Fun-w-Sugar-art

This article was submitted to me by the author for inclusion in this set of files, called Stefan's Florilegium.

While the author will likely give permission for this work to be reprinted in SCA type publications, please check with the author first or check for any permissions granted at the end of this file.

What we will create today is a type of subtletie. Subtleties were very popular with the rich and powerful people in the middle ages and are still made today. When I think of a subtletie, I think of an edible substance made to look like something else. As was true in the middle ages subtleties are often made with various forms of sugar, fruits, vegetables, pastry, gelatins and even meat. Subtleties do not actually have to be edible. They are also made with wax, paper, cloth, wire, tinfoil and wood. Edible subtleties may be supported by non-edible structures. Sometimes part of a subtletie is edible, while another part is not. For example, many marzipan or sugar flowers have wire stems covered in either some type of tape or coated in a colored sugar. For purposes of this class, we are focusing on cold sugar dough (also called sugar plate) and marzipan. We will make very simple subtleties, since the more complex ones take too much time and too many materials to be practical in class.

Boiled sugar plate is sugar that is heated to a boil and poured into a mold while still liquid. The mold is usually rapidly turned to keep the coating even. This type of sugar plate was typically painted. Boiled sugar plate was sometimes dropped on a slab of marble to cool. The fanciest version of boiled sugar plate was Manus Christi. In order to make Manus Christi, boiled sugar was made with rosewater, dropped on a marble slab to cool in the shape of little round cakes. When it was half cooled, the cakes were lightly moistened and coated with gold leaf.

Cold sugar plate or sugar dough is a mixture of finely ground sugar, a liquid and some type of substance to make it stick together. This type of sugar plate became widely used in the sixteenth century. One serious drawback to both boiled and cold sugar plate is that they can melt if the air is too moist.

Pressed sugar is a finely ground sugar mixed with water. It is usually pressed into a mold although it can be made into sheets. This type of sugar is frequently used in the Day of the Dead figures. I have not researched this type of sugar enough to say whether it was used in period.

Fondant is a commercially available form of cold sugar plate. It is technically edible, but I hate the way it tastes and the list of ingredients is not appealing. Fondant is useful in non-competition situations when you do not plan for the item to be eaten. Fondant is frequently used on wedding cakes and other fancy cakes to make a completely smooth surface. Although I seldom use it, it is sometimes easier to shape than period forms of sugar.

Marzipan and marchpane are mixtures of finely ground almonds with sugar and a liquid. The liquid is traditionally either rosewater or orange blossom water. Marzipan is used like cold sugar dough, but does not melt and can be used in a damper environment.

Recipes for boiled sugar plate are found in the Goud Kokery section of Curye on Inglysch. The recipes in this section date to the fourteenth or fifteenth century. The boiled sugar plate recipe is from the Harleian MS 2378 date (?). Boiled sugar plate is usually used to coat the inside of hollow molds while still liquid and must be handled very carefully when hot. One description of the techniques used in the creation and handling of these molds can be found in All the King's Cooks pp. 77-80. Boiled sugar is very hard after it cools. I have also used boiled sugar in layers to create the appearance of water.

The first English recipe for cold sugar plate that I know about was published in 1562. It includes sugar, gum tragacanth, lemon juice and rosewater. This recipe is basically the same as a recipe published a year earlier in France and credited to Alexis of Piedmont. Sugar plate can be used to create fruit, plates, cups and many other items.

Both are a mixture of almonds and sugar with a small amount of liquid. During the SCA time frame, the liquid was usually rosewater or occasionally, orange blossom water. The terms marzipan and marchpane are sometimes used interchangeably. The basic ingredients are the same. However I think of marchpane as the baked product which often has less sugar. Recipes for some forms of marzipan and marchpane can be found as early as the thirteenth century in Spain. See An Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century. I found tenth century Iraqi recipes for filling that sounded much like marzipan but made from walnuts, almonds, pistachios and/or hazlenuts in Annals of the Caliphs' Kitchen, Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq's Tenth Century Baghdadi Cookbook. Although Peter Brears states that marzipan and marchpanes were used in England during the medieval era, he also states that there are no surviving medieval English recipes for marchpane. Peter Brears recipe for marchpane published in All the Kings Cooks was based on a sixteenth century English recipe found in Partridge (1585). Traditionally, marchpane and marzipan were made from finely ground almonds, finely ground sugar, and either rosewater or orange blossom water. Sometimes eggs were added.

Marziplate is not a period term as far as I can tell. It has been described to me as marzipan with gum tragacanth, more rosewater and more sugar. I have not seen any recipes matching this description in period sources. I did see one slightly post-period recipe that meets the description. Marziplate can also be described as a cross between sugar plate and marzipan.

