Tiny Purses – Date Turnovers

This recipe is a date turnover from a 1596 cookbook called “The Good Housewife’s Jewel” called Tiny Purses.

• 2 cups Dates stoned
• 1 cup Raisins or Currants
• 1 tbsp. Suet or Coconut Oil
• 1 tsp. Ginger
• 1 tsp. Cinnamon
• 2 tsps. Sugar
• Puff Paste

Mix together your dates, raisins, suet, ginger, cinnamon, and sugar in a bowl. Cut puff paste into about 5 inch squares.

Lay down your paste and place a flattened portion of the filling inside. Make sure it’s a decent size and flattened.

Moisten two of the edges of the puff paste and fold it into a triangle then pinch the edges shut.

Bake at about 350 degrees until golden brown.

Transcription of Video:

Today we are going to make a recipe called tiny purses. Thanks for joining us today on 18^th Century Cooking.

This recipe comes from a 1596 cookbook called “The Good Housewife’s Jewel”. This recipe, although it’s called little purses, is really a date turnover. The first thing we have to do is stone these dates. I’ve got about 2 cupfuls of dates here.

Whoo, this is sticky! Although if you want to save time, you can buy your dates prestoned. Now that we stoned our dates, let’s mix our ingredients. First we need our dates, then we need a cupful of small raisins. I’m using zante currants. The recipe calls for marrow. I’m going to use a tablespoon of suet instead. A good substitute might be coconut oil. We’re also going to season it with a teaspoon of ginger, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and two teaspoons of sugar. Now that we’ve got all the ingredients, let’s mix it into the bowl.

Whoo, this is really sticky stuff! You’ve really got to dig into this!

Now that our mixture’s ready, let’s put them in the shells. The shells are going to be puff paste cut into about 5 inch squares. If you’re interested in making your own puff paste, I’ll put a link down below. Lay down your paste and put a flattened portion of the filling. Make sure it’s decent sized and flattened. Moisten two of the edges and fold it into a triangle. Make sure to pinch the edges.

These are ready to bake at about 350 degrees. I’m not sure how long these take but I’ll watch them till they’re golden brown.

These smell great. So good in fact, that I asked my dad to come and taste test with me.

[Jon] Well, they do smell great. I could smell them in the oven and wow, they filled the house up with a wonderful smell, so are we going to try them out? I think they’re cool enough, so let’s give them a try. You pick one. I’ll take this one. They look beautiful too. They could even have icing on them, but I think that would be too much. Mmm, that is a wonderful flavor and I really wasn’t expecting that. I ate a few of the dates that she had raw and the dates were actually, obviously, very good, but with the spices.

[Ivy] They taste wonderful.

[Jon] Right with that ginger and the cinnamon in there with the dates and the raisins or the currants, it’s got an amazing flavor that I really wasn’t expecting and a wonderful aroma.

[Ivy] Yes.

[Jon] You did an excellent job on these. They look kind of really hard to smoosh up.

[Ivy] They are.

[Jon] Yeah, it’s a very sticky, the dates and everything, getting that all together, but Ivy did a great job. Thank you for bringing us this recipe. It was wonderful. If you get a chance, this one, again, it’s simple, really not that many ingredients, and all these things you can find at the grocery store so you should be able to do these easily. So thank you so much Ivy and I want to thank you for coming along and savoring the flavors and the aromas

[together] of the 18^th century.

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