Jekyll2022-07-22T23:58:22+01:00https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/feed/discover.xmlFeast & Fast | DiscoverFood defines us as individuals, communities, and nations: we are what we eat and, equally, what we don’t eat. When, where, why, how and with whom we eat are crucial to our identity. Feast & Fast presents novel approaches to understanding the history and culture of food and eating.Tudor bling at High Table: Archbishop Matthew Parker’s silverware for Cambridge Colleges2022-07-22T23:58:22+01:002022-07-22T23:58:22+01:00https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/discover/tudor-bling-at-high-table<figure class="figure col-md-12">
<img src="/images/discover/DSC_9457.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="A generic square placeholder image with rounded corners in a figure." />
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<strong>Figure 1:</strong> Matthew Parker’s two-handled cups and cover
Cover: possibly John Crathorn, London, England, 1531; Cup 1: possibly Lawrence Truechild, London, England, 1555; Cup 2: Unidentified maker, London, England, 1570.
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<img src="/images/discover/RosewaterBowl.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="A generic square placeholder image with rounded corners in a figure." />
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<strong>Figure 2:</strong> Matthew Parker’s rosewater basin
Unidentified maker, London, England, 1545. Corpus Christi College
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<img src="/images/discover/DSC_9400.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="A generic square placeholder image with rounded corners in a figure." />
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<strong>Figure 3:</strong> Matthew Parker’s ewer with hinged cover
London, England, 1545. Corpus Christi College
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<p>The Colleges of Cambridge own some of the most important pieces of Tudor secular (non-religious) silver anywhere in the world. Corpus Christi College has an unsurpassed collection of silver tableware – known as plate – thanks to several gifts from Norwich-born Matthew Parker, one-time Master and later Archbishop of Canterbury under Elizabeth I. While Parker made several lifetime donations to his old College, records prove that he hung onto most of it during his lifetime, only relinquishing it after his death. He also gave key pieces of silver to Gonville and Caius College and to Trinity Hall, both of which he favoured due to their Norwich connections. Feast & Fast reunites for the first time since 1975 one of Parker’s tankards from Gonville and Caius with a selection of Parker’s most important silver from Corpus. This astonishing array of Parker silver is displayed together with two rare and exotic 15th-century coconut cups from Caius, which are amongst the earliest known: a unique opportunity to see some priceless treasures of Cambridge College silver in the broader context of Tudor dining culture as conjured up by Ivan Day’s Renaissance sugar banquet for an English wedding for the Fitzwilliam exhibition.</p>
<p>The two ‘ox-eye’ posset cups and lid (fig. 1) were amongst Parker’s last gifts to Corpus, and none of them match: one cup was new when it was given, one was 15 years old, and the lid was 24 years earlier still. The later cup appears to have been commissioned by Parker as a pair to the first one. They are amongst the earliest surviving examples of posset cups. Posset was a mixture of curdled milk and ale or sack; the narrow top is said to have been used to gather the floating curd, so it could be eaten or removed leaving the clear fluid to be drunk.</p>
<p>The rosewater basin and ewer (figs 2-3) are late Gothic in style, dating from the reign of Henry VIII. They are the grandest pieces of silver that Parker gave to Corpus Christi; indeed, they are believed to be the earliest ewer and basin of this sort to survive anywhere in the world. They were made when Parker was Master, for his own use, and then gifted to the College on 1 September 1570. However, he retained them for use during his lifetime: they were only handed over to Corpus on 26 June 1575. They were used by diners to wash their hands during grand feasts – especially useful before the introduction of forks, which did not become common in England until the early 17th-century.</p>
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<img src="/images/discover/ParkerSalt.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="A generic square placeholder image with rounded corners in a figure." />
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<strong>Figure 4:</strong> Matthew Parker’s standing salt and cover
Attributed to Robert Danbe, London, England, 1562. Corpus Christi College
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<img src="/images/discover/Great.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="A generic square placeholder image with rounded corners in a figure." />
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<strong>Figure 5:</strong> Matthew Parker’s great standing cup and cover with ‘man-and-staff’ finial
Unidentified maker, London, England, 1569. Corpus Christi College
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<img src="/images/discover/L1000945.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="A generic square placeholder image with rounded corners in a figure." />
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<strong>Figure 6:</strong> Matthew Parker’s tankard with hinged domed cover
Attributed to Roger Flint I, London, England, 1570. Gonville and Caius College
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<p>Cylinder salts were the height of fashion from c.1550, and remained popular throughout the 17th-century. Parker’s exquisite example (fig. 4) is unusual because it also contains a pepper-pot: the shallow cavity for salt is covered over by a push-fit lid, of which the upper part is a pepper-pot with six holes at the top. Like the rosewater basin and ewer, it was donated to Corpus on 1 September 1570, but not delivered until June 1575.</p>
<p>Parker’s great standing cup (fig. 5) is the second grandest in Cambridge (after the Vice-Chancellor’s Cup of 1592) and one of the most significant examples of an English standing cup of its date (1569) anywhere. It is a triumph pf technical virtuosity with some elements separately cast and soldered on. Its decoration includes a lot of food: including apples, pears, citrus fruit, melons, pomegranates and grapes. Despite its elaborate decoration, it was probably meant to be used as the cup is designed in two parts: the bowl is a push-fit into the base, and its inside is smooth, with no repoussé (embossed from inside against a mould) to complicate washing up! Presented to Corpus on New Year’s Day 1570, Parker ordered it to remain perpetually within the College, with Gonville and Caius and Trinity Hall to ensure this happened, and if it were lost or stolen, then a replica had to be made. On same day, Parker gave less elaborate cups, almost identical to each other, to Caius and Trinity Hall.</p>
<p>An inscription on the Caius tankard (fig. 6) records that it was a 1572 New Year’s Day gift. We know that on this day, Parker gave an identical tankard to Trinity Hall, and a similar one (made a year later, in 1571) to Corpus. These three are amongst the earliest known surviving tankards, which were to become the preferred type of drinking vessel in Cambridge Colleges during the 17th century.</p>
<p>During the Civil War when Charles I asked all of the Colleges to send him their silver, the Master and Fellows of Corpus secreted away all of the College’s most important pieces of silver to ensure that it could not be discovered by either the Cavaliers or the Roundheads, and taken away to be melted down. When they were returned, they were kept very carefully. Thankfully, everyone at Corpus was aware of their unique importance and so less important silver got melted down to pay for refurbishment projects and new buildings, rather than these unique, priceless treasures.</p>Figure 1: Matthew Parker’s two-handled cups and cover Cover: possibly John Crathorn, London, England, 1531; Cup 1: possibly Lawrence Truechild, London, England, 1555; Cup 2: Unidentified maker, London, England, 1570.‘To eat or not to eat’: The early modern history of dairy and meat alternatives2022-07-22T23:58:22+01:002022-07-22T23:58:22+01:00https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/discover/to-eat-or-not<p>The use of dairy alternatives, such as almond milk, is not a modern phenomenon but is firmly embedded in early modern food choices. While food choices were to a large extent determined by seasonal availability and economic means, religion also played a vital role in determining what people living in Europe between 1500 and 1800 ate. The calendar year was made up of single fast days as well as longer periods of abstinence, which prohibited the eating of meat and dairy products – Fridays, Saturdays, and some Wednesdays as well as Advent and Lent – totalling a staggering 40% of the year. Fasting days were often called ‘thin days’ or ‘fish days’ due to the fact that so much fish was eaten as a meat substitute. That said, the actual extent to which these religious rules were observed is questionable. We know that practice does not always follow prescription: dairy-loving Christians could buy dispensations from the Church, known as ‘butter indulgences’, which allowed them to eat dairy produce during Lent.</p>