While modern frostings were not used, several sources, including All the Kings' Cooks by Peter Brears, say that a mixture of rosewater, sugar and rice flour was used to make an icy glaze in late period.

If an item needs to be stored or presented in a camping situation, marzipan usually works better because marzipan, once it has dried, does not melt if the air is humid. This is because marzipan is usually about half almond paste. Most of the other half is sugar, so you still want to protect it from direct contact with liquids. However, it is sturdier in moist air than the other forms of sugar. Both cold sugar dough (sugar plate) and boiled sugar plate are primarily made from sugar. Add water to sugar and the sugar melts. Cold sugar dough melts very quickly in moist air. Boiled sugar plate will also melt, after all, it is sugar, but my experience is that it is slightly more durable when the air is moist.

Marzipan should be dried for several days, and for thicker items may need as much as a month to cure. Cold sugar can be made and cured within a week in most cases. Theoretically, sugar dough could be made, formed and cured within 24 hours if the item is thin, but it is far better to allow 24 hours to make the sugar, let it cure overnight before forming it, and allow several days to dry the sugar.

Although this may seem a strange consideration, it is a practical one. Marzipan takes very strong arms and hands. (I think my harp playing may have helped some.) An electric mixer works to get the almond paste broken into small pieces and can even be used to do some of the initial mixing of the sugar and almond paste. However, you must then work it by hand, alternately breaking it apart and pushing it together until you have a uniform mixture, the marzipan begins significant oiling, and the texture is pliable. I find it interesting that the recipes I have seen specifically say not to work the marzipan too much because it will oil. Dame Olwen has told me that marzipan is not done unless it is oily. If the marzipan tends to crack and feels dry, it is not done.

When I first began using cold sugar dough, I used my electric mixer. The results were not the best and it took a very long time. Now I generally work cold sugar dough by hand from beginning to end and it takes half an hour to an hour of mixing. You still have to be sure that everything has been very thoroughly and evenly mixed. However, it is not quite as exhausting.

Sugar dough is not very strong before it dries. If a large heavy item is being made, the sugar may (will) collapse under its own weight unless it is supported. Additionally, sugar may crack if it is used to make a thick item or if a thin item dries too quickly. However, some of the thickness issues can be avoided by the use of an armature to support the structure of your creation. Marzipan is better able to support its own weight and seems to be less likely to crack if a large item is made. Even with marzipan, an armature may be useful.

If I am making a thin item in a mold, I will probably use cold sugar. I can roll it into a very thin layer and drape it over a mold. The mold supports its weight until it dries. Once dry, the sugar is very strong. If I want to make several identical items from a mold, I will generally use marzipan because it is less likely to deform if removed from a mold quickly. Although both marzipan and sugar dough can be used interchangeably in many items, each person develops a preference for working with one or the other. Dame Olwen likes to work in marzipan. I like to work in sugar. Both marzipan and sugar can be made in varying levels of flexibility. However, I find sugar dough easier to make into very thin items.

Sugar plate is good for a very smooth finish, a strong item (such as bowls that can be used to hold small items) or items that require a very white color. A "printed" effect is traditionally applied to marchpane. A slurry can be made from either sugar or marzipan to add a particular texture. Sometimes different parts of the same subtletie will be made from different sugars or even non-sugar.

Different molds can hold different sugars. A hot sugar plate requires a heat resistant mold that will hold liquid and can be turned around. A press mold will be used with either cold sugar plate or marzipan.

Most people prefer the taste of marzipan and marchpane to the taste of sugar plate. However, there are exceptions and some people may be allergic to the almonds in marzipan or the rosewater or orange blossom water in either. Additionally, rosewater and orange blossom water flavor the sugar or marzipan. Some people hate the smell or taste of rosewater. For those people it is better, and completely authentic, to use orange blossom water.

Boiled sugar must be used within minutes (while it is still hot enough to be liquid). Cold sugar plate dries rapidly and should be used within a day or two (although there are tricks to make it last up to a couple of weeks). Cold sugar plate should be wrapped in plastic wrap and stored in an air tight baggie that has been "burped". Marzipan can be stored almost indefinitely if you don't add the egg whites and rosewater until you are ready to use it. Once egg whites and rosewater are added, marzipan cannot be stored as long, but it will still keep for weeks. Before marchpane is baked, it can be kept like marzipan. However, again, the addition of eggs and rosewater reduces its useful life. After marchpane is baked, I treat it like very durable cookies.

The two most important requirements for working with sugar plate are to work quickly and have a dry working environment. The sugar plate dries very rapidly, so if you are slow it may dry out before you can shape it. Misters or spray bottles of rosewater or orange blossom water can be used to moisten drying sugar plate. Although sugar plate dries so quickly that it can become difficult to work, it is important to have dry working conditions so that the sugar plate does not melt while you are forming it.

