So I recently came across pastila, which there’s a nice summary of and recipe here: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-make-pastila.amp
Tl;dr imagine apple fruit leather, but you whip the apple purée first until fluffy, add a bit of whipped egg white, and then when it dries out it retains air and is soft/spongey.
The various websites on this dessert make two very interesting claims, as follows:
- The egg white is apparently a later addition, and truly ancient pastila is only two ingredients: purée of baked apples and honey. Therefore, whipped apple purée alone is able to maintain fluffiness and structure to slowly dry out into a fluffy melt in mouth cake? Does anyone know about the food science involved, if there’s any known pitfalls regarding timeframes, moisture content of the purée etc. that would make a two-ingredient attempt fail? The recipes don’t include much sugar/honey and the mixture isn’t heated above 70C after it’s added, so I’m not sure what the deal is here. I do see mention that sour and possibly slightly underripe apples are needed for it, which suggests pectin is important.
- Because this is actually an apple preservation method and essentially fluffed fruit leather, supposedly pastila will last for up to a year at room temperature and not mould or rot. Would such a thing require a specific minimum sugar/honey content or is the drying + acidity of the apples primarily enough? The Kolomna museum pastilas are only 3% egg white and 17% sugar by weight, I’m not sure if I’d likely need to increase the sugar if I remove egg white.
Thanks in advance!
[link] [comments]
from AskCulinary https://ift.tt/EYTUwWf
Comments
Post a Comment