Tuesday, 23 August 2011

Tudor Dolls House: Tudor Food in Miniature

1:12 scale Tudor food from polymer clay
I do enjoy fiddling around with Fimo, making miniature food. The books I've read on Tudor times gave me some ideas for the food I wanted in 1:12 scale. No boring old pottage and dark bread in this house. I wanted to make a 16th century feast.
   Lampreys were fish that looked like eels. With a mix of translucent and beige Fimo, I rolled short lengths, curved them so they were slightly wiggly and gave them poppyseed eyes.
   The Harlequin Tart was easy to make with a base of biscuit-coloured clay and tiny balls of clay in four different colours to make the berries.
   The Tudors were fond of Jumbles, knots of dough that were boiled then baked. I made very thin  lengths of beige clay, twisted them into knots, and brushed them with terracotta-coloured powdered chalk before baking them.
   The little pies are solid circles of beige clay with the same dusting of powdered chalk as the jumbles. In real life they would have contained mutton and vegetables.
  On the wooden trenchers are manchet bread. These were soft white rolls eaten by the well-to-do.  
The poor people got the dark, chewy bread or the bits of bread that had burnt on the bottom. The  wealthy got the nicely baked 'upper crust'.
  Of course, no Tudor feast would be complete without a boar's head. This one, in pride of place on the table, was made for me by a friend.

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