Two "Deruta" sugar plates

Context

In 1574 the city of Venice held a series of banquets to honour the entry and state visit of Henry of Valois, the elected king of Poland and soon to be king of France. Accounts of the time document that the festivities lasted for more than a week. The records show that when Henry visited the Venetian Arsenal on 24 July 1574, the guests were stunned by the elaborate creations on display made of marzipan and sugar. Apparently Henry tried to lift one of the napkins which promptly broke and fell to the ground and it was then that the king and his courtiers discovered that all the crockery and cutlery and even the napkins presented before them were all made of sugar. This is what inspired my sugar plates.

Sugar

At this time Venice was the Centre for trade and processing of sugar in Europe. Raw sugar mainly came from Egypt and was refined and further processed in the city, and Venice was a vital trading partner for anyone in Europe wanting to buy large quantities of sugar in the 16^th century. Venice became famous for their artisans'skills at creating sugar confections, particularly in imitating food and objects such as deceptively realistic plates, cups and even tablecloths, all designed to be eaten.

In his treatise on conviviality written in 1494 and published in 1498 Giovanni Pontano ¹wrote about the increasing importance and availability of sugar “collaziones”.

“The second part of the meal lends great splendour to the banquets to which splendour, it seems to me, much attention should be devoted. For, as the best poets care most about the last act, so to ourselves, who prepared banquets, the second part should be a matter of diligent concern. Since the discovery of sugar, which is used in a variety of ways, banquets and dinners have acquired a great compliment that is elegant and magnificent. Many things prepared from an appeal not only to taste but to the pleasure of the eye of the guest for example the confections made for ”little meals” that we now call “collations” which, since they afforded an opportunity for magnificence, I see that the princes themselves greatly appreciate.

Elinore of Aragon described her stay in Rome in 1473 and wrote about a banquet held in her honour ²

“once at table we stood a while with our backs to the table, and a sugar course arrived on 10 trays with some imperial Eagles made of sugar, and it was an array of sweets and gilded candied oranges and cups of malvasia to drink.”

This banquet demonstrated how the symbolism in sugar work was often a political statement. Whether in the sugar acorns recalling the coat of arms of Pope Sixtus the fourth, or the heraldic birds of the Este family, decorative sugar work was used to sweeten and strengthen alliances between countries, kingdoms, churches and states. It was also a unashamed boast about the skills of the artisans of the region.

My sugar plates are based on dishes currently held in the museum of decorative arts in Paris. The originals date from the first half of the 16^th century and were painted in Deruta, Italy (not far from Venice).

Plates such as the ones I have made may well have been used to charm, delight or send a message about the power of the sugar trade centred in Italy and fought for and about across Europe.

For my plates, I chose to depict in a typical political fashion of the time symbols of the Baron and Baroness of Politarchopolis including symbols of various Politarchopolin awards as well as elements of their excellencies personal arms.

The recipe

The original recipe for the sugar plate is from Ouverture de Cuisine by Lancelot de Casteau, published in 1604. The recipe is in French. I have provided a transcription of the French and a translation on my post for cinnamon sticks. 

Colours

Saffron was a very common (although expensive) way to colour food throughout the SCA period. I therefore used saffron which I ground and mixed with alcohol to make a paint.

If a 16th century cook were aiming to achieve the blue/black colour of Deruta ceramics, they may have used Turnesole (a lichen that produces a red or blue colour depending on the acidity in the mixture). Maestro Martino has a recipe for a “heavenly sky-blue summer sauce) which uses blackberries.

In the forme of cury blood was used to colour a dish black, although good old fashioned burnt toast was also used. I used commercial food colours for the blue/black colour.

Bibliography

• The Edible Monument - The Art of Food for Festivals, Editor Marcia Reed 978-1-60606-454-2
• Le Menagier de Paris 1393
• Medieval Food and Colour, Chris Woolgar, Journal of Medieval History Vol 44, 2018
• Ouveture de Cuisine, Lancelot de Casteau, 1604

1Giovanni Pontano “De conviventia”in idem, I trattati delle virtu sociali, ed. Francesco Tateo (Rome: Bulzoni 1999)

2Republished in Benporat “Feste e banchetti”letter by Ëleanor of Aragon from Pampagnano to Diomedes Carafa dated 10 June 1473

Rat (mock) on a stick - a soteltie

I created these "charming" creatures as an entry for an arts and sciences competition, the theme of which was rats and cats. 

