[Sca-cooks] Tea Information

[Johnna Holloway]

If not a tea, why not a banquet of sweet things?

This is the full menu for the Elizabethan/Jacobean dessert banquet with 
subtleties
that's featured in Peter Brears’ famous 1991 article “Rare Conceits and
Strange
Delightes” from the volume appropriately titled ‘Banquetting Stuffe’.

Brears begins his discussion of sweet-meats, preserves, and other
‘Banquet Stuffe’ by providing the following list from Randle Holme’s
encyclopedic book The
Academy of Armory from 1688. Brears uses this list to construct
his article on how one today might lay out and recreate a proper
late Elizabethan or early Jacobean ‘banquet.’

Other Bills of Fare for every Season in the Year, also how to
set forth Meat in Order accordingly.


The Second Course for this elaborate meal begins with

Oranges and Lemmons and ends with

15. Jelly of five or six colours, Tansies, Fritters, Pancakes, Balls
toasted.

16. Creams made of Codlings, Quince, Plums, Goosberries or Almonds,
Clouted Cream, Snow Cream, fresh Cheese and Cream, Sillabubs & Cream,
Egg Pies.

17. Custards, White pots, Fools, Leach, Blamangers.

18. Lay Tarts of diverse colours, Tarts Royal, Codlings and Cream, Cheese.


The Third Course then begins with the following

1. March-pan set with several sorts of Sweet-Meats.

2. Preserves or wet Sweet-Meats in Plates as, Pears, Plums, Cherries,
Quinces, Grapes Respass, Pippins, Oranges, Lemmons, young Walnuts,
Apricocks, Peaches, &c. with their Syrup about them.

3. Dried Sweet-meats & Suckets of Oranges Lemmons Citron: or
Conserves, or Candies, and Rock-Candies of Cherries, Apricocks,
Plums, Damasius, Pippins, Pears, Angelica, Rosemary and Marygold
Flowers, Pippins, Pears, Apricocks, Plums, Ringo roots: or Marmalet of
Quinces, Damasins, Plums, Oranges, Pastes made of Citron: Pippins,
Apricocks, Rasbery, English Currans.

4. Bikets, Mackroons, naple Bisket, Italian Bisket, Comfeits round,
Longs and Loseng like, Gingerbread, Almond Cakes, Apricock Cakes,
Losenges, Quince Chips, Orange cakes, Marchpane Collops.

5. Sugar cakes, Iamballs, Iemelloes, Sugar Plate, Plum and Rasbury
cakes, Cheese cakes.

6. Tree Fruit as Apples and Pears of diverse kinds, Cheries, Plums,
Strawberies, Currans, Raspes, Walnut, Chestnuts, Filbernuts, Dates,
Graps, figgs, Oranges, Lemmons, Apricocks, Peech, Dried Raisins and
Currans, Prunes, Almonds blanched

According as the season is for them, all which several things are mixt
and interchangably set on the Table according to the discription of the
Gentleman Sewer.

For more see: Brears, Peter. “Rare Conceits and Strange Delightes: The
Practical
Aspects of Culinary Sculpture.” ‘Banquetting Stuffe’. The Fare and
Social Background of the Tudor and Stuart Banquet. [Food and Society
2.] Ed. By C. Anne Wilson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991.
Pp.60-114.

Why do I see youth in their best dresses and garb circulating with trays 
of sweets?


Johnnae llyn Lewis


David Friedman wrote:
> To the best of my knowledge and belief, "tea" as the name of a social 
> event is long out of period. In my view, the practice of having "teas" 
> at events is in the same category as announcing a Queen's Arts 
> Cocktail party--one more way in which the SCA decreases historical 
> knowledge instead of increasing it. snipped
> I would suggest finding a period social event that fits your purposes 
> instead. One of my buttons.
>
>> I'm coordinating Youth Point for Pennsic.? I'm hoping to host a Known 
>> World Youth Officers' Meet and Greet on evening.? I had this idea 
>> that it would be neat to have a class for the kids on period-style 
>> serving and then invite those who wanted to to come back and serve at 
>> the meeting.? I don't want to deal with the hassel and? issues of a 
>> full meal, so I was thinking of a late afternoon/early evening Tea.? 
>> Any ideas on: Period Tea? Service? (Any Culture) Ideas for simple 
>> "tea" foods that kids could maybe help prepare?
>> -Ardenia 
>
>