Historic Cookery at Hampton Court Palace….unofficially!
Christmas Cookery 2015 – The Sugar Knot Garden and Comfits
These are the halfway passable images from the Christmas cookery 2015 at Hampton Court which show the manufacture and progress of the planned sugar knot garden. In the end, it turned into a smaller sugar knot and a pastry version…but both were pretty impressive, not to mention very tasty to boot!
Please click in the images to enlarge them…
Jorge works on the design for the sugar knot garden, based on ideas and plans from The Gardeners Labyrinth by Thomas Hill
Careful planning with an armed guard!
More of Jorge’s planning work, with the copies on top being pounced through onto the paper below for inking in
Jorge drawing out the design for the sugar knot garden in oak gall ink on reconstructed medieval paper
Jorge drawing out the design for the sugar knot garden in oak gall ink on reconstructed medieval paper
The knot garden plan
Jorge explains the knot garden plan to some passing toffs
Adrian begins to layout the sugar on to the plan
Adrian arranges more ‘hedging’
Forming and arranging the first attempt at the sugar ‘hedges’…dyed green with parsley juice
That’s still quite a way to go!
Another close up of the sugar ‘hedging’
The design progresses…
Zak fires up the chafer ready for a day of comfit making.
Photo courtesy E. Griffith-Ward
Robin explaining his method of comfit making
Robin drying off the 4th or 5th layer of syrup on some grains of paradise
Robin adds more syrup to a batch of grains of paradise comfits
On Robin’s day off, Jorge and Zak had free reign on the comfit production
Jorge shows some visitors the comfits in the pan
Adrian prepares cinnamon and cassia for comfiting
Zak explains comfiting as if he’d been doing it for months….rather than the hours he actually had been
Lengths of cinnamon being coated in a gum arabic solution to begin the comfiting process
Some of the finished batches of comfits. The white are uncoloured, the yellow coloured with saffron and the orange are some commercial ones there for comparison
The first cinnamon comfits after 10 or so coats of syrup.
Very blurry green fennel seed comfits being finished off
A second attempt at ragged comfits using larger pieces of cinnamon
The second attempt at cinnamon comfits…turns out Jorge found them too difficult to work in the pan…perhaps they’re something to try with a little more experience
Grains of paradise in the process of colouring with a red syrup, coloured with cochineal
Some of the final comfits used to fill the sugar garden.
Photo courtesy E. Griffith-Ward
The extent of the sugar garden as originally conceived.
Clearly, things weren’t going to plan…which is why they ditched the idea and changed tack half way through the week
Adrian and Robin begin to build the pastry knot garden
Jorge drew another plan to be cut up to use as a template
The paste sections were slab built and ‘glued’ together with an egg wash
The pastry building up on a baking tray
The paste shells before the internal partitions were added
The pastry knot garden pieces ready for blind baking. Here Robin used some split peas to support the walls in the oven.
Photo courtesy E. Griffith-Ward
After the blind baking, the cases were filled with jam.
Photo courtesy E. Griffith-Ward
After the blind baking and filling with jam, the walls were decorated with green colouring extracted from parsley before the final baking.
Photo courtesy E. Griffith-Ward
Arranging the initial pastry knot for display
Arranging the initial pastry knot for display
Arranging the initial pastry knot for display
Arranging the initial pastry knot for display
Arranging the initial pastry knot for display
The first phase of the pastry knot completed
A close up of the pastry showing how the green colour stayed green, even after the baking
The second phase of the pastry knot takes shape
Another view of the finished pastry knot
Another view of the finished pastry knot
Another view of the finished pastry knot
The finished pastry knot, complete with custard border
The second sugar knot..painted with parsley juice colour rather than dyed
The virtually finished sugar element, decorated with parsley colour and filled with comfits.
Photo courtesy E. Griffith-Ward
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