<p>For most people, however, food on ‘thin’ days, as opposed to ‘fat’ days when there were no food restrictions, was dominated by vegetables, pulses, nuts, as well as seafood and fish, as seen in van der Heyden’s Thin Kitchen (fig. 1), in which a group of scrawny, impoverished and famished people fight over a pot of mussels and root vegetables. The bread is so stale and hard that it has been abandoned with the carving knife irretrievably jammed inside, and the stock fish is so tough that is has to be broken into pieces with a hammer. A well-fed man at the door tries to escape this bleak scene of culinary deprivation and desperation.</p>
<figure class="figure col-md-12">
<img src="/images/discover/P.4290-R-155_1_201811_amt49_dc1.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="Pieter van der Heyden, after Bruegel, The thin kitchen Engraving, 1563 P.4290-R-155." />
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<strong>Figure 1:</strong> Pieter van der Heyden, after Bruegel, The thin kitchen Engraving, 1563 P.4290-R-155. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
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<p>Finding dairy and meat alternatives was essential to meet the culinary requirements of ‘thin days’ and make them tolerable. Recipes books in Protestant and Catholic countries provided elaborate and multi-course vegetarian menus for ‘thin’ days, many of which did not contain any dairy or animal products. In The Modern Steward of 1694, the Neapolitan Antonio Latini described a lunch menu for some aristocratic patrons, which included a macaroni dish prepared with almond and pine nut milk, followed by a swordfish dish ingeniously made to look like ‘chops’. A generation earlier, the English Catholic cook, Robert May, published ‘A bill Fare formerly used in Fasting days, in Lent’ in his Accomplisht Cook of 1660 (fig. 2). The lack of meat was more than made up for by the sheer quantity and different types of fish and seafood (including oysters, eels, pike, carp, lobster, ling, haddock, sole, cod, and scallops) as well as the astonishing variety of ways to prepare them.</p>
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<img src="/images/discover/robertmay.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook " />
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<strong>Figure 2:</strong> Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook (London, 1660).
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<p>It was this rich history of cooking without dairy or meat products that inspired the early religious radical and animal-rights activist Thomas Tryon to promote his own vegetarian regime. In a remarkable series of self-help books, such as Wisdom’s dictates of 1691, he included 75 recipes for dishes ‘easily procured without Flesh and Blood, or the Dying groans of God’s innocent and harmless Creatures, which do as far exceed those made of Flesh and Fish’. While the roots of Tryon’s vegetarianism lay in earlier Christian practice, his concern for animal welfare and his criticism of the ‘dark side’ of the dairy industry appear entirely modern and relevant to today.</p>The use of dairy alternatives, such as almond milk, is not a modern phenomenon but is firmly embedded in early modern food choices. While food choices were to a large extent determined by seasonal availability and economic means, religion also played a vital role in determining what people living in Europe between 1500 and 1800 ate. The calendar year was made up of single fast days as well as longer periods of abstinence, which prohibited the eating of meat and dairy products – Fridays, Saturdays, and some Wednesdays as well as Advent and Lent – totalling a staggering 40% of the year. Fasting days were often called ‘thin days’ or ‘fish days’ due to the fact that so much fish was eaten as a meat substitute. That said, the actual extent to which these religious rules were observed is questionable. We know that practice does not always follow prescription: dairy-loving Christians could buy dispensations from the Church, known as ‘butter indulgences’, which allowed them to eat dairy produce during Lent.From roast to raw meat: a cooking process reversed through the conservator’s brush2022-07-22T23:58:22+01:002022-07-22T23:58:22+01:00https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/discover/raw-to-roast<p>This substantial canvas of a Dutch pantry has been specially cleaned for Feast & Fast by Victoria Sutcliffe at Cambridge University’s Hamilton Kerr Institute. During her conservation treatment, Vicky discovered that the painting is a rare example of a 17th-century painting not lined at a later date. (Lining, with an additional canvas layer adhered to the reverse, was a common historical restoration technique used to stabilise and reinforce paintings). Removal of the old, discoloured, patchy varnish has greatly improved the readability of the composition, and revealed van Schooten’s initials ‘F.V.S.’ on the stone ledge at the bottom of the canvas. The varnish’s removal has also revealed van Schooten’s bravura in capturing diverse colours and textures, which had become dull and hard to discern. His evident delight in the accurate recording of details tells us a great deal about the sourcing and preparation of food in 17th-century Haarlem.</p>
<figure class="figure col-md-8">
<img src="/images/discover/CAM_CCF_0096-001.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="Kitchen utensils, meat and vegetables." />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">
<strong>Figure 1:</strong> Floris Gerritsz. van Schooten (1585/88–1656), Kitchen utensils, meat and vegetables, Haarlem, Netherlands, c.1620–30. Oil on canvas. 102.2 x 158.1 cm. Given by Prof. C. Hague, 1820 (96). © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. This image shows the painting before conservation.
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<img src="/images/discover/HKI-2272_img-37-cleaned.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="This image shows painting detail during conservation." />
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<strong>Figure 2:</strong> Floris Gerritsz. van Schooten (1585/88–1656), Kitchen utensils, meat and vegetables, Haarlem, Netherlands, c.1620–30. Oil on canvas. 102.2 x 158.1 cm. Given by Prof. C. Hague, 1820 (96). © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. This image shows painting detail during conservation.
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<p>The painting is filled with various locally sourced produce of the sort that would have been enjoyed in September or October, including pumpkins, cabbages, and apples. While peas were mainly a summer vegetable, late crops were sown in July for autumn harvesting (like the ones shown here) and were then dried to convert them into store cupboard food. Glistening herring, a mainstay of the Dutch economy and diet, await gutting on a pewter plate. Van Schooten has even bothered to record the leg wounds at ankle level on both rabbits, revealing their method of capture in snares. The slab of beef sirloin in the right foreground was always assumed to have been roasted, due to the brownish colour of the meat and the golden colour of the fat. However, the conservator’s brush has revealed a slab of uncooked and completely raw meat, thereby miraculously reversing a cooking process.</p>
<p>Cleaning has also revealed the vibrant colour range and reflective surfaces of the highly polished pots and pans, some stacked, others deliberately angled to catch the light. The different colours reveal that they were made from different types of metal: copper, and copper alloys, such as brass and latten. All of them have sparkling insides, but only some of them have shiny outsides, which reveals that they were used for different kinds of cooking over different kinds of fuel. Those pots with shiny outsides must have been used for making preserves (or other food that required precise temperature control) over charcoal. We know this because burning charcoal releases carbon monoxide that reduces any oxides or other stains on copper, leaving a pan’s surface remarkably clean and shiny. Although charcoal was more expensive than wood, it was easier to control. Those pans with blackened outsides must have been used for general meat and vegetable cookery over an open wood fire, as the black colour represents an even sooty deposit. General cooking was done over wood, which was cheap but harder to control.</p>
<p>Van Schooten’s virtuoso rendition of light on burnished metal belies modern assumptions of the lack of cleanliness in historical kitchens. His shining pans are a testimony to the pride of the servant in his or her work for their master and mistress, as noted by Ann Cook, in her Professed Cookery of c.1760:</p>
<blockquote class="blockquote">
I can observe a secret Pleasure to attend you after your Work is done, as you sit admiring your clean Pots, Pans, Pewter, Dressers, &c &c so I am convinced a secret Pleasure reigns in every Servant’s bosom to discharge their several Duties to those two Worthies they serve.