I based them on the recipe for Herissons (hedgehogs) in Le Viandier de Taillevent (Vatican manuscript) which is from the first half of the 15th century.   

Prenez chair crue, hachiez la plus menue que faire se peult, puis fault roisin de Daingne, frommage de gain esmié, et tout meslez emsemble avec pouldre fine, puis ayez des caillettes de moutton, eschaudez et lavez très bien, et non pas en eaue trop chaude qu'ilz ne se retraient, et les emplez de ladicte chair hachiée, et puis les coudre d'unne petite brochette de boys. 

Take raw flesh, chop as finely as possible, then add raisins de Digne*, crumble harvest cheese, and mix everything together with fine powder, then have sheep intestines, scald and washed very well, and not in water too hot for them to shrink. And stuff them with the said minced flesh, and then sew them up with a small skewer.

I have to admit that I can't give you the quantities of ingredients as I have to admit that I just went with something between what I had, and what felt right. 

• 

  Just before going into the oven
  

  Pork minced then ground
• Feta crumbled finely
• Finely chopped sultanas
• Spice powder**
• pine nuts (for teeth)
• bacon rind for tails

I formed the mix into rats, skewered them, and used pine nuts to make teeth and a currant for an eye. 

I then endored*** them with a mixture of flour, saffron, egg yolks, sandalwood and water. Saffron was the most common colouring for endoring (being to make something look gold) but sandalwood was used in this period to give food a red colour. 

I was keen to see if I could get a colour that resembled the rats on a stick that you buy even now for sale in some countries. A single coat of endoring was ok, but a second coat of the endoring paste half way through ended up making a very effective but slightly disturbingly realistic 'skin'. 

I was really pleased at how the final rats looked. 

Double endored mock rat on a stick

  Notes: I spent/spend a lot of time trying to figure
  out what 15th century French "harvest cheese"
  might be.  Cheese ready to be eaten at harvest
  time? Cheese made from the milk drawn
  at harvest time?  That is a whole other post
  for another day. 

  The other question that I had to think about was
  whether the original recipe is indeed for making
  a soteltie... or is it a recipe for cooking hedgehog
  meat? Who knows?  The original recipe does not
  specify what meat it uses. 

Fresh out of the oven

* Raisins de Digne – Le Menagier de Paris (15th century) tells us what Raisins de Digne are : take two pounds of the raisins which be called raisins of Digne, to wit small ones, with no pips or seeds of any sort therein.

** Fine powder – from le Menagier de Paris : Ginger, cinnamon, cloves, grains of paradise, long pepper

*** Endoring : 15th century English recipe for cockentrice : ''endore them with yolkes of eggs, and poudre of gynger, and saffron, & ioiss of persely or malves, & draw them, and endore them a abowte in euery perty of him. ''

Cinnamon sticks

This dish is a wonderful and delicious soteltie which works well as a sort of renaissance breathmint.

The original recipe is from Ouverture de Cuisine by Lancelot de Casteau, published in 1604. The recipe is in French. I have provided a transcription of the French and a translation.

The recipe has two parts. The first is to make sugar paste and then in the second part you incorporate cinnamon and form cinnamon sticks.

The recipe 

Pour faire paste de succre.

Prennez du fin succre bien tamizé par vn fin tamier, puis ayez gomme d'aragante bien trempee en eau de rose passée par vn estamine aussi espes que vous le pouuez passer, puis mettez vostre gomme dedans vn mortier de cuiure ou autre & estampez bien vostre gomme, y mettant tousiours vn peu de succre tant que vous faictes vne paste maniable. Notez tant plus est il battu tant plus blanc deuient il: de ceste paste vous pouués former ce que voulez, comme faire en formes cauees, ou des trenchoirs, ou plats, ou tasses ce que vous voulez, & le mettez suer dedans vn four qui ne soit pas trop chaud, vous le pouuez aussi dorer aussi fort que les voulez auoir: gardez bien que le four ne soit point si chaud qu'il face leuer la paste par bontons, cela ne vaudroit rien, car il faut que la paste demeure ferme.
Pour faire Caneline.

Prennez vne libure de ceste paste & deux onces de canelle tamizee bien fine, & battez vostre paste dedans vn mortier tant & si longuement que le canelle soit bien encorporee avec le succre, puis vous ferez des couuertures bien tendres la largeur d'vn demy quartier, prennez adonc des bastons la grosseur d'vn doigt, & rollez la paste dessus comme on faict les galettes, puis estant vn peu ressuyé tirés le hors du baston, & le mettez sur le papier, & le mettez suyer dedans le four.

