[Sca-cooks] Sugar Paste Again

[Stefan li Rous]

Anahita asked:
> For the Roman feast i'm doing in September, i'm thinking of making
> sugar plate dishes for serving some desserts. I'm not claiming the
> Romans used sugar paste, i just want to have some cool displays.
> After all, there was that description of Trimalchius' feast in the
> Satyricon by Petronius.
I believe sugar was known to the Romans but not in the quantities to
make sugar paste. I suspect it had to be imported from India or the
Middle East.
> A friend and i will be making them ahead of time. She said that those
> she has made previously were rather fragile.
>
> What can we do to make our sugar plate more durable?
You might look in this file in the FOOD-SWEETS-DECORATED section of the
Florilegium. Even if there is any specific info on stregthening sugar
paste, there is lots of other good information, much of it from Alys,
on working with sugarpaste.
sugar-paste-msg  (100K) 10/22/02    Making sugar paste sotelties.
> Meanwhile she and i are brainstorming on how to do that scene with a
> pig... without using a real raw porker...
There have been artificial pigs, dragons etc done in the SCA before.
You might want to take a look at these files in the FOOD section and
the section mentioned above:
illusion-fds-msg (128K) 10/29/01    Medieval illusion foods. Diguised
food.
Warners-art       (32K)  6/29/98    An article on disguised food.
                                        by Alizaunde, Demoiselle de
Bregeuf.
sotelties-msg    (187K)  6/11/02    Sotelties and Warners - decorated
food.
Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****