</blockquote>
<p>But it was more than a matter of personal pride or pleasing one’s boss: all pans had to be kept scrupulously clean and free of food residues to avoid the creation of toxic copper sulphate, which could inadvertently cause food poisoning.</p>This substantial canvas of a Dutch pantry has been specially cleaned for Feast & Fast by Victoria Sutcliffe at Cambridge University’s Hamilton Kerr Institute. During her conservation treatment, Vicky discovered that the painting is a rare example of a 17th-century painting not lined at a later date. (Lining, with an additional canvas layer adhered to the reverse, was a common historical restoration technique used to stabilise and reinforce paintings). Removal of the old, discoloured, patchy varnish has greatly improved the readability of the composition, and revealed van Schooten’s initials ‘F.V.S.’ on the stone ledge at the bottom of the canvas. The varnish’s removal has also revealed van Schooten’s bravura in capturing diverse colours and textures, which had become dull and hard to discern. His evident delight in the accurate recording of details tells us a great deal about the sourcing and preparation of food in 17th-century Haarlem.A rainbow palette revealed: Van Son’s Still life with lobster2022-07-22T23:58:22+01:002022-07-22T23:58:22+01:00https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/discover/rainbox-palette<p>This painting was cleaned for Feast & Fast by Molly Hughes-Hallett, under the supervision of Adele Wright, at the University of Cambridge’s Hamilton Kerr Institute. Prior to conservation treatment, the still life had a highly yellowed varnish, which completely obscured the sense of light, depth, and space within the painting. Removal of the varnish has revealed the incredibly vibrant rainbow palette: the bright yellow lemons; the rich orange of the cut-open melon, the peaches and the oranges; the pillar-box red cooked lobster and the deeper red cherries; the purples of the plums and grapes; and the rich diversity of greens from the darker vine-leaves, citrus fruit and plum leaves, to the lighter coloured chestnut husks, grapes, and celery – all set against the dazzling white tablecloth and the cavernous black background. Cleaning has equally re-animated the reflections on the silverware as well as on the ripe cherries and the lobster’s carapace, and the glistening drops of fruit juice on the table cloth. It has also revealed the highly textured skin of the citrus fruits, to give them an enhanced sense of tactility. </p>
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<figcaption class="figure-caption">
<strong>Figure 1:</strong> Joris van Son (1623–67), Still life with a lobster, Antwerp, Belgium, 1660. Oil on canvas. 64.1 x 89.2 cm. C.B. Marlay Bequest, 1912 (M.76). © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. This shows a comparison of the two images before and after together.
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<p>While eating seasonally today is often politically or ethically motivated, most diners in 17th-century Europe were constrained by the rhythms of the growing and harvesting seasons. Joris van Son’s vibrant painting is naturalistic in style yet highly unnatural in content, combining foodstuffs that could never actually have been eaten at the same time. It portrays with breath-taking realism summer fruit such as speckled plums, translucent redcurrants, and a gaping melon, together with autumnal harvest produce such as grapes and chestnuts. Similarly, while the lobster – symbol of luxury – was at its best from mid-March to mid-July, the shrimps were at their largest and most succulent only in the autumn. Van Son’s still life also combines local with global: all the fruit was grown locally, except for the citrus fruits, which would probably have been imported from the Mediterranean. Like the lobster, which would have been fished from the coastal waters of the North Sea, oranges and lemons were still a luxury for most northern Europeans.</p>
<p>While most of the food is in perfect condition, the leaves of the cherries have some blight and damage, which may indicate that this luxurious food fantasy was originally intended to be read as a moralising vanitas: a warning against overindulgence and a reminder of the fleeting nature of life. However, the celery with its unnaturally curling leaves had no symbolic meaning at all. It appears to have been included purely to show off the artist’s virtuoso skill, echoing the curling antennae of the lobster directly below. The fact that van Son has placed his signature and date on a sculpted shield hints at the highly constructed and contrived nature of the image, despite its apparent naturalism. It highlights his skill in painterly illusionism – portraying the edible delights of the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional canvas so convincingly that the viewer cannot help but salivate and desire to devour the food with more than just the eyes.</p>This painting was cleaned for Feast & Fast by Molly Hughes-Hallett, under the supervision of Adele Wright, at the University of Cambridge’s Hamilton Kerr Institute. Prior to conservation treatment, the still life had a highly yellowed varnish, which completely obscured the sense of light, depth, and space within the painting. Removal of the varnish has revealed the incredibly vibrant rainbow palette: the bright yellow lemons; the rich orange of the cut-open melon, the peaches and the oranges; the pillar-box red cooked lobster and the deeper red cherries; the purples of the plums and grapes; and the rich diversity of greens from the darker vine-leaves, citrus fruit and plum leaves, to the lighter coloured chestnut husks, grapes, and celery – all set against the dazzling white tablecloth and the cavernous black background. Cleaning has equally re-animated the reflections on the silverware as well as on the ripe cherries and the lobster’s carapace, and the glistening drops of fruit juice on the table cloth. It has also revealed the highly textured skin of the citrus fruits, to give them an enhanced sense of tactility. Behind the Scenes: Recreating an 18th-century pineapple ice cream2022-07-22T23:58:22+01:002022-07-22T23:58:22+01:00https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/discover/behind-the-scenes<blockquote class="blockquote">
<p>‘We love the pineapple ice cream image on the lamp-post banners and posters advertising the Feast & Fast exhibition. Why did you choose it for the show’s logo, and how did you make it?’</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/poster.png" alt="Feast and Fast Exhibition poster" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Feast and Fast Exhibition poster</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’ve been asked this question so many times since Feast & Fast opened in late November, and now we’re closed, I thought it time to let you in ‘behind the scenes’ and into a few secrets!</p>
<p>We chose the pineapple as the logo for Feast & Fast for several reasons. Since the 19th century, the pineapple has come to represent friendship, hospitality and welcome, which are great messages for the Museum. It’s also a fantastic ‘icon’ from a designer’s point of view as it has such a distinctive shape and profile, and such a vibrant yet simple colour: bright yellow for the body of the fruit, and rich green for its crowning leaves. All-in-all, quite unmistakable. This may be why the Museum’s front railings are composed of flourishing pineapple plants: green stems and leaves with vibrant gilded pineapples acting as flamboyant finials.</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/pineapple-railing-long-horizontal-2560x1707.jpg" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Pineapple finials on the railing outside the museum</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More specifically, the pineapple is a key motif in the exhibition, given that it was our founder’s grandfather, Matthew Decker, who grew England’s first crop of pineapples in his garden in Richmond-upon-Thames in the early 18th century. The pick of Decker’s crop was recorded in this marvellously quirky portrait of 1720, which is now in The Fitz.</p>
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<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/pineapplePortrait.jpeg" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Matthew Decker's pineapple portrait</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This huge horticultural feat that was publicised in 1721 by Richard Bradley, who became the first Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge a few years later.</p>
