Candy and Art

I submitted some of my sugar paste research the other week to an “Unfinished Projects” display and got some great feedback. One of the more common questions was: what would 16th century sweetmeats look like? Most of what I do is about recreating a flavour rather than shape of an object so I thought I’d look into it. There are, of course some descriptions of what you can make in the cookery books but they are mostly suggestions of things you can counterfeit such as plates, dishes, cups, glasses and platters, but they also mention walnuts and small loaves of bread or buns.

I didn’t think that was enough to answer the question so I decided to look for some artwork depicting them (I’ll leave my discussion of ephemeral arts in the SCA for another time). Now I’m not an art historian by any stretch of the imagination so if you have better interpretations or know of art I haven’t mentioned please let me know.

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