There are many period sources of color, some of them useful and some of them poisonous. If you are interested in period food coloring, there are many sources of information. The Colorful Cook is a volume of the Compleat Anachronist that discusses various ways that food was colored in period. If you read carefully, most period cookbooks have some information on ways to color food. I am researching and documenting period food colors in a separate paper. You may also want to do your own research. However, even if you have no information on period food colors, you can still play with colors. Today, even in the SCA, most people use modern food coloring. It should be used sparingly unless a truly bright color is needed. Food coloring whether modern or period affects the taste of the food. Too much can give a taste that you may not like, especially when you use a modern black.

Color can be added before or after shaping. It can be mixed in the dough or painted on. Dough can be rolled in powdered colors before or after shaping. Colors can be, and frequently need to be, mixed. Appropriately placed edible gold leaf is a very expensive, but awesome way to put a finishing touch on a subtletie.

The number of ways to shape sugar into various items is limited only by your imagination. Molds, cutouts, runouts, hand shaping, and gluing pieces together are very common. In some ways it is very similar to play dough and the methods used on play dough also work on sugar. Molds are in some ways the easiest method to produce a professional looking product, but they can be very expensive and take up a lot of space. Additionally, you are limited as to what you can make. Cutouts are used to layer shapes onto an item. Runouts and flood work are used to color an area. The area is outlined in piping, then the color is colored. Hand shaping is simply sculpting the item by hand. Often an item is made of several pieces that are glued together.

Cold Sugar Dough originally in a book by Alexis Piedmont as quoted by Barbara Ketcham Wheaton in Savoring the Past, The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789:

Pour faire une paste de succre de laquelle on pourra faire toute sorte de fruit, et autre gentillesse auec leur forme, comme plats, escuelles, verres, tasses et otre choses semblables desquelles on fournira une table, et en la fin se pourra manger, chose delectable aux assistans.

Prens de la gomme dragant autant que tu voudras, et la mets destremprer en eau rose, tant qu'elle soit mollifiée. Et pour quatre onces de sucre, prens en de la grosseur d'une febue, ius de limons plein l'escaille d'une noix, et un peu de glaire d'ouef, en incorporant le tout ensemble. Ce fait, prens quatre onces de succre fin et blanc bien reduit en poudre, et le iette petit à petit, tant que tout soit reduit en forme de paste. Tire-la puis après du mortier, et la broye sus poudre de succre, comme si ce fut farine, tant que tout soit reduit en paste mole, afinque tu le puisse tourner et former à ton plaisir. Quand tu aura reduit la paste en ceste sorte, estans la et applanis auec le rouleau en fueilles grosses ou menus, ainsi que bon te semblera: et par ainsi en formeras aussi telle chose que tu voudras, comme dessus est dit. De telles gentillesses pouras tu seruir à table , te gardant bien de mettre quelque chose de chaud aupres. A la fin du banquet on pourra tout manger, et romper plats verres, tasses et toutes choses, car ceste paste est tres delicate et sauoureuse. Si tu veux faire chose de plus grand gentillesse tu fera un tourteau d'amandes estampées auec du succre et eau rose, de las sorte que se font les mache-pains. Cecy mettras-tu entre deux pastes de tells vaisseaux, ou fruits, ou autre chose que bon semblera.

The recipe was published by Alexis of Piedmont in Les Secrets du rev. sr. Alexis piemontois (1561), f.45v degrees. Ms. Wheaton translated the recipe to English as follows.

To make a dough of sugar with which one may make all kinds of fruit and other agreeable shapes, such as dishes, bowls, glasses, cups, and similar things with which one may set a table, and at the end [of the meal] one can eat them, a delight for those present.

Put the gum tragancanth and the rosewater in the bowl of an electric mixer (or a marble mortar) and stir them together. Let stand at least two hours. Then add the lime juice and the egg white and beat them in well; when the mixture is smooth, which will take awhile, gradually beat in about half of the sugar. Unless your mixer is very powerful, the mixture will be too stiff by then to take any more sugar. Knead in as much of the remaining sugar by hand as is necessary to make a firm dough that is not sticky. Wrap thoroughly in plastic and let it cure overnight. Refrigeration is not necessary.

When the object is dry it will be firm enough to set on the table and use as a container for light, dry foods, such as other pastillage work, biscuits, and nuts. The dough may be colored.

Some people have questioned the use of lime juice instead of lemon juice. I have not completely researched the subject. However, I do know that limon in Spanish means both lime and lemon. It would not surprise me to find that the same duality occurs in French.

Another frequently used sugar paste recipe redaction is found in All the King's Cooks. [[1]] This is based on the recipe found in Giralmo Ruscelli's The Secretes of the Reverend Maister Alexis of Piedmont [[2]]. You may compare the recipes to see the differences and similarities.