<p>To celebrate Decker’s botanical achievement, his links with Bradley and Cambridge, and 300 years of pineapple growing in Britain, we thought it would be fun to make the pineapple a feature outside of the museum to welcome visitors in. So we commissioned artists Sam Bompas and Harry Parr to create a fun, funky, family-friendly and frankly unmissable giant pineapple for The Fitz’s front lawn. It’s lit up at night and since the outbreak of Covid-19 and the Museum’s closure, it’s become a resolute beacon of hope and has been nicknamed The Pineapple of Positivity.</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/Pineapple Feast and Fast_3_201911_mfj22_dc1.jpg" alt="Pineapple lit up outside the museum" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Pineapple lit up outside the museum</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And this is why we also used the pineapple logo on the eye-catching and memorable posters and lamp-post banners advertising Feast & Fast. Keen to keep food, its production and presentation, and the multi-sensory aspects of the exhibition at the heart of our publicity for it, we thought that a pineapple ice cream would be ideal. After all, who doesn’t like ice cream?</p>
<p>This is when we approached our food consultant, Ivan Day, for his expert help. From his half-century worth of experience in such matters, Ivan advised us not to photograph a replica pineapple-shaped ice cream, moulded in silicon or plastic, as they never look real. “You must make a real ice cream from a genuine 18th-century pewter mould, and place it on a genuine 18th-century glass salver that has been frozen overnight so it is really cold. And you must photograph it immediately, so it is really crisp and still glistening. But, be warned, the ice cream will start melting after only a few seconds, so you’ll have to be really quick, or the photographers will end up with the green crown floating in a yellow puddle!” No pressure then…</p>
<p>Ivan generously offered to let us use his late 18th-century hinged tripartite pewter pineapple-shaped mould for the purposes together with his early 18th-century glass salver, and gave us permission to deep-freeze both overnight.</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_0345.jpg" alt="Late 18th-century hinged tripartite pewter pineapple-shaped mould" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Late 18th-century hinged tripartite pewter pineapple-shaped mould</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_0347.jpg" alt="Late 18th-century mould closed" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Late 18th-century mould closed</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Being very short of time, we sadly couldn’t make any pineapple ice cream ourselves, so on Ivan’s advice I bought some mango sorbet instead, as it’s similar in colour. I also got some salt, ice cubes, cocktail sticks, and a fresh pineapple with a good-looking crown of leaves.</p>
<p>After storing the ice cream mould and salver overnight in the Museum café’s freezer (with grateful thanks to the Tate catering team!), we were good to go.</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5011.jpg" alt="Ice cream in Tate's kitcen" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Ice cream in Tate's kitcen</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5012.jpg" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Tate catering team and the frozen goods</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here is a photo record and instructions of how we did it. (If we ever do this again, we would avoid doing it on a scorching hot day in mid-June!)</p>
<p>Step 1: vigorously mix salt and ice into the sorbet to stop it from melting so quickly once solidified.</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5004.jpg" alt="vigorously mix salt and ice into the sorbet" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Vigorously mix salt and ice into the sorbet</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Step 2: carefully spoon the ‘pineapple ice cream’ into all three sections of the open mould</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5006.jpg" alt="Spooning pineapple ice cream" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Spooning pineapple ice cream</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5008.jpg" alt="Spooning pineapple ice cream" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Spooning pineapple ice cream</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Step 3: carry on until the mould is completely full</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5010.jpg" alt="Carry on filling the mould until nearly full" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Carry on filling the mould until nearly full</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Step 4: carefully close the mould and put it into the freezer to solidify overnight</p>
<p>Step 5: next morning, take a fresh pineapple and carefully saw its crown of leaves off</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5154.jpg" alt="Saw off the crown of leaves" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Saw off the crown of leaves</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5155.jpg" alt="Saw off the crown of leaves" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Saw off the crown of leaves</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Step 6: take 3 toothpicks and carefully push them halfway into the stump of the crown</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5159.jpg"n alt="take 3 toothpicks and carefully push them halfway"/>
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Take 3 toothpicks and carefully push them halfway</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5161.jpg" alt="Take 3 toothpicks and carefully push them halfway" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Take 3 toothpicks and carefully push them halfway</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Step 7: retrieve the frozen ice cream mould and glass salver from the freezer and open the mould, using a teacloth to protect your hands from ice-burn!</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5163.jpg" alt="retrieve the frozen ice cream mould" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Retrieve the frozen ice cream mould</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5164.jpg" alt="Retrieve the frozen ice cream mould" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Retrieve the frozen ice cream mould</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5165.jpg" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Retrieve the frozen ice cream mould</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Step 8: carefully saw a small slice off the top of your ice cream so that it’s flat</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5166.jpg" alt="saw a small slice off the top of your ice cream " />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Saw a small slice off the top of your ice cream </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Step 9: quickly place your ice cream centrally on the frozen salver, and carefully push the crown on top, making sure the ends of the toothpicks engage with the ice cream</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5170.jpg" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Place pineapple ice cream in centre of salver</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Step 10: run the ice cream and salver into the photography studio without dropping it, again using the teacloth to protect your hands from ice burn and carefully place on the table</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5171.jpg" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Quickly take the ice cream to the photography shoot</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5173.jpg" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Quickly take the ice cream to the photography shoot</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Step 11: Let the photographer get on with her task before the ice cream melts!</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5177.jpg" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Katie Young taking photographs</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Step 12: rescue the melting pineapple before it runs everywhere and makes a huge mess, and let the photographer have her rightful reward!</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5182.jpg" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Rescue the dish!</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/IMG_5183.jpg" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Katie enjoying the ice cream</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Through her skill and expertise, Katie Young, one of the Museum’s superb in-house photographers, was able to capture some wonderful images of the pineapple ice cream alone, and also with the 18th-century equipment that was typically used to make it by professional confectioners. These were used in the exhibition catalogue, on the website and for publicity.</p>
<figure class="col-md-12">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/images/discover/pineapple/pineapple_1.jpg" alt="The final composition of the pineapple
ice cream" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">The final composition of the pineapple
ice cream</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And that’s the end of my story!</p>
<p>With many thanks to Ivan Day, Gillie Whitehead, Katie Young, Luke Syson, and Tate Catering.</p>
