Solomon's Temple in Flummery - a Culinary Mobile

A footman at Harewood House struggles with two misbehaving Solomon's Temple flummeries

A number of English cookery books published in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century offer a recipe for making a 'Solomon's Temple in Flummery', a dish that would be very difficult to replicate today, unless you happened to own an original mould from the period. These are extremely rare, so it is unlikely that there will be a major revival of the dish. The earliest recipe was published by the Manchester confectioner Elizabeth Raffald in 1769, though of course the dish required a specialist mould so would have been the invention of a potter rather than a cook. Earlier this year my friend Tony Barton cast me a fake one in silicone rubber for the exhibition I curated on Mrs Raffald, which is currently running at Rienzi at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, which I have discussed in an earlier posting. Despite being cast from rubber, it made a lovely feature on the table and was garnished with small dianthus flowers, candied raspberries and pippin knots or jumballs.

This large salt glazed stoneware mould made in Staffordshire between 1730-50 is the prototype of the Solomon's Temple mould. Mrs Raffald describes 'steps' in her recipe, so this is the kind of mould she almost certainly used. Later creamware Solomon's Temple moulds are somewhat simplified, like that illustrated below. Courtesy Winterthur.

A Wedgewood creamware Solomon's Temple mould from the 1780s. 

Tinned steel versions of Solomon's Temple moulds survived into the early twentieth century

Mrs Raffald's husband John was a gardener and seedsman, who organised horticultural competitions at an inn which the couple ran together in Salford. The evidence points to the fact that he was fond of growing pinks and carnations. This is why I decided to use the pinks as a garnish. His brother grew fruit in a market garden, which he sold from a stall in the market near the Exchange in Manchester. This is why I used candied raspberries to surround the flummery. Mrs Raffald instructs us to use rock candy sweetmeats. Candied fruit or peel is what was usually meant by 'sweetmeats'. The term 'rock candy' indicates that the sweetmeats had a sugar crystal or candy coating. 

A late Victorian confectioner called Robert Wells also included a recipe in his book Ornamental Confectionery (London: 1898). Wells garnishes his Solomon's Temple in Blancmange, as he calls it, 'with jumballs, apple paste and rock candies'. This is why I garnished the Houston fake rubber Solomon's Temple with pippin knots, or jumballs, as well as the rock candy raspberries. Here it is on the table surrounded by beautiful eighteenth century silver and porcelain.

However, this static rubber fake cannot give a true impression of what this eccentric dish really looks like and more importantly how it behaves. Because it is made of flummery, which is a kind of opaque milk jelly, the central obelisk wobbles and cavorts in a most entertaining manner, while the four little cones shake, rattle and roll in a very naughty way. Below is a video of a Solomon's Temple I made a few days ago from real flummery to show you what I mean.  I apologise for the quality of the video, which was made on my mobile phone. Next time I make a Solomon's Temple I will post a better video for you.  

Recipe from W. A. Henderson, The Housekeeper's Instructor. (London: 1805. 12th edition).

In a cookery book supposedly written by the London Tavern cook John Farley, the Solomon's Temple mould is described as having steps. The recipe above by William Henderson is identical to Farley's. However, both are derived from Raffald's original 1769 recipe, which they have misquoted. She says, 'Then fill the top of the Temple to the steps', by which she probably means the base of the structure, that is the part coloured brown with chocolate. Farley and Henderson both say 'red flummery for the steps'. Of course Farley never really wrote The London Art of Cookery, so he probably never made a Solomon's Temple. The typesetter made a mistake, which was copied by Henderson. Oh! The never-ending joys of cookery bookery!

A real Solomon's Temple in flummery this time. The base is flavoured with chocolate dissolved in coffee; the central obelisk  is coloured with cochineal. Only the little cones are the original white flummery colour. This was made using a reproduction Solomon's Temple mould I commissioned from genius ceramic artist Morgen Hall. 