Translation

To make sugar paste.

Take fine sugar well sifted through a fine sieve, then take gum tragacanth well tempered with rose water passed through a strainer as thick as you want it to pass, then put your gum into a mortar of copper or other & grind well your gum, and put therein a little of the sugar until you make a workable paste. Note that the more it is beaten the whiter it will be: of this paste you can form that which you want, like to make in hollow molds, or trenchers, or plates or cups as you want, & put it into an oven that is not too hot, you can also gild it and make it as strong as you want to have: watch well that the oven is no longer so hot that it makes dough rise, that would be worthless, because it is necessary that the paste remains firm.

To make Cinnamon Sticks.

Take a pound of this paste & two ounces of cinnamon ground well fine, & beat your paste in a mortar then & long enough that the cinnamon is well incorporated with the sugar, then make the covers well thin the size of a half quarter, take then sticks the size of a finger, & roll the paste like one makes little galettes (crepes), then once a little dry, slide off the end of the stick, & put it on the paper, & put it into the oven.

My version

250g icing sugar
1 teaspoon powdered gum tragacanth
3 teaspoons rosewater (add more if required)

I didn't want to make as much as a pound of paste, and was working in metric. I decided to use 250g of icing sugar, being the size that a packet of icing sugar comes in, in Australia. Sugar wouldn't have come in this form in the period, however the sugar that was available would have been ground until it was this fine.

There is no guidance as to how much gum tragacanth to use in the recipe. I looked at modern gum paste recipes to see if they would provide any guidance – a typical modern gum paste recipe might use gum tragacanth but with the addition of gelatin, egg whites or maybe corn or glucose syrup. That said I did find a recipe (Lindy's cakes in the UK) that simply said that she used 1tsp of gum tragacanth added to 250g sugar paste.

So I used a teaspoon of gum tragacanth powder, and added about three teaspoons of rosewater. I discovered that what happens when you add rosewater to gum powder is that the gum gels immediately into lumps, not easily dissolved by stirring.

But as the original recipe indicates, passing it through a strainer helped to turn it into an amorphous gel, which could then be mixed with the sifted icing sugar to make a paste.

For 250g of my newly made sugar paste, I kneaded in 31 grams of cinnamon (the proportion in the recipe is 1 pound of paste to 2 oz of cinnamon ie. one eighth). To add verisimilitude to the look, I added a few drops of brown food colouring (this is not in the original recipe – I have found that how dark the paste will be is dependant on the cinnamon – the quality of it, and how newly-ground it is).

Using a rod rolling pin, I rolled the mixture out into thin strips and then rolled them up over skewers, and once dry enough, slid them off on to a rack. Rather than curing in a low oven, I placed them in front of the heater to dry.

I also took the extra step of using some brown food colouring to paint the sticks just lightly to give them more texture and make them look more realistic.

I am delighted with the final look and flavour of the cinnamon sticks, and have served them at a feast where they were received with much pleasure (and some confusion as people thought they were real).

Mushroom Pasties - Champignons en paste

Le Menagier de Paris (known as the Goodman of Paris) was written in 1393.

Original recipe

in the old French (transcribed)
Champignons d’une nuit sont les meilleurs, et sont petits et vermeils dedans, clos dessus: et les convient peler, puis laver en eaue chaude et pourboulir; qui en veult mettre en pasté, si y mette de l’uille, du frommage et de la pouldre.

Translation

Mushrooms of one night are the best, if they are small, red inside, and closed at the top; and they should be peeled and then washed in hot water and parboiled, and if you wish to put them in a pasty add oil, cheese, and spice powder.

Reproduction

• Pastry dough rolled thinly and cut into pieces a little over twice the size of the desired pasties (For ease of production you can use commercial pastry, or use your own recipe)
• 400 grams fresh mushrooms
• 50 grams cheese (Parmesan and ricotta),
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger,
• 1/8 tsp ground pepper.

Wash mushrooms and pare away the bottom of the stems, but leave whole. Parboil in salted water 3-4 minutes. Drain, and mix with oil and seasonings. To make pasties, mix the cheese, oil and spices in with the mushrooms; place on top of the pastry piece and turn over. Bake in a 220degC (or the best temperature for the pastry – which will be on the packet for commercial sheets) for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly browned.