<p>Victoria Avery, Keeper of Applied Arts and Co-Curator of Feast and Fast</p>‘We love the pineapple ice cream image on the lamp-post banners and posters advertising the Feast & Fast exhibition. Why did you choose it for the show’s logo, and how did you make it?’Pineapple ice cream: a potted history and some English 18th-century recipes2022-07-22T23:58:22+01:002022-07-22T23:58:22+01:00https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/discover/pineapple-icecream<p>Confectionery shops in 18th-century England and Europe were a far remove from modern sweetshops. In addition to selling (or hiring out) expensive porcelain and glass tableware, they sold fresh fruit, like pineapples and strawberries, and luxury sugar-based sweet treats made on the premises, for a wealthy clientele. These typically included biscuits, wafers, highly decorated Twelfth Cakes, sweeties like sugar plums (what we now call sugared almonds), preserved peels and jams, as well as jellies and whip syllabubs that could be eaten on the spot or taken home.</p>
<p>The sheer variety of food and tableware sold by high-end confectioners can be seen in the recreation of a late 18th-century confectioner’s window, which Ivan Day conjured up for us in the Feast & Fast exhibition. It was inspired in part by satirical artist James Gillray’s cartoon of June 1797 showing soldiers eating sweet treats inside a London confectioner’s, also on display in the exhibition.</p>
<div class="row">
<div class="col">
<figure>
<img src="/images/discover/ice-cream/confectioners.jpg" class="img-fluid" alt="Recreation of a late 18th-century confectioner’s window" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Recreation of a late 18th-century confectioner’s window</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<div class="col">
<figure>
<img src="/images/discover/ice-cream/gillray.jpg" class="img-fluid" alt="Gillray’s cartoon of June 1797 showing soldiers eating sweet treats inside a London confectioner’s" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Gillray’s cartoon of June 1797 showing soldiers eating sweet treats inside a London confectioner’s</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
</div>
<p>According to Ivan, ice cream – or ‘ice’ in 18th-century parlance – was the most elite refreshment that these confectioners made, and it came in a huge variety of flavours. Prices varied according to the cost of the ingredients. Ices made from common garden fruits were less expensive than those made from luxury fruit such as the pineapple. In 1764, according to his trade card (now in The British Museum), the Bond Street confectioner Thomas Street sold a pint of strawberry ice for 3 shillings and 9 pence, while the same quantity of pineapple ice cream cost more than double the price, at 7 shillings and 6 pence.</p>
<p>Like many confectioners, Street also sold fruit-flavoured ices moulded in the form of the fruit, using fruit-shaped pewter moulds supplied by pewterers such as Thomas Chamberlain of Greek Street, London. The most common 18th-century mould for making an ice cream pineapple was designed to replicate the pine-cone-shaped body of the fruit without any leaves. When the frozen ice was removed from the mould, real leaves salvaged from the fruit, were attached to the top, making a very convincing ‘pineapple in ice’. You can find out more about how these were made in <a href="https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/discover/pineapple">this article</a>.</p>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-6">
<figure>
<img src="/images/discover/ice-cream/pineapple.jpg" class="img-fluid" alt="Recreation of pineapple ice cream on a table" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Recreation of pineapple ice cream</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<div class="col-md-6">
<figure>
<img src="/images/discover/ice-cream/mould.jpg" class="img-fluid" alt="Pineapple ice cream mould" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Pineapple ice cream mould</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
</div>
<p>As far as Ivan knows, the earliest published recipe for pineapple ice cream is in French: it appeared in Emy, L’Art de Bien faire Les Glaces d’Office (Paris, 1768). Recipes in other languages quickly followed.</p>
<p>In 1770, recipes for both pineapple water ice (‘Anana, or pine apple ice’, pp. 84-85) and pineapple ice cream (‘Anana or pine apple cream ices’, p. 93) were published in English in The Court and Country Confectioner (London, 1770). The first edition of this highly influential book on the subject of confectionery was launched anonymously, but in a later edition of 1772, the author is identified on the title page as <em>‘Mr. Borella, now head confectioner to the Spanish Ambassador in England’.</em></p>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-6">
<figure>
<img src="/images/discover/ice-cream/5.jpg" class="img-fluid" alt="Title page for the confectionary recipe book" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Title page for the confectionary recipe book.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<div class="col-md-6">
<figure>
<img src="/images/discover/ice-cream/6.jpg" class="img-fluid" alt="Recipe for Anana or pineapple ice cream" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Recipe for Anana or pineapple ice cream</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-12">
<figure>
<img src="/images/discover/ice-cream/7.jpg" class="img-fluid" alt="Recipe for Anana or pineapple ice cream" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Recipe for Anana or pineapple ice cream</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
</div>
<p>The other English recipe to be published hot on the heels of Emy and Borella was by Frederick Nutt in The Complete Confectioner (London, 1789).</p>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-6">
<figure>
<img src="/images/discover/ice-cream/8.jpg" class="img-fluid" alt="Title page of The Complete Confectioner (London, 1789)" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">The Complete Confectioner (London, 1789)</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<div class="col-md-6">
<figure>
<img src="/images/discover/ice-cream/9.jpg" class="img-fluid" alt="Frederick Nutt's ice cream recipe" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Frederick Nutt's ice cream recipe</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
</div>
<p>As the title-page reveals, Nutt had been apprenticed ‘to the well-known Messers. Negri and Witten of Berkley-Square’. These were the successors of another Italian immigrant, Domenico Negri from Turin, who had established ‘The Pot and Pineapple’, a fashionable confectionery shop in Berkeley Square, London, which he ran with his English wife, Ann Gunter. By the early 19th-century, this establishment was known as ‘Gunter’s’, but was still popularly referred to as ‘The Pineapple’. Ivan’s early 19th-century pewter sorbetiere for mixing ice cream (also exhibited in Feast & Fast together with the pineapple ice cream mould and a spaddle) is from Gunter’s, and may well have been used in the production of pineapple ice cream, as well as other luxury fruit ices.</p>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-12">
<figure>
<img src="/images/discover/pineapple/pineapple_1.jpg" class="img-fluid" alt="early 19th-century pewter sorbetiere for mixing ice cream (also exhibited in Feast & Fast together with the pineapple ice cream mould and a spaddle)" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Early 19th-century pewter sorbetiere for mixing ice cream (also exhibited in Feast & Fast together with the pineapple ice cream mould and a spaddle).</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
</div>
<p>Ivan told me,</p>
<blockquote class="blockquote">
<p>“Although we cheated with industrially-produced mango ice cream through necessity when we recreated our 18th-century ‘pineapple in ice’ for the Feast & Fast photo shoot, I have made all of these pineapple ices using 18th-century equipment. Unfortunately, they do not really lend themselves to the modern kitchen as the freezing process was entirely different, but I have got them all to work well.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With great thanks to Ivan Day for his help with this text.</p>
<p><strong>Victoria Avery, Keeper of Applied Arts and Co-Curator of Feast and Fast</strong></p>Confectionery shops in 18th-century England and Europe were a far remove from modern sweetshops. In addition to selling (or hiring out) expensive porcelain and glass tableware, they sold fresh fruit, like pineapples and strawberries, and luxury sugar-based sweet treats made on the premises, for a wealthy clientele. These typically included biscuits, wafers, highly decorated Twelfth Cakes, sweeties like sugar plums (what we now call sugared almonds), preserved peels and jams, as well as jellies and whip syllabubs that could be eaten on the spot or taken home.Bittersweet: The Passover Feast2022-07-22T23:58:22+01:002022-07-22T23:58:22+01:00https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/discover/bittersweet-passover-feast<p>In Judaism, eating is not simply a mundane activity but a means of reconnecting with community, history, and tradition. Nowhere is this more evident than the seven-day (eight outside Israel) holiday of Passover (or Pesach), also called the Festival of Matzah (Unleavened Bread), beginning this year on April 8 and ending on April 16. By its very name, the Festival of Matzah clearly places food at the centre of the ritual menu. Commemorating the enslavement of the Jews in Egypt and their eventual liberation, Passover is one of the most celebrated of all Jewish holidays, and its association with food may explain part of that popularity!</p>
