SC - wafers

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> 
> I'm also interested in decorative ways to serve these wafers and hypoccras
> since I'm serving the King and Queen and our past barons and baronesses.
> Should I just stack the flat wafers on a plate? Roll the wafers into tubes?
> Use a divided plate with the wafers, dried fruits and comfits in different
> sections? Put each type of item on seperate smallish plates and bowls?

I'm not sure about the wafers and fruits (although the wafers look good
served like rolls or cookies, say, in a folded napkin in a basket or on
a large platter, arranged in a circular overlapping pattern), but the
candied spices seem generally to have been stored and served in little
boxes which you pass from diner to diner, perhaps the way I'd imagine a
snuff box going around, with everybody taking a pinch and passing it on.

You can get inexpensive little shaved-wood hat-box shaped (i.e. round)
boxes, as small as two or three inches across, at some fabric/craft
stores, maybe a five-and-dime if such places still exist. These can be
covered with fabric and otherwise decorated, or even painted with your
baronial arms, etc., and are a good way of serving candied spices. I've
bought enough of these for one per table at feasts, and they cost maybe
a dollar a pop, and  I didn't worry if people took them home as little
souvenirs of the event. 

As for the dried fruit, I'm not sure what you'd do, because I'm not sure
if dried fruits would have been considered appropriate served with the
issuance of parlor spices, wafers, that sort of thing. My suspicion (not
backed up by much research into this, I admit) is that they'd be seen as
a food that opens the chest, stomach, or bowles (as often, regrettably,
happens unexpectedly if you eat too many prunes, for example) and might
be seen as an inappropriate match for the spices you eat after the
cheese and other stomach-closing dairy foods. The best image I can
conjure would be that you don't drive a car with the cap left off your
gas tank, do you? I can see a modern person not thinking this way,
though. Now, if you had candied fruits, it might be another matter, and
if I were serving candied fruits I'd serve suckets (wet candies, more or
less) either in some kind of little pot or bowl, and dry fruit confits
in a larger version of my spice box, I suppose. Marmalades and things,
which in late period tended to be fairly dry, slicable lechemeats, were
often stored in perforated tin boxes with a mold built in; you'd oil the
inside of your marmalade box and pour the hot fruit paste in to cool,
take on the shape of the mold, and dry out over several days. Serving
something like candied cherries in a box might seem to evoke period
practice, especially since these items were often made off-premises and
purchased more or less for medicinal purposes.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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