SC - How do you make the fruit and flowers from "Vatel"?

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Huette von Ahrens wrote:
> 
> In the movie "Vatel", there is a wonderful scene where
> our hero makes fruit and flowers out of sugar.  In the
> background of that scene, you see assistants pulling
> some sort of substance that is a beautiful irridescent
> green, and to my eyes, has a taffy-like consistancy.
> Vatel then takes a similar, but different colored,
> blob of this and blows into it, making the beginnings
> of an apple.  The movie then shows him doing various
> parts of making the apple and finishing the fruit and
> flower confection.  There is another scene where Vatel
> sends Anne a vase and flowers also made of sugar.
> They were all so beautiful.  Does anyone on this list
> know how to do this?  Could you recommend a book that
> shows how to do this?  Or does one have to apprentice
> with a master confectioner for years before one could
> make something as beautiful as shown in the movie?

I'd love to see the movie again to be certain whether or not it is
actually Depardieu doing this on camera, or closeups of somebody's
hands, or some such. No, you don't have to apprentice to a master
confectioner for years, but it certainly couldn't hurt. I seem to recall
there are _very_ brief, cursory instructions for the process in Wayne
Gisslen's "Professional Baking", and there are almost certainly other
modern sources for learning the technique. 

I've done this once or twice, never with any huge degree of success, but
it was fun. I actually have a plot to get together with a glassblower
who lives in the Southern Region of the East Kingdom and put our heads
together on the subtlety question. I'm not aware of any real reason to
believe the process is a period one, but on the other hand, there are
various other period boiled, kneaded and formed sugar recipes, I assume
someone could conceivably have been doing this with some of the sugar
used to make pynade, or perhaps that 15th-century English boiled sugar plate.

Basically what you're doing is making a _nearly_ hard crack syrup,
working it to equalize temperatures as it cools (giving it that
characteristic candystripe iridescence) so you don't have boiling
tar/napalm inside a brittle shell, then when it is of a suitable
consistency you blow it like glass, usually with a wooden or glass tube
made for the purpose. Forming things becomes a lot easier when you have
a heat lamp, perhaps an alcohol burner, handy, to keep the item soft as
you work it. Colors can be added in the form of paste dyes (adding
alcohol-based tinctures for coloring would constitute a bad thing, I
think, as our recent thread on maple walnut brittle/fudge showed) while
being worked. Cutting is done with a heated knife or a fancy gizmo with
an electrically heated red-hot nichrome wire (yes, like in your toaster) inside.

One of the greatest exhibitions of this type of art I've witnessed was
some New York chef blowing a sugar Granny Smith Apple, cutting a small
hole near the top, piping a Calvados-laced white chocolate mousse into
it, and inserting a bay leaf to cover the hole. I have the name of the
chef someplace, but don't recall it offhand.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com