SC - gilding the goose?

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Kristine Agnew wrote:
> 
>    I am cooking a goose for an upcoming shire gathering and other than the
> standard recipes( ie. Plein Delit cookbook etc.)I wanted to do something
> quite snazzy but short of refeathering the goose after it was cooked (a
> period practice from what I read) Is there a something with which you can
> "gild" or make golden looking a cooked goose? I'm sure I have read this
> somewhere but for the life of me can't find it.
> I would appreciate any and all advice on this matter.

There are two basic types of gilding. One is endoring, which is to cover
with a golden-colored glaze, usually a saffron-infused egg wash. The
other is actual gilding, which can be done with actual sheet gold (which
is, in theory, edible if not altered with various chemicals: food-grade
gold sheets won't be full of poisons). Another method would be to use
various synthetic edible gold products, either in sheet form or powder,
something like glitter. For the goose I'd recommend the powder; you can
use any sticky glaze (perhaps seasoned honey or some such) and sprinkle
the powder over the glaze. It would look more spray-painted than molded
from gold, but that's not necessarily a bad thing when you consider all
the times I've seen expensive silver vark used in the SCA to make food
that just looks wrapped in aluminum foil.

Real Indian gold and silver vark (micro-thin foil sheets used to wrap
various pills and chewable stuff like betel nuts, as well as to decorate
food) seems to be getting harder to find. Your next best bet would be to
investigate a good cake decorating supply house.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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