A Collection of Christmas Cokentryce!

I wrote this back in 2015. Originally I’d tweeted throughout the Christmas cookery week with updates of the work being done, then after the dust had settled from the event itself, I used the now-defunct Storify service to tie all the tweets together and flesh out the background and information that 140 characters wasn’t nearly enough space for.
With Storify set to be binned I managed to save the whole thing by exporting to a PDF and there this has languished for a few years…now re-purposed for you lucky people to enjoy.
As it was originally a Twitter story, I’ve done my best to reconstruct it as per the original, dated pop culture references and all…

From December 27th 2014 to 1st Jan 2015 the kitchens at Hampton Court Palace were once again brought to life with Tudor cookery. Over the 6 days we made three cokentryce, this is what happened and why.

So what’s a cokentryce, and why make 3?

There are a number of surviving medieval recipes for making a cokentryce such as this one from Harleian MS 279:

Harleian MS.279 .xxviij. Cokyntryce. – Take a Capon, & skald hym, & draw hem clene, & smyte hem a-to in the waste ouerthwart; take a Pigge, & skald hym, & draw hym in the same maner, & smyte hem also in the waste; take a nedyl & a threde, & sewe the fore partye of the Capoun to the After parti of the Pigge; & the fore partye of the Pigge, to the hynder party of the Capoun, & than stuffe hem as thou stuffyst a Pigge; putte hem on a spete, and Roste hym: & whan he is y-now, dore hem with yolkys of Eyroun, & pouder Gyngere & Safroun, thenne wyth the Ius of Percely with-owte; & than serue it forth for a ryal mete

[Take a capon and scald him [in boiling water] and cut him in half at the waist. Take a pig and scald him and gut him as the capon was, and cut him in half at the waist too. Take a needle and thread and sew the front of the capon and the rear of the pig together and the front of the pig and the rear of the capon together then stuff them both as you would stuff a pig. Now put them onto a spit and roast them until it is nearly cooked then coat with a mix of egg yolks, ginger and saffron followed by parsley juice then serve it for a royal meat]

“Clearly that’s a goose and not a capon…can’t you guys even follow a simple recipe?”

“at least you got the pig right…but hang on! I can’t see a boiling pot and they don’t loook pre-boiled and to cap it all, that’s a medieval recipe and this is supposed to be a Tudor kitchen so what the hell is going on here??”

The recipe for cockentryce is an excellent example to use to explain what our job in the kitchens at Hampton Court actually involves.

We’re employed to look at the kitchens of Henry VIII and to put them into context, both of the building and also in history. That means looking at ingredients, recipes, equipment, people, and documents….pretty much everything that might impact on our understanding of those rooms. We’re interested in process much more than taste or end result. It’s simply not possible to produce something that we can say tastes like it did in the past, we can though say that this is how it was made, and these are the techniques used and this is how it could have been done in this space. We are at times though limited by ingredients and equipment and the requirements for cockentryce are a good example of this. To fully understand we need to look at the rational behind the recipe and look at what it is calling for you to make. Although ostensibly telling you to “just” cut the two animals in half and sew the opposing front and back halves together that is missing the subtext which is the creation of, in the case of the recipe, two new animals. If you just cut ‘n shut the two halves together you end up with what Heston Blumenthal created for his Feasts programme…something that needs somewhat of an extensive tummy tuck to get rid of all the excess bunching at the join as clearly the two vastly differently sized animals are never going to marry together neatly

Heston’s cokentryce

Heston’s version may be following the recipe, but it’s missing the spirit that I belive was intended. When you see fantastic creatures in medieval manuscripts, such as this image from the Luttrell Psalter, they look fantastic but they also look feasible with all the parts joining together in an animalistic way. Many of the illustrations are not simply fantasies constructed by the illustrator but were images of what were believed to be real animals that existed somewhere in the world, they may not have been roaming around Europe but roam they most certainly did to the medieval mind; this is what the recipe for cokentryce is trying to create…an actual animal, not simply 2 halves sewn together for comedy effect. It is supposed to be as real and believable to the medieval diners as the dinosaurs in Walking with Dinosaurs are to modern TV viewers; we know they aren’t real but we expect them to look realistic and I belive the same held true for the cokentryce recipe.

Add. M.S. 42130 f182r

so it isn’t just a case of cut and sew if you want to make a “realistic” looking animal, the old adage of measure twice and cut once is true when making a cokentryce and it really helps if the ingredients are of a similar girth, something which causes slight confusion when ordering from the butcher as meat tends to be sold by weight not waist size!

It is also this need to create a new animal that means making 2 as stated in the recipe isn’t particularly simple.

To make a good looking end result the two halves need to be cut and joined so they look good and hold together so Adrian and Marc united them with a scarf joint favouring the front of the goose and rear of the pig in the cutting. This method allows the animals to be cut in such a way as to leave more skin than rib and flesh to give more area for sewing. This meant that out of each pair of animals only one new one could be created as the opposing halves were not suitable for joining and were used for spare parts on the main beast. I suspect that with more practice they would be able to end up with 2 new animals from each pair; practice as they say, makes perfect.

“Yes…but why the goose when the recipe calls for a capon?”

Capons are castrated roosters; the castration is done in one of two ways, either chemically or physically. Chemical castration of fowl has been illegal in the EU since the 1990’s…residual chemicals in the end product do the same to male consumers as they did the bird, and physical castration is illegal within the UK on animal welfare grounds, though it isn’t illegal to import true capons from areas of the EU where physical castration is still legal. This tends to mean that most birds labelled as “capons” in the UK are simply fat chickens, and they haven’t grown in quite the same way, aren’t quite the same shape, have too much breast and not enough leg and aren’t in great supply. Put simply, the goose is a substitute that we feel is acceptable given the restrictions on obtaining true capons and they have a similar measurement to the sucking pigs that we chose to use.

“ok, so you went with a goose that’s fine…but this is a medieval recipe and you’re in a Tudor kitchen….”

Well, leaving aside the argument that the first half of the sixteenth century is still medieval, as I said before, it’s almost the perfect recipe to showcase what we do in the kitchens at Hampton Court Palace…research, reconstruction, investigation, interpretation, experimentation and history all seen through the lens of food. We have no evidence to say that Henry VIII ever saw this recipe presentented before him, but likewise we can’t say it wasn’t. Just because the source material here is from the previous century it doesn’t mean it was only made in that century; cokentryce can be found in fourteenth century recipe collections and there’s plenty of evidence to show that recipes from earlier centuries were included in recipe collections in the sixteenth century and after all, the cokentryce according to Harleian MS 279 is a “ryal mete”. so what better place to make one than in a royal kitchen?

“and the boiling….or lack of it?”

quite simply we don’t have pots big enough to fit a goose or pig into! I also suspect that the scalding process referred to in the recipe is the scalding done as part of the slaughter process to make it easier to pluck or dehair the carcasses rather than an extra one done as part of the cooking process. Having tried scalding chickens before placing them onto a spit for roasting, their skin shrinks quite extensively which whilst making them look more rounded and smoother and neater to the modern eye, also has the effect of increasing any cuts or splits in the skin which, combined with the shrunken skin would make sewing the halves together that much more tricky than it already is. Oh, and before you ask about the stuffing, the flavour wasn’t important to us, the process was so we used bread as a stuffing. This had the advantage of being quick to insert, held the body out to a suitable dimension and held the animal reasonably firmly on the spit, which is the principle role the stuffing plays, but without the time consuming process or cost of mincing pork to use as a stuffing.

Sewing the halves together isn’t a quick job; the grease and fat in both animals starts to melt and makes everything extremely slippery.

and when it’s sewn together you need to think about how the beast will be posed, so in this case a stiff wire was inserted through the mouth and down the neck to provide an armature to allow the head and neck to be positioned well.

once on the spit, pins, wire and thread were used to position the legs and wings with the aim of cooking it in pretty much the final position it was wanted to be in as once cooked it would not be possible to move any of the limbs without breaking them off.

again, during the coating process we deviated somewhat from the recipe as previous experience has shown that using a green batter is more successful than simply coating with the parsley juice.

So the end of day 2 and the 1st of the 3 planned beasts was complete. It was good….but not good enough for Adrian and Marc, they wanted more, bigger and better and along with Jorge, set to discussing what improvements the mk2 variant would have.

Jorge wanted to apply more colour and use different colouring techniques with the next version whilst Adrian and Marc wanted more legs and a better, more natural overall look to the 2nd….and a tail, a much better tail than the one provide by the pig.

“our butcher has just delivered the meat for the last cokentryce that’ll be started tomorrow. He left with the look of ‘what the hell have you done with my beautiful meat??’ on his face”

here you can see the tail that Marc made from the back skin of the goose,stitched into shape and cut so that as it cooked and shrank it would hopefully form a serpent/dragon like appendage.

Adrian was keen to try and add scales to the pig skin and used Jorge’s spare pen knife, which was the finest and sharpest blade to hand, to cut scales into the skin. His thinking was that as the pig skin cooked and formed crackling, the scales would be revealed like the score lines in a traditional roast pork joint and that these would then show up through the thinner batter that was to be applied at the last stage of cooking….it didn’t work.

So 2 down…1 to go, and as with the previous ones, the guys wanted bigger and better. They wanted to take what they had learned from the previous 2 (which were the first ones they’d ever attempted) and improve on that for the last. Chances are this would be the last cokentryce that they would get to made for a while so they wanted to go out in style.

