A subteltie for Gaming

The subtlety was created from recipes found in Curye on Inglisch, a collection of 14th and 15th century cookery books. I traced the developemtn of certain items– marchpane, sugar plate, candied peels, and candied spices– through Gervase Markham’s The English Housewife (1615). For the final recipes, I used Peter Brears’ excellent work, All the King’s Cooks: The Tudor Kitchens of King Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace.

The full entry consists of sugar plate playing cards painted with vegetable paints; orange peel suckets; confits made with peppercorns, caraway, and fennel; and painted marchpane dice. The design on the cards was taken from a deck of 16th century cards, and I used a real die to place the pips on the marchpane.