SC - Re: Sugar Paste
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
Tue Jun 15 15:44:14 PDT 1999
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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