Linen rag paper coloured with the Brazil wood solution for the membrane with goose quills for the structure

unfortunately by the time it was all finished it was gone half past three and what little light there had been in the kitchens had gone. This meant that the flimsy cameras I had were simply not up to the task of taking pictures of the finished beast in all its glory. Suffice to say it had a golden bill and toes along with silver and gold tips to the dorsal spines that, much to Adrians shock had stayed in during the cooking process; a miracle considering they were just spare rib bones poked through the skin and into pieces of bread stitched into position beneath.

The paper wings were ok, but it would have been much better had they been real feather wings…something for the future perhaps?

You’ll notice that I’ve got all the way to here and not actually mentioned what it or they tasted like; possibly one of the more popular questions we were asked over the week. Well it is what it is, the front tastes of goose and the back pork, because that’s what they are and I suppose we should take it as a compliment at having produced a sufficiently convincing series of animals that people would ask what it tastes like.

It’s also worth noting the reaction that our visitors had to the whole thing, which was very positive. Young and old seemed to be genuinely fascinated and even those who expressed a negative opinion for whatever reason, were still interested enough to ask questions and discuss the process and history of the dish. We all spoke to hundreds of people for great lengths of time and all in all had a great, if extremely tiring 6 days making these three animals. It was a genuine team effort and one I am very proud to have been a part of.

…and so with all the visitors having left, the washing up done and the tables and equipment returned to the store room, all that was left was to sweep the floor and think about what we might like to do for future events.

Knot Shots! Part Deux

In our last exciting instalment of all things knot garden, we left the team with Robin working on the base/tank for his sugar version of the Diana fountain design from the garden of Nonsuch Palace. This would form the centre of the knot garden that was being worked on and he wanted it to look pretty special. As such, he planned to include water and swimming fish in the final design…yes, I thought he was mad!

Tiny test fish

Just to show us that he meant business, Robin whipped up a tiny test fish in short order….though luck wasn’t on his side and the fish was filleted by an overexcited young helper…back to the drawing board then!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table… Jeremiah was making a new plinth for an obelisk, egged on it seems by Robert. Most of the obelisks all looked the same, as they should, being cast from the same moulds

Obelisk and plinth moulds, image courtesy Ian Franklin

but this one was different…though vaguely familiar

The odd plinth/base pieces…they do look familiar though

Jeremiah and Robert said I was imagining things….nothing to see…move along…and besides, none of the visitors had said anything so clearly there was nothing odd going on…I wasn’t convinced!

By now, work was really cracking on and everyone had really got into their stride. Marchpane hedging was springing up left, right and centre and sugar architectural pieces were filling the work table, as well as every spare surface in the team break room and preparation kitchen. Adrian was working on combining a load of these into a classical temple…lots of columns and some domes that explained why he’d been looking for small bowls all morning the previous day.

Taking a base of wood and sugar, a stoneware drinking jug, the sugar columns, the dome, a bowl of thin sugar paste to use as glue, and not quite enough fingers and hands…he was off. The columns were glued to the base with the jug in the middle to act as a support. While the “glue” was still flexible, small wedges of sugar were inserted to spread the columns apart so they were wide enough to hold the domed roof.

Building the temple

Clearly the dome couldn’t go on now, it wouldn’t fit with the jug there, so I left him to it went to make a coffee!
Now for clarity I should point out that my office (the whole of the Daily Programmes team office really, it just makes me feel better calling it my office 🤣) isn’t where the Kitchens Team are based. When I’m in the office I’m away from the Kitchen and divorced from the work that they’re doing in there. The kitchen for the office is upstairs, and while I was finishing making my coffee I could hear the door downstairs open. It was half term, most people were busy elsewhere and I knew the only other person in that day was definitely downstairs when I came up to boil the kettle…it could *only* be one of the Kitchen Team…would it be good news, or bad?

I came down the stairs, cup in hand, and entered the office to find Marc waiting…”QUICK, bring your camera,…you’ll want to see this” he said and then shot off towards the historic Kitchen. Still none the wiser as to good or bad, I put the coffee down and followed him back to the Kitchen to find

The rustic arbor

What had been a mould and a few test pieces the day before had turned from that, via some deft colouring to a self supporting feature.

The painted arbour pieces awaiting construction

but hang on a minute…what’s that in the background?? JEREMIAH!!

Hmmmm?!?!

I suppose that’s the trouble when you employ fans and give them creative free reign! On the up side, nobody said anything, so we might just have gotten away with it. As well as the arbour, sat on the side was the temple…the finished temple, roof and all columns fixed in place and pretty solidly dry!

The classical temple

I have absolutely no idea how it all happened in such a short space of time? Perhaps they’d managed something with the TARDIS??
Returning to my now tepid coffee, I left them to finish the rest of the day off making more of all of it, nothing specific, just lots of parts being made and by the close of the day on Friday there were two quadrants virtually finished, or at least it was obvious what they would look like when finished, and a pile of pieces ready for the final push over the weekend.

Saturday was, for me, quite relaxing. Not at work, doing the usual weekend sort of things like shopping and visiting family, but in the back of my mind was the nagging thought that I really should go in on Sunday to see how they ended up and take images of the final result. I also couldn’t help but wonder how the fountain was getting on, as Robin had become a touch obsessed with it by the end of the week.

He had a kit of pieces on the Friday afternoon and mocked up some of it so I could see what he was planning

Some of the fountain parts mocked together

He was still talking about fish and water, but I wasn’t convinced it would come to much as I thought he’d run out of time…I was wrong, oh so wrong, and late on Saturday afternoon a message popped into my inbox containing a picture

The fountain with gold fish and ‘water’. Image courtesy Robin Mitchener

Blimey!
Well that sealed it for me, I had to go in on Sunday to see what else had materialised over the Saturday…I would not be dissapointed.

When I walked into the Kitchen on the final Sunday,I found a slightly saddened Robin…the moisture in the room had ruined the ‘water’ in the fountain and it now looked more like a fountain of chicken soup than water…there’ll be a reason the original confectionery was in the rooms above the pastry department and their ovens, where it would be nice and warm and dry

The cloudy fountain water

What had been hedges laid onto paper to create the quadrants, now had the paper covered with sheets of marchpane that Jeremiah was decorating and painting with a woad coloured syrup to resemble pantiles

Jeremiah painting the pantiles

Where the plan had been to create decorative poles from pulled sugar for the garden, time had gotten the better of them and paper straws had to make do. The intention had been to use the recipe from Harley MS 2378 for Penydes contained in f157v and 158r

This recipe is essentially for making pulled sugar rods that you cut up with shears into the desired lengths. The intention had been to create coloured rods and thus use almost every technique available to Tudor confectioners to make the knot garden. Alas, it was not to be and we’ll have to add that to the next project.

Time ticked on through Sunday and gravel paths started to cover joints between quadrants. A third quadrant had materialise since Friday and was now having the finishing flourishes added to it

The third quadrant

The fourth quadrant was always planned to be unfinished in order to show the working and what was underneath. There had been hopes that visitors could have driven the design of this 4th space to really make this a truly collaborative project, but I think the team were so wrapped up in the rest of the work that this laudable plan fell by the wayside. As with the pulled sugar, next time perhaps!?

Then suddenly it was 3.30. I had told the team that they had to finish by now so that they and the visitors could see the final object in isolation. They cleared away all the work tools and ingredients and cleaned the table around the garden. The last touches were added and stray comfit gravel raked into neat paths…voila! The finished knot garden.

Board game or knot garden?
The completed garden
From another side

The finished garden was all that was planned for and more. 3 completed quadrants and a forth showing the process. Statues, obelisks, temple and fountain…there was even a viewing stump complete with spiral pathway!

Mermaid statue and Obelisk…as well as ‘marble’ bench for relaxing upon!
The view from the top
Any resemblance to a spare sugar loaf with added decoration is entirely coincidental! Image courtesy Ian Franklin
The bonus TARDIS. Image courtesy Ian Franklin

I’ll even cut them some slack for the TARDIS as it looked pretty damn good with its woad blue colouring!

They did a fantastic job. They worked like troopers to get this completed from drawing to finished garden in 9 days and it looked like a single finished product, not a collection of separate items posed next to each other. It met the brief and was suitably sized for the room and visually impressive. It showcased the various skills available, not only to Tudor confectioners and cooks, but of the team themselves and they should all be justifiably proud of what they achieved.
I doff my cap to them all, Marc, Robert, Robin, Jeremiah, Zak, Adrian, David and Barry.

So what happened to it afterwards I hear you ask. As much as this might have been amusing…

Jeremiah Smash!

it wasn’t destroyed in some Godzilla re-enactment; it was however not long for this world. About 4 minutes after I took my last photograph it was gone; dismantled, stored and reclaimed. The architectural pieces are now in store in case they are useful in the future, the gravel and ‘flowers’ were bagged up along with the spare comfits and await a use in the next project. The paper plats have been stored with the rest of the project paperwork and plans while the rest was eaten, taken or binned depending on how many little hands had been all over it.
Why didn’t we keep it all as it was? Several reasons really. First, we just don’t have the space to store it. Second, the longer it’s stored the more ‘tired’ it starts to look unless it’s carefully wrapped or covered. Third, in the main subtelties like this weren’t designed to last; they were designed to be created, admired and consumed. Finally, and most importantly, if we don’t get rid of the things we make, we’re less inclined to have the incentive to progress and improve…we’d find excuses to do new and completely different things because we’d have “done” sugar subtelties. By destroying what’s been made, we never have the actual object to rest our laurels on.

So that’s the sugar knot garden done and dusted. Hopefully that’s given some idea of the work that went into it (despite all the bits I’m bound to have forgotten thanks to taking a fortnight to finish writing this up!)

