Subtleties&Stuffe Description of a Banquet

Description of a Banquet

Tis the season for banqueting 'stuffe'. When food historian Peter C. Brears wrote about banquets for the initial Leeds Symposium on Food History and Traditions in April 1986, he turned to this description by English author Randle Holme.

 Third Course.

1. March-pan set with several sorts of Sweet-Meats.

2. Preserves or wet Sweet-Meats in Plates as, Pears, Plums, Cherries, Quinces, Grapes Respass, Pippins, Oranges, Lemmons, young Walnuts, Apricocks, Peaches, &c. with their Syrup about them.

3. Dried Sweet-meats & Suckets of Oranges Lemmons Citron: or Conserves, or Candies, and Rock-Candies of Cherries, Apricocks, Plums, Damasius, Pippins, Pears, Angelica, Rosemary and Marygold Flowers, Pippins, Pears, Apricocks, Plums, Ringo roots: or Marmalet of Quinces, Damasins, Plums, Oranges, etc. Pastes made of Citron: Pippins, Apricocks, Rasbery, English Currans.

4. Bikets, Mackroons, naple Bisket, Italian Bisket, Comfeits round, Longs and Loseng like, Gingerbread, Almond Cakes, Apricock Cakes, Losenges, Quince Chips, Orange cakes, Marchpane Collops.

5. Sugar cakes, Iamballs, Iemelloes, Sugar Plate, Plum and Rasbury cakes, Cheese cakes.

6. Tree Fruit as Apples and Pears of diverse kinds, Che∣ries, Plums, Strawberies, Currans, Raspes, Walnut, Chestnuts, Filbernuts, Dates, Graps, Figgs, Oranges, Lemmons, Apricocks, Peech, Dried Raisins and Currans, Prunes, Almonds blanched

According as the season is for them, all which several things are mixt and interchangably set on the Table according to the discription of the Gentleman Sewer. [page 80]

Holme, Randle. The Academy of Armory. Chester: Printed for the author, 1688.

The work may be viewed as part of the Early English Books Online collection.

It's a compiled encyclopedia with definitions, dated 1688. His notebooks, which the British Museum published on a cd, contain thousands of drawings of various articles of items connected with trades and crafts. It is a major source for all these little known items and tools. It's titled:

Living and Working in Seventeenth Century England: an Encyclopedia of Drawings and Descriptions from Randle Holme's Original Manuscripts for The Academy of Armory (1688)

For food historians, besides being a sort of a 17th century encyclopedia, it contains definitions and descriptions for foodstuffs and banquet menus.

My article about the work and cd appears as: “Randle Holme and his Academy of Armory. An Unappreciated Source Readers Should Know About”  Tournaments Illuminated.  #160 Fall 2006, pages 28-30.