[Sca-cooks] Roman Display, was Sugar Plate Again

[ED Reese]

--
Okay, well, this may be a budget breaker, too, but even if you could beg or
borrow one or two, or buy them, and then sell them as a kingdom fundraiser
-- go to places that sell the cheap terra cotta and pottery statues, and
buy yourself some neo-classical-ish "statuary". If you want it bronze,
paint it.

Decorate them with flowers, drape them with real clothing, use them for
candelabra.

Dress your servers. Take the idea of a "symbolized" triumph, and have the
royalty served by folks who are their "defeated enemies" in one course. Use
different complementary allegories for other courses.

Come up with a dessert -- or even a soup -- based on the grand old cracker
of Cleopatra dissolving a pearl in wine -- a "soup" in which "pearls" of
sour cream/cream cheese, that sort of thing "dissolve".

Again, find a place that has cheap terra cotta planters, and use those as
"fruit bowls" and "bread bowls". Pier 1 also has a nice new line of lovely
red plates and bowls, that aren't HORRIBLY expensive for an accent or two,
and use them as "Gaulish" knock-offs of Samian ware. (Yeah, I can get you
the documentation. The use of colorful, contrasting and complimentary
tableware was popular late period/Romano British.)

I'm assuming, of course, that this will be done in our usual "sit down
table" and "served by courses" SCA style, not the roman reclining,
everything cut in pieces mode.

Pine nuts are good and useful! Again, I think everything you described goes
with doing an Italian feast, but Italians who are trying to put on a Roman
feast. :-) That gives you greater latitude, keeps you in two periods, and
allows you to have some fabulous fun with the servers' costumes! Have you
read about Isabella and Beatrice d'Este planning their "a la Turka"
parties, where they all dressed up in their idea of what a turk would look
like!

Anyway, whatever route you go, I'd make the courses tell an allegory, and
if you can relate it back to royals, so much the better.

Site dressing can help as much to capture the mood as the food. I think the
sugar plates sound lovely, and am wondering if you could super chill and
mold honey/honey comb into something that would last just long enough to be
eaten, perhaps placed atop an "edible" charger that would benefit from the
melting honey "sauce"? Won't butter and honey and heat make a kind of
toffee? (Of course, butter isn't very Roman, but you could claim one of the
cooks was a foreign slave!) Or am I wrong, and only sugar makes the toffee?
But, you could do a romanesque "cheesecake" that could possible benefit
from a honey sauce....

Just some ideas, hope I've not been impertinent. My Roman food books,
including my desperately desired "Food In Antiquity" are -- are you ready,
Mistress Selene? -- in a box in California, so this isn't terribly well
researched.

Yours,

Esther

At 09:35 PM 5/17/2003 -0400, you wrote:

>You might try looking at books like
>Emily Gowers. The Loaded Table. Representations
>of Food in Roman Literature. This is more
>gastronomy and not cookery. It doesn't have recipes.
>There are a number of these that might give you some
>ideas.
>Patrick Faas' new book does have recipes:
>Around the Roman Table. It might give you some ideas.
>
>Johnnae llyn Lewis   Johnna Holloway
>
>lilinah at earthlink.net wrote: snipped--
>
> > Indeed. We are aware that it isn't Roman. But i'm at a loss for what
> > to do to make something rather special, other than serving good tasty
> > food - and other than the sugar plate serving dishes and the "Peach
> > Pits", the food will be "period". snipped
>
> > But if anyone has any food display ideas for a Roman feast, i'd love to
> > hear it. Anahita
>
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