Cft-Banquets-art

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Cft-Banquets-art - 6/2/07

"Confections and the Banquet" by Alys Katharine, O.L., O.P.

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[NOTE – As well as elsewhere in the Florilegium, see more articles by Dame Alys on her webpage at: http://home.netcom.com/~alysk/ -Stefan]

Confections and the Banquet

by Alys Katharine, O.L., O.P.

Household accounts from the medieval period list the amounts of sugar as well as the kinds of sugar that were purchased. For one year, the household of King Edward I used only 677 lbs. of sugar in food dishes, but used 1900 lbs. of rose sugar and 300 lbs. of violet sugar for other purposes.(10) Comfits (candied spices) were taken to war by Edward, Duke of Guelders (1369), as well as Count William IV (1345) in his battle with the Bishop of Utrecht.(11) A recipe to make your own comfits is in an accompanying article.

As mentioned in the article, "Some Sweet Terms," England gradually developed the practice of a "banquet", a separate, sweet, course that followed the main meal. While guests might simply retire to another room for the banquet, wealthier landowners constructed a separate "banqueting house." Also called "prospecting" rooms or a "pleasure house," they could be tiny (fitting only six or seven people) to grandiose, such as one made for a hoped-for visit by Queen Elizabeth. Constructed around 1580, it was three stories high with six rooms on each floor.(12) Some were made of living plants, a sort of bower in a garden. Others were placed in park-like settings or on an island, a feast for the eyes while the stomach was being sated on sugar. A number of cookbooks from the late 1500s on include a list of items necessary for a "banquet." This could serve as a checklist to see if one had everything. It also made sure that banquets continued to include more and more items, as hosts attempted to outdo one another!

What follows now is a partial list of the types of confections, sweets, pastries, and "desserts" that were available from the 14th century on. The list is partial in that learning about period confection is an ongoing process. You will find a summary of cookery books containing many of these recipes at the end of this article.

Items Used in a "Banquet"

Gervase Markham (The English Huswife, 1615) wrote a brief section on "The Ordering of Banquets" wherein he describes an ideal dessert course. "...I will now proceed to the ordering or setting forth of a banquet; wherein you shall observe that the marchpanes have the first place, the middle place, and the last place; your preserved fruits shall be dished up first, your pastes next, your wet suckets after them, then your dried suckets, then your marmalades and goodinyakes, then your comfits of all kinds; next, your pears, apples, wardens baked, raw or roasted, and your oranges and lemons slices; and lastly your wafer cakes."(13) He continues by saying that this is the order in which to organize them prior to sending them out to the dining hall. When the diners are ready, "dish made for show only" precedes everything. The following is a compilation of a number of "dessert" items listed in a variety of cookery books as proper for a "banquet."

Fruits

fruit pastes: quince, peach, green pippins pomegranate seeds

fruit, fresh prunes

preserves, dry and liquid barberries

succade (suckets): orange peel, lemon peel lemons

sitrenade sweet oranges

marmalade cherries conserved

pears in syrup raisins

dates in composte orengat (orange peel candied in honey)

dates in confit chitron (candied citron)

dates

Nuts, seeds, and spices

nuts, sugared coliander (coriander)

marzipan (ground almonds mixed with sugar, rosewater, and egg whites) nutmegs

marchpane (marzipan baked) licoras

pepper, white and brown ginger

saffron anis vermeil (red-colored anise)

aniseeds noisette confites (candied filberts)

cinnamon pine nut comfits

ginger comfits cubeb comfits

cumin comfits coriander comfits

Sugar Items

Sugar paste (see an accompanying article) rose sugar (sucre rosat)

sugar "reliefs," sculptures violet sugar

sugar, melted and moulded dragees, large and small (round drops of sugar)

sugar, spun candich (crystalized sugar gobbets)

comfets (see specific listing above)

Manus Christi (boiled sugar gobbets with gold leaf added)

rusen, red and white (poured into moulds, usually fruit shaped)

Baked goods, cookies, pies, cakes

biscuits: there were a number of varieties

* light, dry biscuits, biscuit breads, diet breads. Some had egg, others did not.

* rich short cakes, the paste being mixed with butter or cream

* raised with ale yeast; usually spiced with aniseeds, caraway, coriander.