I can’t say what the next post will be about or when it’ll be…what can I say, just look at the post history and see my laziness writ large. 2020 promises to be a roller-coaster ride of a year…the anniversary of the Field of the Cloth of Gold complete with family festival (9 days of jousts, plays, games, crafts and cookery in the gardens at Hampton Court) and stunning exhibition on the history of that momentous occasion full of fantastic objects connected with Henry VIII and Francis I’s meeting in 1520. There’s Tudor cookery through the year at Hampton Court (check website for details as they say) or if the Georgians are more your thing, then we’ve got your back at Kew Palace Kitchens too….all of which, or none of it, is ripe for blog posting!

TTFN

The [Knot] Garden of Earthly Delights!

So, we’re a couple of days past the end of the February half term holiday that contained the Elizabethan confectionery cookery at Hampton Court Palace….how did things go? As with previous posts, this is picture heavy, text light…and likely to end up being split into a couple of posts just to keep you coming back for more and because there’s a lot to cram in from 9 days of work!

A garden in the Gardeners Labyrinth

Many of you will have seen the updates on Twitter over the week, so you’ll already know that the results look awesome…the guys really knocked this project out of the park.

I think it would be fair to say that the plans for this week haven’t had an easy life. I wrote a brief for the team at the end of last year listing what I wanted them to end up with…a sugar knot garden…as well as giving some specifications about what I didn’t want included or worked on (should be visually impressive and proportionate to the room it would be displayed in, but shouldn’t be “to scale”, should demonstrate correct period techniques and help visitors understand the use of sugar subtelties in the late sixteenth century as well as giving them some information about Tudor garden design and banqueting… but I left all of the detailed planning as to how this would be realised up to them. They had all of the Christmas cookery week to discuss ideas amongst themselves and to decide what they would be doing, how they’d do it, and more importantly, when it would get done. This was as much about the team learning to plan things that I would have done for them in the past as it was about working out how to make a sugar garden!

Their response to the brief was a good one, they gave some great examples of the sort of stuff they wanted to make, they said roughly how they’d make that sort of thing and when it might get made through the course of the 9 days, they even thought about who would be needed to bring which skills to each task…what they didn’t say was exactly what it would look like! So this past week has been as much of a journey of discovery for me as it has been for you on Twitter.

When I left you last, the team had made a start on the first quadrant of their plan, and the sketches and draft plats that they had created gave me some idea of what I should expect to materialise through the course of the next 7 days. They moved fast and converted almonds and sugar to marchpane paste for the hedges in swift order, all of which were textured to look like real hedges using Adrian’s nifty broken stick technique I showed in the last post. These hedges were then laid over the drawings on the plats they’d made out of replica medieval paper and hey presto…knot gardens!

the labyrinth quadrant…or Millennium Falcon?
the first quadrant, part coloured by mid afternoon on day 3

With all the hedging being made, it was easy to forget that there were all of the rest of the garden parts to manufacture as well, from architectural details like a fountain or decorative obelisks to gravel paths and flowerbeds. The gravel and flowers would be made from sugar comfits, what today we’d call hundreds and thousands, and these would be needed in bulk . Comfits are made by coating seeds with a thin layer of sugar syrup, then drying it out until it’s hard and then repeating that process a number of times depending on how big you want the final product…this can be anything from a few dozen times for hundreds & thousands, to a few hundred times for gobstoppers! Ivan Day has already described the process in great detail which means that I, a very lazy man, do not have to. Making comfits is something that the team have been slogging away at each cookery weekend through January and early February to ensure a stockpile of sufficient size for this garden project…if only they had the modern mechanised process of making them with what look like large heated copper cement mixers to rotate the seeds and syrup automatically.

Making comfits using the balancing pan over a portable charcoal stove
Making comfits using the balancing pan over a portable charcoal stove
Once they're nearly big enough, coloured syrup is used for the last few coats to build up the final appearance
Once they’re nearly big enough, coloured syrup is used for the last few coats to build up the final appearance
Saffron for yellow and cochineal for red are some of the colouring’s used for the comfits and sugar work, along with parsley for green and woad for blue

Probably the best historic description that’s easily accessible for comfit making is contained in Delights for Ladies… by Sir Hugh Plat it’s chock full of detail and echoes descriptions and mentions that are found in earlier texts and recipes.

Diana Fountain from Nonsuch Palace

For the architectural features like the pillars, columns and fountains, I’d specified to use sugar plate made from fine ground sugar and gum tragacanth. This was to be moulded with wooden or plaster moulds, not free modelled…which they’d have much preferred (I know, I’m a total git!). This meant that they would need to plan what they wanted to make, then make moulds of those items and only then, could they begin to manufacture the pieces for the garden…easy right?!

Again, they grasped the task with both hands and really went for it. While some of the ideas for moulds were complete from the get go…an architectural obelisk, and a plinth/base for it for example…many were planned with no particular end function in mind, such as decorative strips that would eventually find a use as applied decoration on the fountain base, or to form the steps of the classical temple.

Obelisk and plinth mould carved by Robert
Mould for a decorative strip, image courtesy Ian Franklin

With these moulds made before the start of the week, work could begin at any time, but the need for a number of other moulds only became apparent mid-way through the week, once the team started to work out what was and wasn’t likely to be achievable, or just went and had some mad ideas. These included the mould for the rustic arbour pieces as well as the columns for the temple. As we’ll see later, the arbour pieces were designed to interlock, providing support for the completed piece as well as looking like tree limbs and leaves.

wooden mould
Mould to make “rustic arbour” pieces, carved mid-way through the project

Along with the carved wooden moulds, I had challenged them to make and use plaster of Paris moulds as they had done when they made the sugar queen in 2016/17, though on a considerably smaller scale this time!
Robin decided that he’d use this technique to make the figure that would top the fountain he wanted to make…this would be based on the Diana fountain image a few pics up from here. His plan was to sculpt a wax master of the figure, make a two part mould from this and then use that mould to either cast boiled sugar figures (really adventurous), or press sugar paste into it to make them that way. As is more and more the way of late, because of other responsibilities, I was out of the room when he started the process of making the mould and only caught it as he poured the second batch of plaster to make the top half.

making a plaster mould
Making a two part plaster mould…pouring the second half of the mould.

Having made a bed of plaster within clay retaining walls, the small wax figure was laid into the plaster and locating marks were sculpted into it just before it fully set. Then an hour or so later, the second half of the mould was poured in and the whole left to set…which is about when Robin realised that he’d got so carried away with wanting to get the mould made, that he’d not actually added any barrier or release agent to either the wax figure, or the first half of the mould. Had he just encased his delicately carved wax model inside a block of solid plaster??

No…he was a VERY lucky chap, and at the end of the day when the plaster was fully set and dry, some gentle prising with a stout blade…and a few choice words uttered…popped the two halves of the mould apart. Admittedly it did decapitate the figure, but as the mould was good, with no air bubbles or voids, that mishap could be overlooked. The two halves were popped into the airing cupboard to dry overnight, and the next day Robin used it to create tiny “marble” statues around 5cm tall, each one made slightly different by adding more sugar that was free modelled to make draping cloth or clothing pieces.

sugar statue
Marble stat…sorry, I meant Sugar statue

These were all well and good, but his plan was for a figure topped fountain, complete with water…and fish…because why not?! Obviously it wouldn’t be real water, boiled sugar would substitute for that as it should set hard but stay transparent enough to see the tiny sugar fish that would be “swimming” in it, but it did mean that the main tank had to be “water” tight.
The image of the Diana fountain was fairly easy to follow, especially as in July 2019, Robin had made a series of moulds that made up an octagonal box and he hoped he could re-purpose these to make the main base/tank of the fountain; it’s actually why a fountain was suggested by the team as they though it would be fairly easy to make and that time could then be spent on other details within the garden….that didn’t really work out that way though.

sugar models
Sugar “trinket box” and covered cup

It turned out that the box mould was a little smaller than the fountain needed to be, so Robin proceeded to create a kit of parts of flat panels cut from a sheet of sugar paste. When these were dry, they were “glued” together with a thinned down sugar paste and the joints covered in thin strips of paste for rigidity and decoration, as well as helping to seal the tank to keep the “water” in.

Robin making the fountain base/tank

as an aside here before the details of the rest of the fountain, it’s probably worth pointing out the bone tools Robin is using…which he had to make for the job…a nice and useful piece of recycling kitchen waste…and by custom making, it ensured he gets the exact tools he needs, not some that are only “close enough” for the job.

A selection of bone modelling tools

I’m going to leave it here for now and give myself a couple of days to write the next post and you time to digest this…it’ll also allow me time to fit in the day job and prepare a report on the past week, carry on planning the next major cookery run at Easter, and sort out end of year reviews for the team…fun or what?!?
By the way, there’s cookery in the Kitchens at Hampton Court each weekend through until the end of March, so plenty of opportunity for you to visit and see some of this sort of thing in the flesh…who knows, you might even fancy lending a hand! Details of cookery events at Historic Royal Palaces sites can be found by visiting the website and searching for “what’s on” at Hampton Court or Kew Palaces (if the eighteenth century is more your thing)

TTFN

The Gardeners Labyrinth

Waaaaay back in 2015, the Kitchens at Hampton Court Palace saw the Kitchen Team try to make a sugar knot garden that may or may not have gone according to plan…well, ok, it didn’t, we ended up with some very impressive jam tarts but not the sugar and almond garden that was planned. So with the February half term school holiday 2020 upon us, and the last of 6 months of Elizabethan interpretation drawing to an end, I thought it was high time that redemption was sought and I tasked the team with planning and preparing to make a sugar knot garden once again.