Some Solomon's Temple Moulds have miniature melons and cherries (jewel fruits) which were cast on the chocolate or coffee base in different colours, as in this example moulded from a 1790s creamware mould in my collection

Solomon's Temple moulds were made in other forms. A design with a large central cupola and four smaller surrounding domes became known as a Kosiki mould in the later nineteenth century. Here is a Solomon's Temple in flummery made from one of these.

If you want to find out more about period jellies and flummeries, visit this page on my website.

See if you can spot our fake Solomon's Temple on the table displayed in the Mrs Raffald exhibition in Houston. Why not go to Rienzi at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and see it for yourself. Though I must warn you, it does not wobble like a real one.

This blog is created by Historic Food. Go to the Historic Food Website.

Go to Morgen Hall's Website.

Mrs Raffald puts on her cowboy boots and goes to Texas

Eighteenth Century table setting at Rienzi, MFAH, Houston Texas

I have just spent a week installing an eighteenth century table setting at Rienzi House Museum in Houston Texas. The table, part of an exhibition called English Taste: The Art of Dining in the Eighteenth Century was designed to act as a showcase for an assemblage of important English rococo silver by Paul de Lamarie, Paul Crespin, William Cripps, and Robert Tyrill. Elements of the celebrated Meissen Möllendorff Service, said to be designed by Frederick the Great, also appear on the table. The exhibition runs from September 17th 2011 to January 29th 2012.

The layout shows the second course of a typical high status English meal of the second half of the eighteenth century. It is based on a table diagram published by the Manchester confectioner Mrs Elizabeth Raffald in The Experienced English Housekeeper (Manchester: 1769). Although savoury foods dominate the setting, including a larded hare complete with head and ears, there are also a number of Raffald's novelty flummeries and jellies, such as her fishpond and Solomon's Temple.

Credit must go to my dear friend Tony Barton of Bendipeeze Ltd and his Bendy assistants for making much of the remarkable artificial food, including that crazy larded hare, the original of which was roasted on a spit in front of my kitchen fire. A rare image of the closely guarded secret method of making fake peas used on the Bendipeeze production line can be seen at the end of this posting.

It is a great pity that an exhibition of this kind has never been set up in Manchester, England, where Raffald worked. So hip-hurrah to Christine Gervais at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston for having the vision to invite me to do this. 

More can be found out about the exhibition at the MFAH website.

SEE A VIDEO OF THE TABLE SETTING

Mrs Raffald's Cribbage Cards in Flummery - rather impractical blancmange playing cards

Mrs Raffald's fishpond - gilded blancmange fish swimming in Lisbon wine

Frantic preparations at the Bendipeeze depot. The Bendies have
heard a rumour that Mrs Rafffald herself is about to visit the factory.

This blog is created by Historic Food. Go to the Historic Food Website.

More Edible Artistry

The images on this page are of food produced by attendees on my two most recent courses, with a little help from me! I do try to convey to my students that standards of food and presentation in the past were frequently very high and that one of the best ways to understand this is to work with original equipment in order to replicate dishes that convey the staggering beauty of much of our ancestors' food. Appearance was everything! 

But taste was pretty important too - look at this delicious nineteenth century pie, garnished with truffles and crayfish in the image above - and marbled with truffles, pigeon, capon breast and turkey when cut through. We had it for our lunch on my moulded foods course last Sunday - it tasted as good as it looked. I made eight pies like this last week - all different - for a BBC drama production set in the early nineteenth century. They were all spiked with silver hatelet skewers and ornamented like the one above. You might get a glimpse of them when the programme goes out at Christmas, but more on that later on.

A jelly in the form of a Prince of Wales Feathers made with a rosewater flavoured blancmange above and a raspberry jelly below.

My current obsession - Mrs Elizabeth Raffald's 'Solomon's Temple in Flummery' made in a 1790s Staffordshire mould. The first one we turned out on the course failed because I was not concentrating when I turned it out. But we made another the next day - the one depicted above - and that came out perfectly, looking like some beautiful alien being from another planet with its garniture of fresh flowers.

