[Sca-cooks] A Feast Menu for Commentary

[Johnna Holloway]

The Ottoman were heavily into their sugar items and they paraded them  
for a number of festivals.

See http://www.kanyak.com/surname-i-vehbi/yerasimos.html
for descriptions.

Images are here
http://www.kanyak.com/surname-i-vehbi/images.html

I would start out with a mold or a couple of molds if you are doing  
elephants
in any quantity. It saves a great deal of time and if the baroness is  
going to be
in office for a number of years, the molds can be used for other  
feasts through the years
or even presented to her as a gift. You may want to invest a large  
mold plus a smaller one.

Cake places have naturalistic elephant molds. I like Tomric plastics  
myself but they can be expensive.
They carry professional weight molds for shops and home use. http://www.tomric.com

One book with marvelous pictures is:
The Food Culture of the Ottoman Palace by Gary Oberling and Grace Martin
Smith. Istanbul : Society of Friends of Topkapi Palace Museum, 2001.
Again great illus; good text with footnotes; Lots of information on the
16th century court.

And all my information of course from the 2006 research on Ottoman  
sugar is posted on the SCA Subtleties List. That may be of help.

Johnnae



On Aug 7, 2010, at 9:23 AM, Barbara Benson wrote:
>
>> You could on adding a subtletie or Ottoman sugarwork? Would that be
>> something you could do or contract out?
>
> I really want to do some sugar work - but I have no idea how to go
> about it. I am familiar with sugar paste and such but have come across
> no descriptions as to how the Ottoman's did sugar work. I have a bunch
> of pictures of the parade of sugar from the Suleyman's sons
> circumcision celebration and I know exactly what I want to do (the new
> Baroness has a thing for elephants). But the how is causing me
> problems.
> Was the sugar molded? Carved? Blown? I don't even know where to look
> to figure that out.
> Thank you for your time and thoughts. This feast has me all tense and
> turned around.
>
> Ciao,
>
> --
> Serena