Clearly sugar models of gardens are a popular subject; the inestimable Ivan Day has recently created one for the outstanding Feast & Fast exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge

One of the magnificent recreated banquet tables created by Ivan Day for the Feast & Fast exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
One of the magnificent recreated banquet tables created by Ivan Day for the Feast & Fast exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

(if you’re reading this before April 26 2020 and have the chance to go and see it…GO, you won’t be disappointed).Melford Hall banqueting house Ivan chose to model a sugar version of the banqueting house from Melford Hall as his centre piece, with the knot garden itself  a much more two dimensional affair (you can just about make it out in the image above, there’s a golden tree/bush in the middle of part of it), surrounded by a multitude of other sugar delights and beautiful serving dishes. For our version, the intention was always to repeat the plan from 2015…go large, go 3-D, concentrate on the hedges and paths and add period architectural details such as obelisks and posts as would have been found in a late Tudor period garden at a high status property, while using techniques found in confectionery and cookery texts of the time. Inspiration was to be drawn from surviving and replanted gardens at stately properties across the UK as well as details from lost gardens such as those at Hampton Court itself, along with the garden at Nonsuch Palace, many details of which survive…

This was to be an interactive affair, with as many things as possible for visitors to help with or shape with their thoughts and opinions, but most of all it should be fun and interesting…So with that in mind, the plan that the team came up with was this:

Rough sketch design for the HCP sugar knot garden 2020
Rough sketch design for the HCP sugar knot garden 2020

Each quadrant of the design would be based on suggested garden designs contained within the 1577 Gardeners Labyrinth and would look something like one of these sketches

 

design 1 & 2design 3& 4

The design would possibly repeat…or maybe stay the same in 3 of the 4 quadrants, with the design of the 4th one being created by visitors over the course of the 9 days of cookery. The designs would, as with 2015, be sketched onto replica medieval paper using oak gall ink and quill, and would form guides upon which almond marchpane, and sugar paste “hedges” would be created. The gravel in between the knots would be made of sugar comfits and the pillars, posts and perhaps a banquet house, would be made of various forms of sugar…either pulled or moulded into shape, all coloured with period food colourants.

That was the plan…how’d that work out??

As I write this, it’s day two of the 9 day event and so far, so good! Everyone is on the same page and progress is coming along at a pace…in fact, much quicker than I’d expected to be honest. Jeremiah has been transferring the original sketches onto paper that can be used out in the kitchen (rather sneakily working in the warm of the office next to a radiator while Storm Dennis ravages the UK)

transferring the designs onto replica medieval paper with quill and oak gall ink
transferring the designs onto replica medieval paper with quill and oak gall ink

When he’s not been doing that, he’s been blanching almonds like a man possessed as they’re going to need an awful lot of them to make all the marchpane that they’ll need.wp-1581858682325.jpg

Robert has been busy testing out the moulds that he’s created for some of the architectural details…he’s making these details from a mouldable sugar paste that is very similar the the modelling sugar used to make decorative flowers and such like for wedding cakes. This is then pressed into the moulds to shape it before it’s turned out and left to dry and set hard; the kit of parts is then stuck together with more paste to create some (fingers crossed) impressive pieces for the garden.

With all this activity this morning, seeing the first quadrant change from this:

IMG_20200216_102020-1.jpg
The first quadrant at 10.20 am 16/02/20

To this, in such a short space of time

wp-1581856812662.jpg
The first quadrant at 12.30 on 16/02/20

was a bit of a shock! The plan is to create all of the hedging and then “paint” it green with a parsley juice based colouring. This was the second method tried back in 2015 (if you’ve not gone a read that post…slackers) and while it doesn’t produce as solid a green paste, it does mean you aren’t held up waiting for the green to be made before you can get on and model the marchpane.

You’ll notice that there’s a texture to the marchpane, and at first I thought it was just roughly made, but how wrong I was. Adrian wanted to make it look like it was actual box hedging, so started to stipple the surfaces with the point of his knife but found that took too long…

IMG_20200216_102640
a simple broken stick becomes a creative tool for making marchpane hedging

cue some quick thinking and a broken stick, and suddenly you have a tool for making box hedging

roasting beef in front of the great fire

Obviously, on top of all this confectionery construction, there’s the usual roasting of beef taking place. That’s a staple within the kitchens as it’s the primary function that the surviving spaces were designed for. It’s also great on a cold, wet and blustery day like today when it becomes the single most popular place in the kitchen if not the Palace!

There’s still 7 more days of the knot garden construction to go, the last day is Sunday February 23 2020, so hopefully time for a few updates between now and then, if not here then certainly on Twitter. Fingers crossed it all ends up as impressive as these first steps look like they might lead to.

 

 

 

Hello Sweety!

Waaaaay back in the mists of time (2016) I set the Historic Kitchen Team the task of trying to make large figurines from cast boiled sugar; you can read about it <HERE>. Try as they might, there was little success…but we did end up with a very nice mould that’s been sat in storage ever since crying out to be used. Well this October, for the school half term holiday, the opportunity presented itself to push the team one more time to try to produce a cast sugar figure…and this is the short update about what happened, though as there’s a picture of a dirty great sugar figurine at the top of the page, I’m pretty certain it’s not going to be a great shock to you when you get to the bottom of the page.

But was that something they actually did in the past I hear you ask….well, as I detail in the post from 2016 (don’t worry, you don’t have to scroll back too far through the blog to find it, I’m lazy and haven’t written a great deal since then) there are plenty of recipes that run through the process, so it seems likely.

‘To mak ymages i[n] suger’ snippet
Harley M.S. 2378 f161v
(C) The British Library
‘To mold of a lemmon, orenge, peare, Nut &tc. and after to cast it hollowe within, of sugar.’
Sir Hugh Platt. Delightes for Ladies,1608

There’s also descriptions of subtelties in the form of people being presented to the table, such as the description of  vaulting and leaping figures served by Cardinal Wolsey to French guests in Cavendish’s “Life of Cardinal Wolsey” 1 as well as suitable Elizabethan period references…all very handy as Hampton Court is showcasing all things Elizabeth this autumn (2019), to coincide with the temporary exhibition of the Lost Dress, the former Bacton Altar cloth, thought to be made from one of Elizabeth’s dresses.

So, fast forward to the present day and the nine day half term event, during which I charged the team with the task of repeating much of what they’d done in 2016, but with the added demand of having to produce cast models.

plaster of Paris mould of a female figurine
Half the plaster mould of the figurine ready for some test casting

The first test of the week looked promising, and half a queen was produced in short order…though not by pouring boiling sugar into the mould, but rather by creating a sheet of sugar then slumping it into place to create the form.

The resultant half a queen needed a stick to support it…which very swiftly begat the concept of a “lickable, ‘lizabethan lolly”!

hmmm….lollipops!

 This test piece was left overnight when it was thought it might firm up as it dried out a little more in the airing cupboard…

failed sugar figurine
The Blob!

but that was not to be, and by the morning,the once 3D form of the front of a queen was now an accurate sugar model of a Dr Who character from the Troughton or Pertwee eras.

Quite a lot of the rest of the week was spent with the team fixated on improving the results of the slumping method and with creating a crystal clear sugar that would set hard despite the awful weather we had over the week and the rain soaked and sopping wet atmosphere in the Kitchens…

Fish Court at Hampton Court Palace
Henry VIII’s confectionery was on the first floor at the end of Fish Court, just behind and to the right of the windows at the end

it’s no great surprise to find out that confectionery kitchens are nice and warm and dry, and Henry VIII’s were no exception.

Situated at the end of Fish Court in the midst of the Kitchen complex, upstairs above the pastry house where it could be kept warm and dry by the heat from the ovens and the working rooms below. Here in 1539, Bonaventure Carter, James Fulgam, George Herd and John Bartlett would have worked to produce sweet delicacies for King Henry VIII and the upper echelons of his Court…but I digress…back to the Elizabethan stuff!

The obsession with the slumping wasn’t what had been asked for and isn’t how the recipes describes figures being made, so that had to stop and work needed to concentrate on working out how to work with boiled sugar in quantities that could fill the mould, or at least fill it to coat a layer sufficient to hold the shape of the Queen figure and most crucially, survive removing from the mould (the principal problem back in 2016).
By now, Friday was upon us and there’d been no great signs of progress. Several changes of staffing  had occurred and work on comfits was proving to be popular because it was nowhere near as complicated as the casting work was turning out to be. 5.45pm on Friday rolled round and I left for a weekend of shopping and the normal “adult” things that have to be done on days away from work, only to be greeted at four o’clock on Saturday afternoon on Twitter by the image of a ‘perfectly’ cast sugar figure posted by Jeremiah from the team…they’d actually done it, pulling it out the proverbial bag at the 11th hour.
cast sugar figure in the shape of Queen Elizabet ILike buses, it wasn’t long before Robin (it was Robin and Jeremiah who were working on the figures over the weekend) sent me a photo of a second figurine…

The second successful Sugar Queen

This one was much less caramelised than the first one as you can see from the handy mobile phone torch being shone through it from behind.

Unfortunately, these two were the only two sugar queens they made, but its not about quantity, its about the ability to make them, and to repeat making them which is the whole point of the recipes…to be able to make as many as you need, repeatedly.
On returning to work after the weekend, I was able to check the team camera to see if they’d managed to record any of the manufacturing process…which luckily for all of us, they had (click on the images to see larger versions).

