SC - "Eat, Drink & Be Merry" (long)

[alysk at ix.netcom.com]

Stefan asked for more information on _East, Drink & Be Merry:
The British at Table, 1600-2000_, edited by Ivan Day, Philip
Wilson Publishers, London, 2000, isbn 0 85667 519 9.

"The publication of this book accompanies a three-venue touring
exhibition...a collaboration between Norfolk Museums Service, the
York Civic Trust and English Heritage...Comprising over thirty
important paintings, some four hundred decorative arts objects and
numerous culinary masterpieces, all brought together in historic
room settings, and cased displays, the exhibition helps bring to
life in a very tangible way the daily rituals of the British at
table."

The meals are recreated in real items (sugar paste, for example) and
in plastic, so real that a particular visitor (a marine biologist?)
was trying to determine whether the seafood was authentic.  The
particular meals recreated are: The Garter Feast of 1671; Duke of
Newcastle's Feast (c. 1710) which uses recipes from May; a British
breakfast, teatime, a picnic from 2000, and an Elizabethan
banquet.

Each particular section of the book gives historic information for
that meal, along with specific descriptions of some of the re-created
foods/dishes.  I was enthralled to learn that the white decorations
on one of the edges of a dish were cock's combs, which turn white when
cooked.  I still am flabbergasted at the exquisite reproduction of
some of May's pies, which have to be seen to be appreciated.

While OOP for us, the descriptions, pictures of the dishes on the
table, etc. for the meals from the 1600s and 1700s helped me more
clearly see how little we really recreate when we do foods.  If you
are interested in late period cookery, you will get some good nuggets
of information.  

I went to England for two days last April to attend the Leeds Food
History Symposium at which Ivan Day gave a presentation from this
touring display.  He showed photos (similar to the photos in the book)
and went into more detail about the construction and re-creation of
some of the items.  Obviously, I was most interested in the Elizabethan
banquet that was recreated.  While one can see things in the photos in
the book, it's not always obvious what they are.  The white "stuff" 
making the walkways surrounding the sugar paste banqueting house is 
actually hundreds and hundreds of comfits.  

One of the rooms in the display is a kitchen, with sugar paste flowers
hanging to dry, some sugar paste statues (Grecian) in various stages of
completion, a mold for making them, the hanging basin and tools needed
to make comfits, and so on.  The frontispiece for the book shows the
completed statues and the parterre (?) of dough and (custards?) that 
complete the display on the table.

The book is a good resource for facts and information about late period
foodways.  This includes things such as how much of particular items 
was ordered or used, how the staff served the food to the king, the
table arrangements (one of the displays is an accurate reproduction
of a table display from a cookery book), and so on.  There is clear
evidence (p. 87) that the king, for example, didn't eat some of every
dish that was in a course.  IIRC, we had a discussion something similar.
Were folk supposed to eat some of every dish or only certain ones?  This
notes that the king had 20 dishes to choose from in each of two courses,
but only picked 4 dishes in the first and perhaps one in the second.

Obviously, because of the dates (1600-2000), most of the 
emphasis is on OOP food, but I am very happy to have this as part of
my collection.  I am doubly happy that I decided to be bold and travel
up to York from Leeds on my one "free" day, so I could personally see
the exhibit rather than just read about it in the book.  It helped to
have read the book the night before.  I could then sound "intelligent"
when I pointed out to other visitors the cocks' comb decorations.  That
particular lady counted with an explanation of one of the pies... She
knew from its contents just what it was and had eaten some like
it when she was a child.  I wanna go ba-a-a-ck! 

Alys Katharine, stuck in the US