The Joys of French Cooking, Pre-British Conquest

Some links recently led me to Carolyn Smith-Kizer’s Eighteenth-Century Cuisine blog, which offers this invitation:

Explore with me 18thC French cuisine as a habitante in Nouvelle France may have cooked. After the F&I War, and again after the Revolutionary War, habitantes were surrounded and overrun by Anglo and other American influences. By the end of the 18thC, new foods and new methods of cooking would change her culture forever.

As one example of her offerings, Smith-Kizer shared this recipe from a 1651 French cookbook, translated:

Farts of whore.
Make your fritter paste stronger than usual [thicker than one would use for including items such as apples, vegetables, marrow, etc.], by the means of an increase in flour & eggs, then stretch [drop from a spoon or use a syringe] the dough [into] large or thin [pieces], & as soon as they will be cooked [deep-fried] serve hot with sugar, & water of scent [flower water–orange, violet, etc.].
*****
40. Pets de putain.
Faites votre paste de beignets plus forte qu'à l'ordinaire, par le moyen d'augmentation de farine & d'œufs, puis les tirez fort menus, & lors qu'ils seront cuits servez les chauds avec sucre, & eau de senteur.

Hungry yet?