So, is that it you ask? Pretty much. As is was all rather 11th hour, there was no real time to experiment with the decoration as it’s described in the recipes and colouring the finished article. Likewise, time didn’t allow for working on a less clear version of the sugar to see if not caring about clarity would make a difference. The recipes never mention the end result being clear, especially as they go on to describe how to colour and paint them with coloured sugar. The notion of ‘clear’ is a modern one in my opinion, and not likely to be something they were either worried about or possibly had worked out how to achieve as it took a LOT of work and patience to keep the boiling sugar from crystallising on the stove or as it cooled and started absorbing moisture…still, lots of things to look at next time I pick this as a topic to work with. =o)

  1. George Cavendish, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, 2nd edn (London: Harding and Lepard, 1827) (pp. 197–198)

Confectionery Cloth Of Gold

When Henry VIII and Francis I met for the treaty negotiations now known as the meeting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, little did they realise than almost 500 years later, someone would have the reasonably insane idea of recreating part of that meeting in three dimensions out of sugar. Well of course they wouldn’t realise that, it would be stupid to think so, and even more stupid to consider making a sugar version as an idea; which possibly tells you more about me than anything else, as it was the first idea that sprang to my mind when my colleague Suzanne asked for ideas to link the family “make and do” activity planned for this summer with the work that the Historic Kitchens Team would be doing in the Kitchens at Hampton Court Palace.
Her intention was to have something that any visitors to the Palace could participate in, that built in scale over the course of the event, was a genuine community effort but also allowed people to try real historic techniques and methods out…the only problem was that she didn’t have any idea what it could be as she didn’t want to suggest anything that the Kitchens Team wouldn’t be happy with…what did I think it could be?

Now, those of you that have followed the exploits in the Kitchens over the last quarter of a century (dear God has it really been that long!?!) might recall that the team have been responsible for a lot of sugar models in the past…I touched on some of them when we were talking about the making of the sugar knot garden a couple of years ago (HERE). You also might know that I’ve never been a great fan of this work, not because I don’t appreciate the immense skill that my friends and colleagues have in order to turn powdered sugar into stunning models, but rather that it is work that was never done in the room we have to work in and so by making confectionery models and such like we run the risk of giving a false impression of how the spaces were used in the past. That being said, sugar work can be ideal as a public interactive activity because if using the later sixteenth century recipes for sugar plate, as for example was published in the Second Book of the Good Huswifes Jewell by Thomas Dawson in 1597, then you’re essentially working with edible modelling clay…ideal for kids of all ages to play around with.

So setting aside my reservations, I suggested sugar work to Suzanne and we were then merely faced with working out what this would be used to make.
In fact it didn’t take long, she mentioned that we could use the Field of the Cloth of Gold painting (held by the Royal Collection and displayed at Hampton Court Palace in the Young Henry exhibition) as a subject and I did the rest. As there would be a finite number of days that the build would take place over, we really needed a subject that couldn’t be finished…nothing worse than saying you’ll be building XXX over a month only to be so busy with helpers that you finish on day 2! That meant that the obvious candidate, the main temporary Palace in the foreground was out, yes we could have added lots of decoration, but how interesting is it to ask people to make a tiny brick or tile? Much better to be able to make lots of something, where numbers weren’t important…and what are there lots of in the image and what were there lots of at the actual meeting?? People and tents. All that was needed was a bit more focus and we’d have an idea to work from.

Henry VIII and Francis I wrestle together before a cloth of gold tent

If you look in the top middle of the painting, you’ll see a large golden tent…no, not the fancy double ended one, just above that, the round one with the two kings in front of it all surrounded by a circle of tents in the Tudor colours of green and white. That was what we’d make, and if we had too much help then more tents or more figures could be made to bulk it all out. On the days that the guys in the Kitchens were making the “real” thing, people could also work in one of our other Palace rooms and help make more of the image in paper and card, that way everyone had the chance to try historic and modern methods of model making all to create a giant 3D version of as much of the painting as we could get done.

So with the flimsiest of ideas to work from, I dropped the news on the team that starting in just over a week, they’d have two and a half weeks to make as much of the image as they could, and that on 6 of those days they’d have as much help as they could coerce visitors into giving them…you can imagine how popular I was that day! They might have been fuming, but I was pretty confident in their skills and abilities and was sure that by the due date (21 August) there’d be something pretty spectacular to see. I walked back to my office to leave them to cogitate and come up with a plan and within a very short time, Adrian and Robin came up with a blinder.

Construct a large sugar central tent, possibly on top of a paste board framework to support it, and gild that. Make a Henry VIII and Francis I out of a combination of sugar plate and marchpane (almond and sugar paste) and paint them with natural food colours. Make a mould to construct sugar figures and press them out to make an army and the crowning glory of an idea, break the green and white striped tents down into individual stripes, make the white from sugar plate and the green from coloured or painted marchpane then when each “stripe” was sat next to the others you would build up a tent; all you needed was a “straight” piece and a wedge piece to make the curved tents (a bit like an [insert name brand here] chocolate orange)

A white sugar “wedge” laying down on the board next to green and white “stripes”

Green marchpane “stripes” being made by moulding inside a wooden frame

All they would need to do would be to have people churn out stripes and wedges like there was no tomorrow along with a few dozen soldiers, while the team concentrated on the marchpane monarchs and the massive gold tent…easy! Well I say easy, because for me it has been…pop in to the Kitchen once in a while to see how things are progressing, take a few pictures in anticipation of this blog post, order sugar and almonds…a lot of sugar and almonds…then at the last minute, buy a load of gold leaf and go on leave for a few days leaving the guys to it for the final big push to the finish. For them, it’s not been as easy, but it’s been a genuine revelation in some respects.
Firstly there’s Jeremiah…who knew the hidden talents the man had?! We got our first inkling when he wanted to try his hand at sugarwork in the first planning week, so “had a go” at making a sugar playing card:

Jeremiah decorating sugar playing cards

the man’s a demon with a brush…turns out he’s none too shabby when it comes to freehand modelling too as his marchpane Henry and Francis heads showed:

Robin once again demonstrated that for a man with what he describes as “builders hands”, the detail and finesse with which he can make things is astounding, from the bone modelling tools that the whole team used, to an alabaster mould for making tiny sugar figures

an alabaster sugar mould and bone modelling tools made by Robin

He also proved more than capable when it came to modelling marchpane

marchpane heads made by Robin

too…something that for years he’d never tried to do…perhaps we should have pushed him earlier?!
These are just some of the stand out examples in a sea of skills that have genuinely shone over the last few weeks of work.

Zak working wonders with kids and families alike, convincing them that making loads of identical tent pieces was something they should aspire to, and without that coercion and cooperation, there really would be so much less for you to see here. He was also responsible for finishing off the sugar part of the golden tent and helped add the gold leaf with Dave…when Dave wasn’t busy gilding children’s fingernails or noses to order!? [note to self…discuss profligate use of gold leaf with Dave 😎 ]

Zak adds the front part of the pelmet to the tent

and all ably assisted by Robert and Liam who when not explaining what the others were doing, were providing the other daily cookery for visitors or helping them turn out tent sections, soldiers and a host of other sugary delights.

So, enough smoke blowing, how did they actually go about making the model I hear you cry?
Well the segmented green and white tents were ‘easy’, just pressed out in the moulds that Adrian and David whittled out of wood from the firewood pile in the Kitchen. Sugar plate was made following the Dawson recipe you can look at above (as with all the images, clicking on them should expand them to full size…or at least a larger size more conducive to viewing), and this was used like edible play dough. the marchpane was made by grinding almonds in a mortar and pestle…very ‘hands on’ for visitors…with a little rose-water and then powdered sugar was added and the whole pounded into a paste. You can see from the two images of the heads above that Jerry was a little less fussed about how fine his marchpane was ground compared to Robin, but either way the result is the same, a pliable almond modelling paste that can be coloured with natural colouring just like the sugar can.

evaporating the parsley juice to concentrate the green colour

Colours were made up from parsley juice for the green, cochineal for the reds (ideally we’d use kermes for this, but time and tide meant that the more readily available cochineal would have to suffice), woad powder for blue, oak gall ink for blacks and saffron for yellows. These were applied with brushes made from assorted hairs, furs and feathers, bound together to make tips and held onto wooden hafts with goose quills.

The main golden tent was always intended to be made of sugar, but this was highly unlikely to be strong enough to be self supporting, so Adrian got the first few groups of visitors helping with the project to make some paste board with him. This was easily made from our archival paper glued together with a flour, water and alum glue then pressed until dried and hard. This was then cut to shape and stuck together to form a board base upon which to place the sugar.

the golden tent wall panel moulds

Initially Adrian had made moulds that included integral decoration so that a raised foliate design would be cast into the tent walls, but it turned out that the carving wasn’t quite deep enough to consistently guarantee that a panel would turn out with decoration on it…it was a fine line between not quite deep enough and too deep to easily come off the mould, so erring on the side of caution was probably the best thing he could have done.

Once turned out and set aside to dry, the panels were placed onto the pasteboard former and then a thin ‘mortar’ of liquid sugar plate was used to bond the panels together…and to the board it appears as Zak was quite generous with how much he used! When this was all complete and dried, the whole tent was painted with a saffron based paint, principally to act as a base to put the gold onto, but also as a fail safe in case I forgot to order the gold leaf (oh ye of little faith!!). Apparently the guys had planned for the painting to take at least a day, if not longer so that plenty of visitors could get a chance to help. Turns out that on that day all our visitors were budding painters as they covered the whole thing in a couple of hours or so…perhaps finer brushes to slow them down next time?

golden figure finial on the tent

I think it was around the start of the painting phase that Jerry noticed that the tent in the original painting had a figure as a finial, so he knocked one up out of marchpane, but all I can see when I look at it is the

old magic robot game from the 1970’s….I still keep expecting it to spin round and point at things 😀

The final things to make were the wrestling monarchs which Adrian had intended to be made from sugar and marchpane and probably would have been about the same size as an Action Man figure, but Jerry ended up taking the reins and they turned out a little more in scale with the tent…and waltzing we think rather than wrestling.

