SC - Re: Sugar Paste

[Elise Fleming]

Greetings.  A forwarded post from Jeannette read:

>So Christy, is this sugar paste something one uses to make sugar 
>plates and bowls?  (snip)  Can they be painted and can they
>actually be eaten?  I still want to try the blown bubbles of sugar but 
>I think that is a different compound . 

One of the problems is that two different items were called sugar 
plate, historically.  Sugar paste is modernly known as gum paste.  In 
the Tudor/Elizabethan/Stuart cookery books it is also called sugar 
plate (as well as several other names).  Form of Cury (from the 1400s) 
has a recipe for sugar plate.  This was not the same as the sugar/gum 
paste of the Elizabethan times.  The sugar plate was a melted sugar 
syrup that was poured out to form a plate and then colored.  There is 
at least one recipe in the 13th Century Anonymous Andalusian cookery 
book in Cariadoc's collection that is also similar to the sugar plate 
of Form of Cury.  The instructions (from my memory) are to pour the 
boiled sugar syrup into molds so that one can form a castle and all its 
furnishings.

This boiled sugar syrup continued to co-exist with what we know of as 
sugar/gum paste.  There are Elizabethan recipes to make hollow fruits, 
etc., with wooden or plaster molds and then colored.  Some of the 
colors were painted on.  Some were incorporated into the original 
mixture.

There are numerous books today on working with gum paste.  Books that 
deal with pastillage or Mexican gum paste are similar.  I found a 
delightful book entitled _Sugar Work_ (Blown- and Pulled-Sugar 
Techniques), by Peter T. Boyle, Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY, 1992; ISBN 
0-442-01350-7 for the paperback version.  It was also printed by 
Chapman and Hall (London), Thomas Nelson Australia and Nelson Canada.
The "blown bubbles of sugar" that Jeannette refers to are probably this 
stuff.  The cover of the book has two blue stem goblets that I thought 
were glass for quite a while!

Jeannette queries about eating the stuff.  Sugar/gum paste can be eaten 
but the modern product does not have quite as nice a flavor as the 
period product made from rosewater and tragacanth.  Edibility is also 
dependent on how thick the piece is and what coloring agents might have 
been used on it.  Period sugar plate had some toxic colors used on it 
which sometimes were recognized as toxic and sometimes not.   In 
general, the colors used by the period (Elizabethan) limners were 
painted onto the plates.

All types of items were made from the sugar paste.  These are some of 
the items listed in period cookery books:  dishes, shoes, walnuts,  
skulls and bones, trenchers, slippers, cinnamon sticks, capital 
letters, snakes, keys, plates, clasps and eyes, snails, knives, wax 
lights,frogs,gloves, cups, cowslips, roses, marbles, primroses, 
cherries, knots, table furnishings, "burrage" flowers, strawberries, 
"jumballs", pigeons, stock gilliflowers, marigolds, apples, rabbits, 
any bird or beast.

Hope this helps!

Alys Katharine 

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