Subtleties&Stuffe Casting Sugar Recipes

We'll begin with a recipe from Delightes for ladies to adorne their persons, tables, closets, and distillatories with beauties, banquets, perfumes and waters.

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34.Casting of sugar in partie moldes of wood.

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LAy your moldes in faire water three or foure houres before you cast, then dry vp your inward moisture with a cloth of Linnen, then boyle rosewater & refined sugar together, but not to anie great stiffnesse, then poure it into your moldes, let your molds stand one houre, and then gently part or open the moldes, and take out that which you haue cast, you may also worke the paste aniè numero. [12.13.] into these molds, first printing or pressing gently a little of the paste into the one halfe, and after with a knife taking away the superflu∣ous edges, and so likewise of the other halfe: then presse both sides of the mold together, two or three times, & after take away the crest that will arise in the middest: and to make the sides to cleaue together, you may touch thē first ouer with Gum Dragagant dissolued, before you presse the sides of the mold together: note that you may conuey comfits within, before you close the sides. You may cast of any of these mixtures or pastes in alablaster molds, molded from the life. Sir Hugh Plat 1602

The easiest of recipes appears in A Book of Fruits and Flowers. London: 1653.

To cast all kind of Sugar works into Moulds.

Take one pound of Barabry Sugar, Clarifie it with the white of an Egg, boyle it till it will roule between your finger and your thumb, then cast it into your standing Moulds, being watered two hours before in cold water, take it out and gild them to garnish a Marchpine with them at your pleasure.

Nearly as simple as instructions from

Mayerne, Théodore Turquet de, Sir, from Archimagirus anglo-gallicus from 1658

where it reads

132. To cast all kind of standing conceipts in Sugar-works.

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Take a pound of double refined sugar, and boyle it to a Candie heigh, with as much Rose-vvater as vvill melt it, then your double moulds, being vvatered two houres, first powre the sugar into those moulds, and when it is cold, you may take them out, and they will be birds, or beasts, according to your moulds, this standing conceipt, you may garnish your March pane with.