Meanwhile, Dave started to gild the tent and when he wasn’t doing it Zak took over; together they plastered about 6 books of leaf onto the tent (about 150 leaves of gold)…less what Dave put on children or blew into the air to show how light gold can be when it’s very, very thin.

Finally all that was left to do was put all the pieces together to form the diorama…

HRP’s Historic Kitchens Team present the Field of the Cloth of Gold…not suitable for diabetics or those on a calorie controlled diet

So that’s that then. One roller coaster ride of a month, tens of kilos of sugar and almonds, innumerable bunches of parsley, 6 books of gold, the blood, sweat and tears of all the team, the help of hundreds of visitors all to make something that was designed to be ephemeral…displayed for a short time to show the skills of all concerned, then broken up and eaten….I think it was worth it.

The Sugar Queen – Part 3 – Boiled Sugar…Finally!

So just the last two days of the Christmas event to cover and we’re done and dusted…is it just me or does Christmas seem a really, really long time ago? Where have those two weeks gone?

Anyway…day 5 dawned and there was no getting away from it for Adrian and Jorge…they would have to make a start on the boiled sugar working.
As a measure of caution, they decided to only cast one half of the figure, they weren’t sure if the sugar would come loose from the plaster when it had cooled and didn’t want to go the whole hog and create a huge sugar and plaster lump that they couldn’t pull apart. Both of them eschewed the instructions in the Platt recipe for casting sugar items to soak the mould in water before use as they reasoned there was still plenty of moisture in the plaster that hadn’t completely dried still…I very much suspect this was the root cause of what was to come, though as always hindsight is 20:20.

First job…boil some sugar into a syrup and then keep going until it is at the hard crack stage or thereabouts

The first sugar batch

It’s a lousy picture, but it really does do this attempt justice. As I have said several times before, the Tudor Kitchens at Hampton Court Palace in the winter are most definitely NOT the place to attempt sugar work, hell, even in the summer they’re less than ideal. As the sugar began to melt and the liquid bubbled…in the blink of an eye the whole lot crystallised and turned into a dry lump of junk, fit for nothing. The problem was the cold and damp…after a nice dry week, albeit a cold one, the weather had changed and warmed up enough for all the frost to turn to water and the fog of the day before had been washed away by a light but constant drizzle.
My suggestion for the second batch…pre-warm the skillet before putting the sugar and splash of water in; which they duly did and it seemed to do the trick, allowing the sugar to melt and start cooking away.

Pretty soon the whole mixture was boiling away nicely and after a few drop tests into some cold water both Adrian and Jorge decided to go for an initial casting

With Adrian taking the mould in hand, Jorge poured in the boiling sugar and with a combination of tilting and pouring the whole of the half of the mould was coated.

The first half coated in sugar

Showing admirable restraint, both Adrian and Jorge then left it alone for a few minutes rather than try to pull it out straight away and gave it a chance to harden off…in truth they were deep in conversation with the fascinated visitors to the Kitchen, explaining what it was they were doing and why, and fortunately not blaming me for the insanity of it all.
A few minutes passed and it was time to try to remove the sugar…

…it was however, stuck fast. Perhaps they hadn’t left it long enough? Perhaps some time would cause it to harden more…or soften in the damp atmosphere…or…???
It was at this point I left the sugar casting to catch up on some paperwork and knock out a tweet or two in the relative calm of the office. It was by now late in the day and I got into the ‘zone’ with some writing and lost track of the time. When I emerged from the office the Palace was closed and the Kitchen empty…I strode into the break room and scanned round looking for some semblance of a cast sugar figure, but saw nothing. Adrian looked at me with a look that spoke volumes and I walked into the break kitchen to put the kettle on. As I walked to the sink to fill the kettle I was greeted by this sight…

I guess it didn’t come out easily then

…the plaster mould soaking in the sink to try to dissolve the last of the boiled sugar! Neither time nor damp atmosphere had helped remove the bonded sugar and the only recourse had been to soak the whole thing in water to try to dissolve the bond between the two materials…or at least soften the sugar enough to finally pull it clear of the plaster. So much for tea…it was time for a beer and some thinking!

Day 6 – Go large then go home!

Day 5 had been New Years Eve, Adrian had a life and thus more interesting places to be…dancing the night away near Heathrow airport; a third of the team had gone home and the rest of us sat in front of one of the worst DVD’s I can recall ever watching, all of which meant there was little discussion about how to crack the casting problem that evening. Day six dawned and the new year brought new ideas to Adrian and he thought he’d cracked how to solve the sugar bonding to the plaster problem. unfortunately this idea meant completely abandoning the whole of the casting process as described and “solving” the problem by means of redesigning the whole process and mould material…in short, cast into a clay lined mould. As innovative as that might have been, and more of which shortly, solving the problem by throwing the whole thing away and inventing a new method wasn’t a solution. The end result, the cast figure, wasn’t as important as trying the process the correct way and then, not ignoring the parts that ‘don’t work’ or make no sense, but investigating the whole and complete process…just because we can’t make it work doesn’t mean the recipe/description is wrong after all, just that we are.
I will confess that at this point I lost a lot of interest in the sugarwork. Both Jorge and Adrian, though appreciating the idea that following the recipe as it was written was a good thing had gone off on one and were trying to come up with solutions to the problem rather than simply following the words…I went and concentrated on the roasting and the multi spit and got lost in the fire for a while

I returned from my funk just in time to see Jorge put the skillet down having just poured their final attempt using the plaster mould, though this time they had lightly greased the mould with oil before pouring.

Can you see the sugar?

A short wait for it to set and it was time for the moment of truth…

Heroic failure! A little longer and who knows what might have come out. Adrian was being a lot more positive than Jorge and his optimism was rewarded a short wait later as the remnants of what had solidified popped out of the mould with a deft pull

Wile the plaster attempt had been cooling they tried the clay lined version using the second mould

The clay lined mould

This was worse and they got no results from their ‘solution’…history was partially vindicated  😎

So was that it? No, not a chance. While all of the casting shenanigans had been going on, Elly and Tom had persevered with the press moulded sugar figure and worked on a base for her based on the Ditchley portrait of Elizabeth that had kick started the whole affair.

And with that, the sugar queen was complete…or as complete as she was going to get. A little bit of a brush and tidy up, a few more photos for the record and then this ephemeral object was gone, her job done.

Was it a successful project?…Yes, most definitely, thousands of people coming through the Kitchen saw the work progress over the course of the week and tens of thousands watched the trials and tribulations online via Twitter.
Could it have been improved?…Of course! I’m sure that both Adrian and Jorge and all the rest of the team that put something towards the sugar figures had the skill and abilities to not need to have been as cautious as they were when it came to the casting. I think that if they’d gone for the casting first, following the recipe, rather than staying safe and going for the press moulded figure then there may well have been a complete cast figure by the end of the week…though what was I saying earlier about hindsight?? The flip side to that would have been no press moulded figure for people to see early on through the week and it could all have kept failing as the final casting attempts did and we could have ended up with nothing at all to physically show after six days apart from two plaster moulds. Those are the choices that were made though and we ended up with a fantastic end product.

As always, I doff my cap to my more dexterous colleagues, as I said in a previous post, I just come up with the ideas, they’re the ones who actually make it all a physical reality for you all to see. Also we must not forget all those in the team who were working on other things over the week like the roasting, marchpane and comfit making…all of which I’ve ignored here, but are so important in order to bring the Kitchens to life and make everyone’s visit extra special.

A usual…comments gratefully received. There’ll be another short break before the next post on boiling in pewter vessels, and a new gallery of all the images from the event as I have a conference paper to write and present within the next week along with a mountain of paperwork and meetings, but keep an eye out on Twitter and here for the next blog update.

The Sugar Queen – part 2 – ̶C̶a̶s̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶S̶u̶g̶a̶r̶ – Errmm…Nope!

So, last time I went through the first couple of days of the Christmas event and detailed how the plaster of Paris mould was made ready for casting the sugar figure. The next stage of the plan was to follow the instructions in the Platt recipe for casting in plaster moulds and soak the mould in water; whilst this was happening there would be a little experimentation with boiling sugar and then about three-quarters of the way through day three the mould would be dried, put together, filled with boiling sugar and an attempt made at casting the first figure. Meanwhile, another part of the team would make a second mould from the wooden former in case things went awry with the casting in the first and it became unusable or broken in some way….well they were what I thought the plans were at least.
One of my major failings is that because I live with the planning for so much longer than the rest of the team I can never remember if I’ve passed on all the details to them, or if I just think I have! Posting a blog post with all the details in is one thing, but did I actually remember to tell all of the team these details? Either way, the result was the same and over the course of day 2 and through the evening it became clear that Adrian and Jorge had decided to forge another path. Yes a second mould would be made but there would be no casting with boiled sugar…worries and doubts had set in and they felt much more confident in trying to get a full, press moulded figure out made from sugar paste and then work up to the cast boiled sugar…so much for go large or go home!

The first thing they decided to do was make a second plaster mould, but this time they would use one half of the first mould to cast against rather than the clay. This meant the wooden figure was placed back into one half of the mould and then the whole exposed surface, wood and plaster, was then coated liberally with the tallow & oil mixture.

This was then coated in plaster exactly as before and when set, the original half was removed and the mould finished exactly as with the original…though in this case it contained a few more air bubbles than the first attempt and these needed to be filled with some putty consistency plaster after the fact

While Elly and Jorge were working on this, Adrian was working on some test pressings before steeling himself for a full on queen.