* "biskatello"

almond macaroon

jumballs (a kind of cookie twisted into fanciful knots

wafers

shortcakes: Shropshire

Shrewsbury

gingerbread: red (dried bread crumbs, red wine)

white (gum tragacanth, ginger, sometimes almonds)

payne puff

corneseli

marchpanes (baked marzipan, set on a wafer, frequently decorated with comfits, or a shiny white icing)

Custards, milks, miscellaneous

doucettes leach (milk and gelatine)

dariols (custard tarts) jellies

leach (egg and milk custard) cheese

leach Lombard (dates, breadcrumbs, cream or almond milk) creams

FOOTNOTES

10. Witteveen, Joop. "Rose Sugar and Other Medieval Sweets, Petits Propos Culinaires, #20

11. ibid.

12. Wilson, C. Anne, editor. 'Banquetting Stuffe'. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991.

13. Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, (1615) , edited by Michael R. Best, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, 1986

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Madge Lorwin, Dining With William Shakespeare, Atheneum, NY, 1976, p 414-415:

"The cost of spices for a banquet could easily exceed the cost for labor. In 1559 the City of London put on a military display at Greenwich for the new queen's benefit, and the expenditures for the banquet that followed were conscientiously itemized. 'The cooke and his man for thayre labors' were paid a total of five shillings. For a pound of cinnamon, the city paid four shillings; for ¾ pound of pepper, one shilling tenpence; for an ounce of whole mace, one shilling twopence; and for a pound of ginger, two shillings.'"

Thomas Dawson, 1596, The Good Huswifes Jewell: "The Names of all thinges necessary for a banquet. Suger, pepper, saffron, anniseedes, cinamon, nutmegs, saunders, coliander (coriander), licoras, all kinds of cumfets, orenges, pomegranet seedes, corneseli, prunes, currans, barberies conserved, pepper white and browne, lemons, rosewater, raisins, rie flower, ginger, cloves and mace, damaske water, dates, cherries conserved, sweete orenges, wafers; for your Marchpane seasoned and unseasoned, Spinndges."

John Murrell, 1621, A Delightful Daily Exercise for Ladies and Gentlewomen

"A bill of Service for a Banquet. Serve your banqueting stuffe in Silver or Guilt Boules, or Glasse Plates, and set your boules on the Table as you see in these following examples: Put in every Boule two or three several fruits, but not wet and dry together.

A Marchpaine

Mackroones Preserved Pear-plums

Dryed Apricockes

Preserved Oringes whole French Bisket

Cleere cakes of Rasberies

Paste of Apricocks Preserved Cherries

A Marchpaine

Preserved gooseberries Counties Cakes

Lemons in quaking iellie

Drye Cherries Paste of Gooseberies

A Marchpaine

Shrewsbery cakes Preserved Pippins

Paste of Rasberies

Preserved damsons Dry peare-plums

Almond Iambales

Candied Citron Sucket Lemons

A Marchpaine

Preserved Barbaries Candied Eringoes

Artificiall Fruites

Gentilesses ` Marmelate of Gooseberies

Diasettony of Quinces

Marble paste Shell bread

A Marchpaine

Sucket of Walenuts Marmelate of Damsons

Comfeits of 2 other sortes

Pippins in quaking ielley Preserved Quinces

Nouellesses

Synamon sticks made by Art Preserved Wardons

A Marchpaine

Greene gooseberies Canalones in spices

Sugar of Roses

Prince Bisket Sinamon letters by Art

Muscadines called kissing Comfites

Dryed Oringes Quideniock

A Bill of Service for a Banquet on the Dutch fashion. You may put two or three sorts of your fruite in every bowle, but not wet and dry together.

A Marchpaine

Greene Mackroones Preserved plums

Caueaire [Caviar]

Dryed Apricoks Counties Cakes

Parmasant [Cheese]

Bisket Anchouies

A Marchpaine

Paste of pippins Naples bisket

Comfites of 2 sortes

Preserved gooseberies Sinamon letters

Lemons in quaking iellie

Drye cherries Paste of gooseberies

A Marchpaine

Sugar cakes Preserved pippins

Paste of Rasberies

Preserved damsons Dry pear-plums

Almond Iambales

Candied Citron Sucket Lemons

A Marchpaine

Preserved Barberies Candied Oringes

Artificiall fruites

Gentillisses Marmelate of Gooseberies

Diasetonia of Quinces

Marble Paste Shell bread

A Marchpaine

Succet of Walnuts Marmelate of damsons

Comfeits of 2 sortes

Pippins in quaking Ielley Preserved Quinces

Nouelisses

Sinamon Sticks by Art