<p>The Passover Seder (Hebrew for ‘order’) is the feast held on the first two evenings of the festival, when Jews gather to read from the Haggadah (a liturgical text and guide), drink wine, tell stories, sing, and eat special foods. During the first night’s meal, the youngest person at the table sings four questions, all of which ask what makes the night different from all other nights. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, this year’s Seder will have to be different from all other years, as families isolate themselves and host virtual festivities on Skype, Zoom or via FaceTime.</p>
<p>Celebrating Passover requires several days of preparation, beginning with an exhaustive house-cleaning. The aim of scrupulously patrolling pantries and kitchen shelves, turning inside and out the pockets of clothing and scrubbing every nook and cranny in the home, is to get rid of even the tiniest forbidden crumb of hametz that might lurk there. Hametz is defined as any grain that ferments on decomposition, namely, wheat, barley, spelt, oats and rye. In deference to the memory of the Israelites who fled Egypt in such a hurry that their dough did not have time to rise, Jews avoid eating or even benefitting from any use of hametz, and dispose of things like bread, yeast, beer, and in some communities, even yoghurt and fermented milk products. All cooking utensils and implements are exchanged for special holiday ones or scoured and washed in boiling water, calling to mind the polished pots and pans in Van Schooten’s painting (fig.1). There is a ritual search for leaven (bedikat hametz) and cats are invited to catch mice that might bring in some leavened breadcrumbs to the already clean house. One such ‘food guardian’ is immortalised in an 18th century piece of soft-paste porcelain (fig.2).</p>
<p>The Seder is a multimedia event – its sights, sounds, tastes and smells captivate young and old alike, and there are few foods that carry as much history and meaning as do those on the Seder plate (Qe’arah), which traditionally holds five or six items that symbolise parts of the Passover story. These items are raised, dipped, combined, eaten, or pointed out, and include chazeret (usually lettuce), karpas (a green vegetable such as celery, which is ostentatiously included in a 17th century still life by Van Son in fig.3), beitzah (a roasted or hard-boiled egg that represents both mourning and rebirth), zeroa (shank bone), haroset (a sticky fruit-and-nut paste that mimics the clay mortar used by Jewish slaves in Egypt) and maror (bitter herbs that act as a reminder of the bitterness of servitude, although most Jews now use horseradish). A new addition to the Seder plate, and an essential motif of the Feast & Fast exhibition, is the pineapple. Prized as a symbol of welcome and prosperity, it stands as a sign of hospitality to today’s refugees.</p>
<p>As well as the items on the Seder plate, the Seder table also features a container of salt water or vinegar, four glasses of wine (consumed while reclining) and three pieces of matzah stacked and wrapped or covered in a cloth. Jewish texts and rituals send the clear message that eating bread brings Jews nearer to God and God nearer to them, and for hundreds of years matzah was considered the ‘Jewish food’ par excellence. (Up until the 15th century, matzah was relatively thick, dense, soft and round, but today it is equated by most Westerners with a thin, cracker-like, square product that originated in Germany.) In fact, matzah was so popular among Italian Christians during the 18th century that in cities like Rome and Mantua, Catholic authorities attempting to keep Jews and Christians apart frequently banned Jews from selling matzah to non-Jews and barred Christians from eating it.</p>
<p>During the Seder, participants make and eat the ‘Hillel Sandwich’ (Korech), by putting a bitter herb and haroset (which according to one Iberian recipe from 1726 contained raisins, almonds, cinnamon, pistachios, dates, ginger, walnuts, apples, pears, figs and hazelnuts) between two pieces of matzah. It was a wrap in the modern sense. Matzah as a wrap, being convenient and portable, fits into the hasty nature of the first Passover. A verse from the Book of Exodus states, ‘And so shall you eat it: with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste…’. (Exodus 12.11) The matzah wrap was a version of fast food!</p>
<p>The main festive meal (Shulchan Orech) sees the parade of dinner food begin. Quintessential Passover fare for Ashkenazim (Jews from Central and Eastern Europe) includes soup with matzah balls, matzah brei (a dish of soaked pieces of matzah mixed with beaten eggs and fried as a pancake or omelette), gefilte fish (a poached mixture of ground, deboned fish such as carp or pike) with horseradish, and for dessert, nut, honey and sponge cakes, in which finely ground matzah meal and potato starch substitute for flour. Sephardim (Jews from the Iberian Peninsula) might enjoy mina (a magnificent pie, a bit like lasagne, in which matzah is layered with spiced meat such as ground lamb and beef, or vegetables), roasted lamb or poultry accompanied by meat-stuffed vegetables and apio (a sweet and sour combination of carrots and celery root). A typical 16th century Spanish meal served on the first night of Passover would plausibly have included roasted lamb in a coating of chard, mint, garlic and egg; chickpeas cooked with honey, onions and spices, and turrón (an almond and honey nougat) for dessert.</p>
<p>The challenge of celebrating Passover in the face of COVID-19 underscores the fact that the Seder night is not a time of frozen decorum, but of reinvention. Jewish food is a dynamic cultural phenomenon. Practices are lost and added over the centuries and layered upon each other, intertwined, and continually shifting. At this moment of rupture, the enthusiasm of Seder participants in every generation (whether eating symbolic foods, talking about food, preparing food, or visualizing imaginary meals) reminds us that food is not just fuel. It can offer new connections, new adventures and, maybe, liberation.</p>
<p>Julia Biggs</p>
<figure class="figure col-md-12">
<img src="https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/images/discover/passover/Figure1.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">
<strong>Figure 1:</strong> Floris Gerritsz. van Schooten (1585/88–1656), Kitchen utensils, meat and vegetables (detail), Haarlem, Netherlands, c.1620–30. Oil on canvas. 102.2 x 158.1 cm. Given by Prof. C. Hague, 1820 (96). Conserved by Victoria Sutcliffe at the Hamilton Kerr Institute. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="figure col-md-12">
<img src="https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/images/discover/passover/Figure2.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">
<strong>Figure 2:</strong> Cat seated with a mouse in its paw, Bow Porcelain Manufactory, England, c. 1753-8. Soft-paste porcelain painted overglaze in enamels. 8.1 x 5 cm. Dr J.W.L. Glaisher Bequest (C.3055-1928). © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="figure col-md-12">
<img src="https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/images/discover/passover/Figure3.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">
<strong>Figure 3:</strong> Joris van Son (1623–67), Still life with a lobster (detail), Antwerp, Belgium, 1660. Oil on canvas. 64.1 x 89.2 cm. C.B. Marlay Bequest, 1912 (M.76). © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
</figcaption>
</figure>In Judaism, eating is not simply a mundane activity but a means of reconnecting with community, history, and tradition. Nowhere is this more evident than the seven-day (eight outside Israel) holiday of Passover (or Pesach), also called the Festival of Matzah (Unleavened Bread), beginning this year on April 8 and ending on April 16. By its very name, the Festival of Matzah clearly places food at the centre of the ritual menu. Commemorating the enslavement of the Jews in Egypt and their eventual liberation, Passover is one of the most celebrated of all Jewish holidays, and its association with food may explain part of that popularity!From knives and roast birds to forks and bird pies: Changes in food fashion2022-07-22T23:58:22+01:002022-07-22T23:58:22+01:00https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/discover/knives-and-roast-birds<p>Dives and Lazarus is a parable told by Jesus, and recorded in Luke 16:19-31, in which the rich, greedy, and gluttonous Dives refuses to give any food to the poor and afflicted Lazarus who is begging at his gate. When they die, Dives ends up in hell while Lazarus goes to heaven. This painting was made as a warning to avoid greed and gluttony (two of the Seven Deadly Sins) and as a reminder to exercise charity by feeding the hungry (the first of the Seven Works of Mercy as prescribed by the Catholic Church).</p>