1. Stir the gum tragacanth into the lemon juice and rosewater in a small basin. Leave overnight, or place in a pan of hot water until the gum tragacanth has dissolved, and leave it to cool.

2. Stir in the lightly beaten egg white (and any required food colouring), then work in the sifted icing sugar, little by little, until it forms a dough. Turn this out on to a board with more icing sugar, and knead until completely smooth.

3. Roll it into a ball, and closely wrap in a plastic food bag immediately, since the surface dries out to brittleness after only a short exposure to the air.

Although this is also a redaction of the work of Alexis of Piedmont, it is a modern redaction of a period interpretation, which makes it one step further away from the original. For that reason, I used Barbara Ketchum's redaction until recently. The sugar dough recipe in All the King's Cooks, The Tudor Kitchens of King Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace by Peter Brears is similar but uses lemon juice instead of lime juice, the quantities vary somewhat and the gum tragacanth is soaked in lemon juice and rosewater. Although the original French recipe did not call for soaking in both liquids, my experience is that the gum tragacanth dissolves better when added to both the juice and rosewater at the beginning of the recipe.

A Cold Sugar Dough found in Sir Hugh Plat's Delightes for Ladies:

13. The making of sugar-paste, and casting thereof in carved molds.

"Take one pound of the whitest refined or double refined sugar, if you can get it: put thereto three ounces (some cofit-makers put 6. ounces for more gaine) of the best starch you can buy; and if you dry the sugar after it is poudered, it will the sooner passe thorough your lawne searce: then searce it & lay the same on a heape in the midst of a sheet of clean paper: in the middle of which masse, put a pretty lump of the bignes of a walnut of gum dragagant, first, steeped in Rosewater one night; a porenger ful of rosewater is sufficient to dissolue one ounce of gu (which must first bee well picked, leauing out the drosse) remember to strain the gumme through a canuas, then hauing mixed som of the white of an egge with your strained gum, temper it with the sugar betwixt your fingers by little and little, til you haue wrought vpp all the sugar and the gumme together into a stiffe paste, and in the tempring let there be always some of the sugar between your fingers and the gumme, then dust your wooden moulds a little with some of that poudered sugar thorough a peece of Lawne or fine linen cloath..."

Cast Figures of Sugar

Throw on the sugar a like amount of water or rosewater and cook until its consistency is good. Empty it into the mould and make of it whatever shape is in the mold, the places of the "eyebrow" and the "eye" and what resembles the dish you want, because it comes out of the mould in the best way. Then decorate it with gilding and whatever you want of it. If you want to make a tree or a figure of a castle, cut it piece by piece. Then decorate it section by section and stick it together with mastic until you complete the figure you want, if God wills.

Place the sugar and water in a small pan over a gentle heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the sugar has dissolved.

Stop stirring before the sugar boils, then boil it until it reaches 170 degrees C (325 degrees F) on a sugar thermometer. Dip the base of the pan into cold water for a few minutes to stop the cooking process.

Pour the sugar out onto the marble slab, allowing it to run into thin broad discs.

Let it cool until quite brittle, then slide it off and keep in an airtight container until required. [[3]]

Fruit Made of Sugar [Marzipan]

Add one part of sieved sugar to one part of cleaned and pound almonds. Knead it all with rose water and roll your hand in almond oil and make with it whatever you want of all fruits and shapes, if God wishes. [[4]]

Mix the almonds and rosewater in a bowl. Stir in the icing sugar and work them together with a pestle or the back of a wooden spoon until they form a smooth, very firm dough. Be careful not to work them too harshly or the mixture will turn oily.

Line a cookie sheet with wafers or rice paper, place the dough inside and smooth level with a spatula.

You may make designs by impressing them with cookie stamps or by using coloured comfits.

Mix the glaze ingredients together and brush them over the top of the marchpane.

Bake at 80 degrees C (175 degrees F) for 30 minutes. Then remove and leave to cool. Repeat this stage if necessary until it is quite firm.

Sugar plate crown on cushion –Front View Sugar plate crown on cushion –View from Above

[2] According to William Eamon of the Department of History at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Alexis de Piedmont is a pseudonym for Girolamo Ruscelli. See Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

[5] This recipe is a simplified version of the recipe found in All the King's Cook's on page 73. That recipe is a redaction of a recipe found in The Treasury of Commodious Conceits and Hidden Secrets by J. Partridge (1583).

Copyright 2009 by Debra C. Eccles, 455 Main Street, Reisterstown, MD 21136. deccles2 at yahoo.com. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications,provided the author is credited and notified. Addresses change, but a reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that the author is notified of the publication and if possible receives a copy.

If this article is reprinted in a publication, I would appreciate a notice in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.

[1] Found at page 81.

[3] All the King's Cooks at p. 70.

[4] An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13^th Century.

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