sugar plate

Sugar Paste

45.

After getting feedback at the Unfinished Projects at Bitter End’s Harvest Feast, I made a new attempt and entered it in the Apprentices Competition at Samhain. As I am not an apprentice I asked Mistress Maiosara to sponsor me and she graciously did. Because this post is so long, there’s also a short version.

There’s quite a history of sugar paste (modernly called gum paste), with recipes in English going back to at least 1558 when Alessio’s Secreti (1555) was translated into English. Recipes originating in English start appearing in 1567.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

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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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Sugar Paste

42. 43.

The final presentation

I’ve been putting this sugar paste post together for about three months now and have done four attempts, two successes, one mostly successful and one abject failure. I entered a version of this for commentary at the Unfinished Projects at Bitter End’s Harvest Feast, and I’ll be using that feedback to make my next attempt. I also brought the most successful version, with a functioning plate made out of sugar paste, to Culinary Night. My apologies for how long this one is but I wanted to be thorough and I plan to enter this in competition in the future.

There’s quite a history of sugar paste (modernly called gum paste), with recipes in English going back to at least 1558 when Alessio’s Secreti (1555) was translated into English. Recipes originating in English start appearing in 1567. Most of the recipes for sugar paste come out after the 1590s.

(more…)

By Tomas de Courcy, ago