<p>This small, early 17th-century panel of Dives and Lazarus by an unknown Antwerp-based painter was cleaned for Feast & Fast by Elisabeth Petrina, under the supervision of Rupert Featherstone, at Cambridge University’s Hamilton Kerr Institute. Elisabeth painstakingly removed several layers of dirt and old yellowed varnish from the surface to reveal the well-preserved original paint layers, full of well-observed, brightly coloured details. Scientific analysis was undertaken, including dendrochronology by Ian Tyers, to try to clarify when the painting was made. The results indicate that the panel came from a tree felled after c.1563, making it likely that the panel was painted at some point after that and the early 1600s.</p>
<p>It was always known that this painting was based on an earlier (1554) engraving of the same subject by the German Lutheran artist, Heinrich Aldegrever (fig. 1). What the conservation reveals is the extent to which the yet-to-be-identified painter has adapted the details of the original composition in order to modernise it, making it relevant to his audience. In terms of the scene’s setting, he omitted the three windows in the background with their rather old-fashioned bottle-glass roundels in favour of a plain dark background, and he exchanged the tiled stove at left for a table set with a vase of beautifully rendered flowers, including fashionable tulips. The clothes and accessories have also been updated to keep up with fashion: ruffs have replaced flat collars, and swords eliminated.</p>
<figure class="figure col-md-12">
<img src="/images/discover/DP836657.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="A generic square placeholder image with rounded corners in a figure." />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">
<strong>Figure 1:</strong> Heinrich Aldegrever, The rich man at his table, from The Parable of Dives and Lazarus, 1554, engraving, sheet: 8 x 11 cm. Gift of Henry Walters, 1917 (17.37.228). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Public Domain)
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What is most significant in the context of Feast & Fast is the deliberate change in menu and tableware. In the original 1554 print, Dives’ status and wealth is indicated by the fact that he is about to devour a large roast bird. By the early 17th century, elaborate pies crowned with birds were now the height of luxury, which explains why the painter included several on Dives’ table. And instead of the two covered dishes, the servant now carries in an enormous pie, with a pheasant on top for ornament and to indicate its contents. Dives’ elite status is highlighted further by the inclusion of forks (revealed in the recent clean) – still a novel type of cutlery in the Low Countries when the painting was made. In the original print, the diners eat exclusively with knives. Forks were an Italian invention and became popular in wealthy circles across Europe from the early 17th century onwards. They were regarded as an indicator of refined manners and cleanliness, with diners no longer having to eat food with their fingers.</p>
<figure class="figure col-md-12">
<img src="/images/discover/274_1_201907_mfj22_dc1.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="A generic square placeholder image with rounded corners in a figure." />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">
<strong>Figure 2:</strong> Flemish School, Antwerp, Belgium, adapted from a 1554 engraving by Heinrich Aldegrever (c.1502–1555/61), early 17th century. Oil on panel. 17.8 x 23.2 cm. Daniel Mesman Bequest, 1834 (274). New image taken after conservation and cleaning. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This kind of expert and painstaking cleaning of historical paintings conducted by Cambridge University’s HKI proves how even the smallest of panels can reveal enormous cultural shifts in dining habits in early modern Europe.</p>Dives and Lazarus is a parable told by Jesus, and recorded in Luke 16:19-31, in which the rich, greedy, and gluttonous Dives refuses to give any food to the poor and afflicted Lazarus who is begging at his gate. When they die, Dives ends up in hell while Lazarus goes to heaven. This painting was made as a warning to avoid greed and gluttony (two of the Seven Deadly Sins) and as a reminder to exercise charity by feeding the hungry (the first of the Seven Works of Mercy as prescribed by the Catholic Church).‘How to peel a pomegranate’: Exotic fruit as artistic inspiration2022-07-22T23:58:22+01:002022-07-22T23:58:22+01:00https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/discover/how-to-peel<p>‘Epluchez vos grenades’, or ‘Peel your pomegranates’ is how François Pierre de la Varenne directed his readers in his recipe for a pomegranate salad, in his popular cookery book, Le cuisinier François of 1651. The simplicity of this French cook’s instructions (not unlike The Great British Bake Off’s technical challenge) hides the complexity of the technique of removing the precious blood-red seeds of a pomegranate, which even today elicits a flurry of suggestions. Do you cut the peel horizontally and then ‘bash the back of the fruit with a rolling pin or heavy wooden spoon’ as Yotam Ottolenghi suggests? Do you carefully score the fruit vertically and remove the peel to reveal the inner globular fruit? Or do you simply cut it down the middle and pull out the seeds from their pith, squirting red juice everywhere? Presumably Ottolenghi’s mother or grandmother had passed on their pomegranate knowledge, showing him how to do it rather than writing it down. Similarly, La Varenne – like many cookery book writers of the early modern period – provides no specific practical details of how to peel a pomegranate.</p>
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<img src="/images/discover/C.12-2002_3_201501_kly25_dc1.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="A generic square placeholder image with rounded corners in a figure." />
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<strong>Figure 1:</strong> Dish with pomegranate tree, China, Fujien province, c.1644–61. Hard-paste porcelain painted underglaze in blue. 9.8 x 50.8 cm. Dr Thomas Donald Kellaway Bequest (C.12-2002). © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
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<p>As one of the oldest foods, the pomegranate has a long and complex history, from its origins in Iran and northern India to its transplantation around the globe, from China to Mexico. The fruit of the pomegranate as well as the tree are powerfully resonant symbols in many ancient cultures around the world. The bright red colour of its seeds and the wide-spreading branches of the tree could mean many things including beauty, fertility, hospitality, good luck, and eternal life. On the inside of this large mid-seventeenth-century Chinese blue-and-white serving bowl (fig. 1), two pomegranates are shown ‘growing’ at the heart of a pomegranate ‘tree-of-life’. The pomegranates are cut open to expose their seeds, a sign of the fruit’s reproductive capacity. Both the Chinese maker and the European elite buyer of this luxury porcelain dish would have understood that the cut pomegranates at the dish’s centre had symbolic meaning.</p>
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<strong>Figure 2:</strong> Clapmash bowl with pomegranates, grapes and foliage Probably London (Southwark), England, or possibly Netherlands, 1639. Tin-glazed earthenware painted in blue, green and orange, with ‘I.B.M. / 1639’ on the base. 11.8 x 40.5 cm. Dr J.W.L. Glaisher Bequest (C.1400-1928). © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
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<p>Although pomegranates remained luxury exotic fruits in the 17th century, they appeared as decorative motifs on a variety of objects, including, rather surprisingly, relatively inexpensive English ceramics, such as this 1639 clapmash bowl (fig. 2). Many of these dishes were given as engagement or marriage gifts, emphasising the link of the pomegranate to fertility. The scored sides of one of the pomegranates on the clapmash bowl (fig. 3) indicate one of the time-honoured methods of peeling a pomegranate, still in use today. One wonders whether the artisan painting this image on the inside of the dish would actually have had any idea at all of how to peel a pomegranate. Indeed, he or she had probably never even seen a real pomegranate, and were simply copying the motifs from books or prints. This may be one reason why the seeds are painted blue, but that’s another story….</p>
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<strong>Figure 3:</strong> A scored pomegranate, detail from fig. 2.
