the temperature probe
get as much of that back in as possible who am i kidding
that's really good so now we mix it and 1936 you would have used a wooden spoon
i'm gonna use an electric mixer it doesn't tell you how long to mix it
it gives you kind of a vague it's going to change color and it's going to be less glossy
so my my understanding is that it gets lighter in color and becomes kind of dull
i think i've reached the point where i've mixed it enough it's uh the mixer's starting
to strain a little bit and the color has changed it's lightened the touch
and it's also become a lot less glossy um almost dull so i'm gonna put this into
a loaf pan and i have buttered greased the loaf pan and then put a parchment sling in
so it's a little bit easier to get out later so pour this in
get it all in there and so i'm just going to let this cool until it hardens and before it gets too
hard i'm going to score the top with this little knife so that it makes it easier to cut up later
girls hi glenn hello friends Sucre À La Crème from the la cuisine raisonnée okay um
so we had this last week but it was not like this at all didn't work out it was very soft
okay wow that's sweet
that was super sweet but that's a much better texture than last week's okay
got that kind of uh crispy fudgy yeah thing so um the 19 was it what year was this 26
1936. so the 1936 version is very kind of minimalist in its in its instructions uh the
1966 version gives temperatures and it tells you to pull it off at 236 for softball stage
too soft too soft um so on the first time at 236 i pulled it out and it just you know yeah
that was last week why was last week's tastes amazing absolutely tastes amazing but if you
leave it out of the freezer it just turns into a gooey gooey mess i actually didn't i actually
love this texture much better the crystal formed yeah that's sort of the sort of crystal
so i would go higher uh softball is 235 to 240 degrees fahrenheit i don't know
i have to look it up so if you go if you go to like 238 or 239
you're gonna get a better texture that that more crystalline but still not crystally or hard yes
i would go much higher and make sure that your temperature probe isn't touching the bottom of
the pot because that'll that'll throw your yes it will that'll throw you off completely
um i could just eat i could until it makes me sick completely until it makes me sick and the
they both give instructions of substitutions this one says that you can do half cassonade or brown
sugar okay and half white sugar and leave out the maple syrup i know why would you leave out
the maple syrup now that being said it's not as easy to get hold of everywhere in the world
not as not as easy everywhere this book though is aimed firmly at quebec yes of
where it should probably probably probably you know a mostly unknown book outside of quebec
where maple syrup is much easier to get it is true so if you want to do this and then you've you
could do it all with white sugar and you've almost started to blur the line into scottish tablet
yes in fact it becomes a historical version of scottish tablet so i'm curious how long it'll
not that i'll keep it very long because i'll eat it but how long will it keep i think if you cut it
up and put it in a sealed container and kept it in the fridge or the freezer you could sticky for a
while keep for a long time the only the only thing that the only way it'll go bad is if it starts
to take on flavors from your fridge or freezer fair enough so this is the kind of thing that if
you wanted to make it for holiday gift giving you could probably do it two or three weeks in advance
yeah i just my concern is that as much as i want to eat it all right now i will overwhelm myself
and eating it all before it you know goes lucky on the counter and gets too warm yeah is not gonna
happen there's just you and i eating these things right now so um we'd love to share this with you
you'll have to give it a try give it a try and if and if you are one of our viewers in quebec let
us know if your family makes this and how they make it thanks for stopping by see you again
soon
you