Online medieval cooking classes

Over the last year and a half I have given a number of live online medieval cooking classes, some of which were recorded.   Each class is an hour long, and recording quality is sometimes a little... mixed. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy them. 

• Three Spanish recipes from Ruperto de Nola (1529) part 1  Recipes are Marzipans for Invalids, and Renaissance donuts)
• Three Spanish recipes from Ruperto de Nola (1529) part 2 Recipes are Marinated mutton and Renaissance donuts)
• Cooking together; a Janete of Hens from Ruperto de Nola (1529).  Recipe is here

Macaroons - French Bisket Bread

Got spare egg whites because you made delicious doucettes?  Looking for a simple tasty biscuit recipe? I have you covered with these wonderful Elizabethan biscuits. 

Source: Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, 1604

To make French biskit bread:

Take one pound of almonds blanched in cold water, beat them verie smale, put in some rose water to them, in the beating, wherein some musk hath lien,then take one pound of sugar beaten and searced and beat with your almonds, then take the whites of fowre eggs beten and put to the sugar & almonds, then beat it well together, then heat the oven as hot as you doe for other biskit bread, then take a paper & strawe some sugar upon it, & lay two spoonfulls of the stuf in a place, then lay the paper upon a board full of holes, & put them into the oven as fast as you can & so bake them, when they begin to looke somewhat browne they are baked inough.

Ingredients:

2 Egg whites

200g Ground Almonds 

200g caster sugar

Rosewater

Beat your egg whites until  fluffy.  Moisten your ground almond meal with some rose water (try a teaspoon first and taste because rosewaters differ greatly in strength) and then sift in the caster sugar. Mix all dry ingredients together, then fold in the beaten egg whites. 

Heat your oven to a moderate temperature, around 180 degrees. 

Line a baking tray (ideally a perforated tray but don't stress about it if you don't have one) with paper and sprinkle lightly with sugar.  Using a dessert spoon, spoon balls of the mixture on to the tray - don't worry if they don't look perfect, they will be perfect tasting!

Bake for 15-20 mins until they are light brown.  The outsides will be crisp and nutty, and the insides deliciously chewy.    

Elizabethan dish - Fartes of Portingale

Ahah!  I thought I had posted this recipe on my blog ages ago, and it was only when this recipe appeared on a recent episode Tasting History and I did a search for my version to compare that I realised that I had drafted this but not posted it. Oops!  I will have to cook these again so I can add some photos to this post. 

So anyway, this one of the most delicious dishes in my repertoire.  The combination of the sweetness of the dates and currants, with lamb mince and the beef broth is just divine.  It is also a really useful dish for catering feasts with because you can get easy portion control (eg. 3 meatballs per person) and the meatballs can be prepped beforehand and then just cooked up in broth on the day. 

The recipe I am giving is quite a large serving - if you are serving it as an entree, or for a smaller dinner, feel free to halve the recipe.  

The Good Huswive's Handmaid for Cookerie (1588) Handmaide for the Kitchin

How to make Fartes of Portingale*.

Take a peece of a leg of Mutton, mince it smal and season it with cloues, Mace pepper and salt, and Dates minced with currans: then roll it into round rolles, and so into little balles, and so boyle them in a little beefe broth and so serue them foorth.

Translation: Take a piece of a leg of mutton, mince it small and season it with cloves, mace, pepper an salt and dates minced with currants: then roll it into round rolls and then into little balls. and so boil them in a little beef broth and so serve them forth. 

Recipe

30 grams of dates (buy pitted ones, it is worth it!)
1 kg lamb mince (if you can find mutton, use it, and let me know where I can get my hands on some of it!!!)
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1.4 tsp mace
salt
pepper
30 grams currants
3 litres of beef stock

Chop the dates finely - this is by far the most tedious part of the recipe - having some hot water on hand to wipe the knife down occasionally will help. I am told that the best method is to actually use a slicing rather than a chopping motion to cut up dates. Mince up the currants as well.  Mix together with the meat and spices, and then form into small balls (you will get about 25-30).  Bring your beef stock up to the boil, and add the meatballs. Cook until done - this will only take about 15 minutes.  Serve piping hot in the broth. 

*Portingale was the Elizabethan way of saying Portugal. Fartes are essentially cooked balls of food - most often meatballs, sometimes dough.