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</figure> -->‘Epluchez vos grenades’, or ‘Peel your pomegranates’ is how François Pierre de la Varenne directed his readers in his recipe for a pomegranate salad, in his popular cookery book, Le cuisinier François of 1651. The simplicity of this French cook’s instructions (not unlike The Great British Bake Off’s technical challenge) hides the complexity of the technique of removing the precious blood-red seeds of a pomegranate, which even today elicits a flurry of suggestions. Do you cut the peel horizontally and then ‘bash the back of the fruit with a rolling pin or heavy wooden spoon’ as Yotam Ottolenghi suggests? Do you carefully score the fruit vertically and remove the peel to reveal the inner globular fruit? Or do you simply cut it down the middle and pull out the seeds from their pith, squirting red juice everywhere? Presumably Ottolenghi’s mother or grandmother had passed on their pomegranate knowledge, showing him how to do it rather than writing it down. Similarly, La Varenne – like many cookery book writers of the early modern period – provides no specific practical details of how to peel a pomegranate.Happy Birthday to Trees: The festival of Tu B’Shevat2022-07-22T23:58:22+01:002022-07-22T23:58:22+01:00https://feast-and-fast.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/discover/happy-birthday-to-trees<p>The Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat (sometimes spelled Tu Bishvat) occurs on the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Shevat, which this year falls on February 10. It marks the beginning of a ‘new year’ or ‘birthday’ for trees, as they emerge from their winter sleep and start another fruit-bearing cycle. Traditionally celebrated by eating lots of fruit and holding large feasts, in ancient times Tu B’Shevat indicated the date by which Jewish farmers needed to calculate the year’s tithes (or offerings) of fruit they should bring to the Temple in Jerusalem. This had to be fourth-year fruit, as the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) forbids Jews to eat the fruit of new trees for three years after they are planted (Leviticus 19.23-25).
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<p>With the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the end of tithing, Tu B’Shevat lost much of its importance, but thanks to the kabbalists (Jewish mystics) of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Safed (a mountaintop city of Galilee in Israel) it gained a new spiritual significance. The kabbalists created a ritual: a seder (ceremonial meal) modelled on the Passover feast, during which diners read selected biblical and rabbinic passages and ate fruits and nuts associated with the land of Israel, paying attention to the different textures, tastes and symbolism of the items they consumed.</p>
<p>Described in a fifty-page pamphlet first printed in Venice in 1728 and entitled Pri Etz Hadar (‘The Fruit of the Goodly Tree’), the kabbalists’ Tu B’Shevat seder is structured around four cups of wine, going from all or mostly white to all or mostly red, to mimic the colour changes of the seasons of the white snow and almond blossoms (in Israel) of late winter, to the red of the anemone blossoms of the summer.</p>
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<img src="/images/discover/trees/figure1.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="Pineapple-shaped ice cream" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Figure 1: Pineapple-shaped ice cream made by Ivan Day, using an eighteenth-century English pewter mould</figcaption>
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<p>The first fruits and nuts to be served have inedible coverings and include the pineapple, created in mouth-watering ice cream form for Feast & Fast by Ivan Day (fig. 1), and the pomegranate, which can be seen split open to reveal an inviting profusion of glistening red seeds in Jan Davidsz de Heem’s Still Life (fig. 2). (According to tradition, pomegranates have 613 seeds, corresponding to the number of commandments in the Torah, so the fruit serves as a symbol both of righteousness and abundance.) Fruits with inedible cores - such as apricots, cherries, dates, peaches, plums and olives – follow. The third group are completely edible fruits or those with very small seeds, such as apples, berries, grapes and figs. The eighteenth-century trompe l’oeil (trick the eye) plate of figs on display in the exhibition look particularly luscious (fig. 3).</p>
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<img src="/images/discover/trees/figure2.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="Still life with fruit" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Figure 2: Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-84), detail of a pomegranate, Still life with fruit, Antwerp, Belgium, 1646. Oil on canvas on panel. C.B. Marlay Bequest, 1912. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.</figcaption>
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<img src="/images/discover/trees/figure3.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" alt="Trompe l’oeil plate of fruit" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption">Figure 3: Trompe l’oeil plate of fruit (possibly figs), Alcora Factory, Valencia, Spain, c. 1765-85. Tin-glazed earthenware. 3.2 x 23.5 cm. Dr J.W.L. Glaisher Bequest (C.2138-1928). © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.</figcaption>
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<p>The Tu B’Shevat seder did not catch on among Ashkenazim (Jews from Central and Eastern Europe), probably because the harsh winter weather around the time of the festival made fruit hard to come by. In contrast, among Sephardim (Jews from the Iberian Peninsula), who call the holiday ‘Las Frutas’ (The Fruit), the seder gained special prominence. The custom emerged of eating the Shevah Minim or ‘Seven Species’, the five fruits and two grains found in ancient Israel and mentioned in Deuteronomy 8.8: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates. It also became customary to sample as many different types of fruit as possible – at least twelve.</p>
<p>In some Jewish communities, creative Tu B’Shevat practices developed. For example, Jews in Kurdistan placed sweet fruits like raisins in rings around trees, and then prayed for a plentiful fruit season. In Persia, Jews climbed onto their neighbours’ roofs and lowered empty baskets down chimneys to have them return laden with fruit.</p>
<p>Today, popular Tu B’Shevat treats include confections like apricot and pistachio balls and marzipan-stuffed dates, and some Turkish Jews prepare a dessert called trigo koço, in which boiled wheat kernels are sweetened with sugar and mixed with ground walnuts and cinnamon. Heralding the prospect of sunnier days ahead, Tu B’Shevat is an extraordinary birthday party for trees that comes bearing food, drink and song – a delicious mixture.</p>
<p>JB</p>The Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat (sometimes spelled Tu Bishvat) occurs on the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Shevat, which this year falls on February 10. It marks the beginning of a ‘new year’ or ‘birthday’ for trees, as they emerge from their winter sleep and start another fruit-bearing cycle. Traditionally celebrated by eating lots of fruit and holding large feasts, in ancient times Tu B’Shevat indicated the date by which Jewish farmers needed to calculate the year’s tithes (or offerings) of fruit they should bring to the Temple in Jerusalem. This had to be fourth-year fruit, as the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) forbids Jews to eat the fruit of new trees for three years after they are planted (Leviticus 19.23-25).