The sugar paste used was a rough and ready variation of the recipe from Ruscelli’s “The secrets of the reverend Maister Alexis of Piemont 1

all the ingredients were there, just not necessarily in the same order or quantities. Once made, and as Adrian started to fill the front half of the mould, it became clear that it would take an awful lot more paste to fill the entire mould…good job this was just a test. He decided to push the boat out…and push his luck, by trying for a complete front of the figure, and to make it a bit more flash, he used some of the marchpane that Zak had been making with various visitors, to give some colour and pizzaz to the face and hands. These parts of the mould were filled and then the rest had the standard sugar paste pressed into it at around 10-30 mm thick depending on both a) what was needed and b) what past was left, having started at the head and worked down. The results were pretty damn impressive, if a little flimsy…and this at least would give people the idea of what was being attempted.

With some more marchpane and sugar paste, Adrian finished off the day seeing how much material he was going to require to press out an entire figure

Once the mould was separated, the results were encouraging…even if it wasn’t the boiled sugar I had hoped for.

The test torso…not bad at all

…and so finished day 3.

Day 4

In an ideal world, day 4 would have seen the press moulding done and finished with nice and early and thence they would have moved on to the real deal, the boiled sugar. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be so, only this time it was most definitely my fault! A previously booked and unchangeable appointment meant I would be away from the Kitchen for the bulk of the day, the instructions I left…under no circumstances do anything interesting or adventurous as there wouldn’t be anyone there to record it! I HAD to leave by 12.00 and absolutely no later in order to make the appointment, so anything interesting had to be done PDQ at the start of the day…Adrian did not disappoint!
First mission…paste…lots of sugar paste

After a change of hat and Adrian starts churning out sugar paste

Once the paste was made, it was simply a case of packing it into the plaster mould

and then closing the two halves together…with some vigour

From this point on things got a bit…well, physical, with an awful lot of grunting and groaning from Adrian as he tried to force more paste into the mould so that all the detail was filled and there was sufficient wall thickness for the whole to not sag and droop when it was finished.

Rolling out paste for a base

It turned out that without a solid base though there was little chance of the figure standing upright upon removal from the mould, so Adrian made a base out of a hastily made batch of paste and used this to seal the bottom of the skirts, the void now being packed full of flour to hold her steady when she was complete.

All it took then was a little bit of fiddling and the first half of the mould popped off a treat. This meant Adrian could do a quick tidy up around the join while the figure was still supported by the back half of the mould as he wanted to avoid excessive amounts of handling until the paste had hardened a little

The torso came loose from both halves of the mould at first, which caused me a little concern that the back of the figure may have been incomplete or broken…something I need not have worried about

Then with the deft hand of a master…as well as a little shaking, cajoling and a healthy dose of luck, out popped the Sugar Queen!

I think the voice of the child watching from Adrian’s elbow said it all…”Oh my God! Wow!”

Free at last!

By now it was 12.30…and I was VERY late!
As I sprinted out of the Kitchen my parting words were once again…”Don’t do anything interesting!” and with that I was away for the afternoon. So what did I find on my return? Turns out they’d been quite busy…

A pair of press moulded sugar queens in sugar paste and marchpane

Marchpane and sugar paste figure

…and that’s how day 4 finished.

Had they chosen to, the surface of the figures could have been smoothed out quite a bit before the paste set and that would have removed all of the cracks and imperfections, but to be honest, I don’t think anyone cared. They’d managed to get two fairly impressively large figures made and run through the process in front of a couple of thousand visitors plus several thousand more online…they deserved a beer…or two!

Next post…the last two days of the event and finally some boiled sugar casting!

As always, comments gratefully received, and once again, some of the images will expand to a larger size if you click on them, so give that a go if you want to see some more detail.

  1. Girolamo Ruscelli, The secrets of the reverend Maister Alexis of Piemont : containing excellent remedies against diverse diseases, wounds, and other accidents, with the maner to make distillations, parfumes, confitures, dying, colours, fusions, and meltings …, trans. by William Ward (London: Thomas Wright, 1595) (p. 61).

The Sugar Queen – Mould Making

So the equipment is cleaned and put away, the team returned to their homes and the dust has settled on another Christmas of cookery at Hampton Court Palace…but what did we achieve?

Two posts ago, <HERE> , I detailed the plans for the work over the week and gave a little insight into the methods that would be applied to making a cast sugar figure in front of our visitors. Those who follow on Twitter will already have seen most of the results but, free of the 140 character limit of tweeting, I can flesh all that out for you here and lay bare the highs and lows for those who eschew Twitter.

So the plan was a simple one, we would make a wooden former, we’d make a mould from that former, we’d cast a positive in sugar from that mould, and Robert is your mother’s brother…we’d bask in adulation and glory! As always through this, when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘the team’ and then, mostly not me…I come up with the stupid plans and can manage the donkey work when called upon, the skilled work needed for this insane idea was all due to the rest of my extremely handy and talented colleagues.

The wooden former from the front

The wooden former from the side

Contrary to his Davros related text message, Adrian turned up with a cracking wooden model to be used as a former for creating the mould with. Apparently she’s a little lopsided, but only Adrian noticed that…it irks him because he made it and it wasn’t “as good as it should be” but I’m damned if anyone else noticed…even when he pointed it out to us.
The plan of action was : Day 1, coat the wooden former in wax to seal it and then get this ready for casting. Day 2, construct the casting box, line with wax/oiled paper and begin the casting process with plaster of Paris. Taking the resultant mould and leaving it somewhere nice and warm to dry overnight (shouldn’t be a problem, everyone at HCP seems to like having their office at volcano like temperatures 😉 ). Day 3, investigate boiling sugar and spend the day making sugar paste 1 as practice for … Day 4, cast the first attempt in boiled sugar; trying as many times as possible through the day…continue this for the rest of the week. Simultaneously,  from Day 3 on, make a second mould with which to make press moulded sugar paste figures with and to use as a backup when we inevitably took things too far with the first mould and ended up with an irreparable kit of parts.

Day 1

Day 1 started with a bit of a shock…ice and frost! We were expecting things to be less than conducive to confectionery work in the Great Kitchen, after all there’s a reason that the original confectionery area was above the pastry department…it’s large ovens meaning that the rooms above would remain warm and dry, unlike our Kitchen which is cold and damp, I suppose at least now it was just cold and much less damp than usual.
First task, seal the wooden former, so Jorge fired up the portable stove while Adrian got some beeswax from the store cupboard and threw it into a skillet to melt.

Once the charcoal was up to temperature, the wax filled skillet was placed on top and left until the wax had all melted. At this point, Adrian ladled it over the former until it was mostly covered and he then began the rather laborious task of smoothing the lumpy wax out so that the wood was evenly covered and sealed for plaster casting.

Clearly it would have been so much simpler to just have a deeper pot and more wax allowing the former to be dipped into this to coat it in one go, but unfortunately we a) didn’t have enough wax to do this, b) didn’t have a suitable pot that both wax and former would adequately fit into and, most importantly c) We aren’t allowed to do that sort of thing…and a damn good job too! Our key Principle at Historic Royal Palaces is Guardianship…

“We exist for tomorrow, not just for yesterday. Our job is to give these palaces a future as valuable as their past. We know how precious they and their contents are, and we aim to conserve them to the standard they deserve: the best.”

We are extremely lucky in being able to cook, experiment and experience life within the Kitchen at Hampton Court as close as it is possible to  in the ways these things were done in the past, there are limitations though and these are there to ensure that the building is still there for future generations to come…and not coated in beeswax by a bunch of cretins playing with a mad idea!…but I digress (as usual).

Day 2

By the morning of day 2, Adrian and Jorge had completely rethought how they wanted to make the plaster mould. Rather than make a mould box and create a large two piece mould that was essentially a cube in shape with the hollow of the figure in the middle, they wanted to use thicker plaster to cast a more organic mould off of the wooden figure and without using a casting box. Admittedly this would save a lot of time that would have been spent making the box and would end up using much less plaster…a win all round. All that would be needed would be to divide the wooden former into two halves with some clay, create a fence of clay around the bottom of the figure

and then slap on some thick plaster. Once side one was dry, the clay could be removed and a second coating of plaster on the un-moulded side applied to create a complete two-part mould.

Of course, things aren’t ever going to be that simple, and wax or not, the former still needed a coating of a mould release/grease to ensure that it slipped from the plaster when it had set. This was made of a mixture of tallow and oil, heated together over the charcoal and then liberally applied to the former and clay surfaces that would be coated in the plaster. Once this had been applied and all was cleared and ready to go, Adrian and Jorge mixed the plaster up to a consistency of raw meringue and began to liberally apply it to create the first half of the mould.

The first half of the mould made

The plaster didn’t take too long to harden to a degree that meant Adrian wasn’t forced to hold it in his hands all afternoon and they were left with half a mould curing in the Kitchen. Once this was set sufficiently the clay could be peeled off and the plaster tidied up a little where it had formed areas that would allow the back half of the mould to lock to the front with no chance of separation.

Once this process was complete a clay fence could be added to the base of the rear of the former, and another liberal coating of the grease mixture applied all round before coating with more plaster.

Once the final coat of plaster had been applied, and as you can see from the videos, the consistency was fairly varied meaning that there was quite a difference in the amount of water in the batches and thus quite a difference in drying time, the whole affair was left to cure for a while until it was solid enough to move on.

The completed mould curing

Once a suitable length of time had elapsed…calculated in tea breaks and trips to warm up in the break room; it’s not often you can be thankful for an exothermic reaction like plaster curing to keep you warm in a cold kitchen 2 …it was time to take the leap and crack the mould open!
First step was to trim the edges with a knife to make sure all of the splashes and any plaster overlap that still remained between the two halves was finally removed.

Then with a little bit of coaxing, the rear portion of the mould popped off…

The rear half of the mould

Then with a little more wiggling and jiggling…and a few muttered words

The former was free and we had two halves of a mould ready to go!

The front half of the plaster mould

All that was left was to do a quick test press with some sugar paste to check that the figure would be visible

then it was off to a warm, dry place overnight to dry  and fully cure.

Whilst typing this it has become very clear that there is no chance of me being able to write a single post that covers the whole of the week’s confectionery capers…not if I want you to not die of boredom whilst reading it at least. So consider this the first post, with more to come when I’ve typed it all up and had a little family time to myself; I’ll also add a gallery of all the images that I took over the week, but again, that’ll have to wait a few days. For now it’s worth noting that some of the images in the post will expand to larger size if you click on them…might make some of the detail a little clearer for you.

As always, comments gratefully received…positive, negative, ambivalent…and keep an eye out for the next part some time early next week.

  1. Girolamo Ruscelli, The secrets of the reverend Maister Alexis of Piemont : containing excellent remedies against diverse diseases, wounds, and other accidents, with the maner to make distillations, parfumes, confitures, dying, colours, fusions, and meltings …, trans. by William Ward (London: Thomas Wright, 1595) (p. 61).
  2. Yes, I am well aware of the dangers and damage that the heat from curing plaster can cause. A full risk assessment was carried out and the plaster work was carried out as safely as is possible to do so. No hands or other appendages were kept in wet plaster as it cured, only the outside of the mould was held and then only for very short lengths of time

Christmas Confectionery

So with Christmas 2016 fast approaching I guess I should get my finger out and tell you what the plans are for the cookery at Hampton Court this year.

As with last year the overall theme of the event, both upstairs in the “nice” bits of the Palace as well  as down in the Kitchens, will be the reign of Elizabeth I, but what exactly will we be cooking in the Kitchen I hear you cry?
Over the last few years of special events at Christmas and Easter I seem to have painted us into a corner of having a “thing” that will be made over the span of the event so that visitors can see the progress over the course of the week and this year is expected to be no exception. The “thing” has always been chosen so that multiple period techniques can be showcased or attempted (depending on your point of view), that it can be made in multiple discrete steps, that it’s fairly visual and would make good images for social media, is interesting and above all has a “I didn’t know they did that” component to it…all of which, as might be obvious, makes working out what the “thing” is going to be, really, really difficult. In the past we’ve made cokentryce, a sugar and a pastry knot garden and a pastry castle but none of those plans had come easily to the table…relying more on me being struck with divine intervention to come up with the ideas than any great level of thought and planning and I suppose the same is true of the “thing” for this Christmas cookery.

model castle made to represent the marchpane given to EiR in 1561-2

It was while mulling through ideas with Barry in mid September that we were struck by descriptions of the New Years gifts 1 given to Elizabeth by various people, which included marchpanes “made like a tower, with men and sundry artillery in it”, which those of you who have visited Hampton Court prior to 2006 may remember seeing reproduced in the original kitchen display. It wasn’t so much the tower and artillery but rather the men that we were taken with [no sniggering at the back!] and we thought that this could be the start of what the “thing” might be forming for us. Subtelties made in the form of people are also mentioned in Cavendish’s Life of Cardinal Wolsey 2  and so this seemed like an idea that could have potential…making a subteltie in the shape of a person, but of whom, made from what and how?

Queen Elizabeth I (‘The Ditchley portrait’) by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, circa 1592. (C) National Portrait Gallery, London

Well the “of whom?” was easy…let’s make a subteltie of Elizabeth I…or at least, a female figure in Elizabethan dress that will be based on the shape of the Queen in the Ditchley Portrait as that’s an instantly recognisable representation of an Elizabethan woman…and has some significance for the “upstairs” portion of the Christmas event at Hampton Court this year; the “from what and how?”, that’s less easy.

We could make it from marchpane, at its simplest this is a paste made from pounded raw almonds and sugar, but that’s not particularly exciting or interesting to watch or make…and I know that if I was to have proposed that as a plan the rest of the team would lynch me for making them grind who knows how many kilograms of raw almonds for days on end; it would also take most of the week to produce the basic ingredients during which time there would be very little for visitors to see, so marchpane is out. We could go with wax and make a pretty large-scale figure that way, but we’ve done wax before back in 2006 and 2008 and although unlike the marchpane there would be progress to see through the course of the week, it would only generate “but what about the cooking?” comments; so that too was a non starter.

With pastry covered last Easter with the chastelete and simple sugar work last Christmas with the knot garden the only course of action is to go out on a limb and go with sugar casting…the most difficult method of modelling at the best of times, let alone in a cold, damp Tudor kitchen! Apart from small sugar roses about 7cm in diameter, the largest item we ever had any success with was when Jorge seemed to lose the plot and attempted to start a new cult of Aten worship with a big sugar disc made in the Kitchens back in 2007!

Jorge tries to kickstart Aten worship in the 21st century!

Simply put, there’s too much moisture in the building for success with casting sugar, it melts when cast or sets too quickly, or crystallises in the pan as it’s boiling all of which means that we tend to avoid it like the plague as it’s just doomed to failure from the outset…but these tiny details haven’t stopped me from forging ahead with this as the plan for the “thing” over the Christmas cookery…a cast sugar model of an Elizabethan woman, notionally Elizabeth I, standing around 23 cm tall and about 15 cm wide…by the end of the event the team are going to hate me!

But how are we going to make it?

In theory, that’s quite simple…make a mould, boil some sugar, pour the boiling sugar into the mould, wait a short while, pour out the excess and wait…when cold, open the mould and Bob’s your uncle, a sugar Elizabeth…easy!
Well clearly, nothing in life is ever that simple…what mould, made of what, made how, boil sugar how??? I mean, surely there must be some clues that we can follow…and rather handily there are. Casting objects from sugar has a conveniently long history with  recipes covering the technique book ending the sixteenth century.

‘To mak ymages i[n] suger’ snippet
Harley M.S. 2378 f161v
(C) The British Library

Harley M.S. 2378 contains a recipe “to mak ymages in suger” on f161v (if you prefer an easier to read version you can find it transcribed in “Curye on Inglysh” published by the Early English Text Society 3 )

‘To mold of a lemmon, orenge, peare, Nut &tc. and after to cast it hollowe within, of sugar.’
Sir Hugh Platt. Delightes for Ladies,1608

whilst Sir Hugh Platt’s Delightes for Ladies 4 contains several useful sets of instructions for casting sugar as well as details of moulds made from both carved wood and “burnt Alabaster”…or plaster; a mould of which the Museum of London has in its collection. This mould dates from the late medieval or early post medieval period and is one half of a mould that is presumed to have been for making confectionery models of St Catherine. So we have an example to go by, though I suspect ours will be a lot cruder….and bigger.

Half of a presumed pair of moulds for making confectionery models of St Catherine.
(C) Museum of London

So, using a combination of the techniques in these recipes along with the instructions by Cennini in his Il Libro dell’Arte 5 on how to make moulds for casting people and objects, we’re going to have a stab at it.
This means that we’ll be taking a wooden former in the rough shape of the figure we want to cast that, fingers crossed, Adrian has already made for us, and coating that in wax in order to be able to add some fine detail and seal the wood that it’s made from to stop the plaster from sticking to it. Next, a casting box needs to be made out of thin wooden planks and a bed of plaster poured into it to support the former…which we will need to cover in a mould release lubricant that we will have to make out of tallow and oil. Next the plaster will be poured to half cover the former and left to set…once set, this plaster will be coated in the mould release and the casing box topped up with plaster to cover the former. Fingers crossed this should mean that once set we will be able to pull the mould apart and be left with a negative space in the two halves of plaster into which boiled sugar can be poured; which once cooled will result in a sugar queen…sounds easy doesn’t it, what could possibly go wrong?!

I’m pretty sure I’ve covered all the bases in terms of ordering the equipment needed, from plaster to wooden planks, tallow to barrier cream

but there’s bound to be something I’ve forgotten, or presumed we have in store somewhere but am actually woefully mistaken as to its existence…watch this space for details of whatever that turns out to be.

On top of all of this there’ll be comfit making on most days and roasting each day, with beef on the spit every day and chickens being cooked on the multi armed spit on alternate days…as always, if you’re visiting the Hampton Court over the Christmas event and wander into the Kitchens then feel free to try your hand as a turn broach and experience life at the blunt end of Henry VIII’s House of Provisions, or see if there are any other tasks that we need a hand with…there’s always some stirring, grinding or rolling that’ll need doing and a Kitchen Team member who is all too happy to let someone else try their hand at it if it means they get a crafty five minute break from the work.

All of this sugar work and mould making will be done in phases over the course of the week after Christmas, starting 27th December and finishing 1st January, though there is roasting and all of the courtly capers upstairs in the State rooms from 21st December to the 23rd inclusive as well as the post-Christmas week. Fingers crossed we’ll have some results to show, though in truth if we only get a mould made I’ll be extremely happy. As with previous events like this I will be recording and photographing for later blog posts and will keep things up to date via Twitter (@Tudorcook)…both successes and failures.

  1. John Nichols, The Progress and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols (London: John Nichols & Son, 1823), I (pp. xxxvi–xxxvii).
  2. George Cavendish, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, 2nd edn (London: Harding and Lepard, 1827) (pp. 197–198).
  3. Constance Hieatt and Sharon Butler, Curye on Inglysch (Oxford University Press, 1985)(p. 153).
  4. Sir Hugh Platt, Delightes for Ladies, to adorn their Persons, Tables, Closets and distillatories London: 1608.
  5. Cennino Cennini, The Book of theArt of Cennino Cennini, a Contemporary Practical Treatise on Quattrocento Painting, trans. by Christiana Herringham, 2nd edn (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1922).