We used these tiny profiteroles filled with apricot preserve to make a delicious profiterole pudding, a moulded custard very lightly set with gelatine and flavoured with kirsch and muscatel raisins poached in syrup. The recipe we used was from Jules Gouffés The Royal Cookery Book (London: 1871). Rather like a cold luxury bread and butter pudding, we made it in a tall and quite spectacular stepped mould. There are over fifty profiteroles embedded in the soft rich custard. Because they give strength to what would be a weak towering structure if they were not present, the profiteroles allow the jelled cream to be a very light one, giving it a nice soft mouth feel.   

Photo by Ran Akaike

The finished profiterole pudding was delicious. It was served at dinner with two other moulded dishes made on the course; an iced cabinet pudding and a raspberry jelly surmounted by a blancmange portrait of Queen Victoria. Here they all are after a marathon unmoulding session in my kitchen. The iced cabinet pudding is in the centre. It is embellished with maidenhair fern fronds and surrounded by garnish ices made of muscadine water ice, a delicious lemon sorbet flavoured with elderflowers.

Photo by Vicky Shearman

On my moulded food course last weekend, one of the students brought along a lovely wooden sugar mould for pressing out  a small grapevine design in gum paste she had recently bought on ebay. But she was unsure how to use it. Just for fun I taught her to use it to construct a Wedgewood style Jasperware plate entirely out of sugar. With the use of a few other moulds belonging to me, we made the components to make it into an impressive edible taza.

Photo by Ran Akaike

Some of my students collect antique moulds and want to learn how to use them. Though few would be able to make this Alexandra Cross jelly. Although surviving outer moulds in this design are not uncommon, the internal liner required to make one with the Danish Flag running through it is extremely rare. So it was a great experience for them to make this crazy Victorian set piece dish, which they had all heard of, but never seen. For those of you who might like to have a go at making food of this quality, I will be publishing my 2014 course schedule on my website and on this blog in September.

If you found this interesting, you might like to have a look at an earlier posting with lots more beautiful food which I have made. 

Spanish Paps and Steeple Creams

Or The Wobbliest Jelly In The Universe

A 1655 piramidis cream garnished with pine nuts ('Pine Apple blown')

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries one of the most widely used food moulds was simply a conical wine glass. Early modern period English dishes like Spanish Paps, Pirimidis Creams and Steeple Creams were all moulded in ‘an old fashion drinking-Glasse’. When released from their glasses each little cream would pop out in the form of a miniature steeple, thus one of the popular names for this type of dish. Spanish Paps, so called because they were reminiscent of little breasts, were thickened with ground rice, while Pirimidis and Steeple Creams were a type of opaque white jelly rendered solid with various types of collagen. Hartshorn, isinglass, calves foot jelly, gum tragacanth, gum Arabic and even ivory shavings were all used to set them. One of the earliest printed recipes for this type of sweet was published in W.M.’s The Queen’s Closet Opened (London: 1655). As you can see it is a fairly complicated procedure.

To make Piramidis Cream

Take a quart of water, and six ounces of harts horn, and put it into a Bottle with Gum-dragon, and Gum-arabick, of each as much as a small Nut, put all this into the Bottle, which must be so big as will hold a pint more; for if it be full it will break; stop it very Close with a Cork, and tye a Cloth about it, put the Bottle into a pot of beef when it is boyling, and let it boyle three hours, then take as much Cream as there is Jelly, and halfe a pound of Almonds well beaten with Rose-water, so that you cannot discern what they be, mingle the Cream and the Almonds together, then strain it, and do so two or three times to get all you can out of the Almonds, then put jelly when it is cold into a silver Bason, and the Cream to it; sweeten it as you like, put in two or three grains of Musk and Amber-greece, set it over the fire, stirring it continually and skimming it, till it be seething hot, but let it not boyle, then put it into an old fashion drinking-Glasse, and let it stand till it is cold, and when you will use it, hold your Glass in a warm hand, and loosen it with a Knife, and whelm it into a Dish, and have in readinesse Pine Apple blown, and stick it all over, and serve it in with Cream or without as you please.

The kind of wine glass used to make these conical creams and opaque jellies

Some recipes published in the second half of the eighteenth century, like that of Elizabeth Raffald's 1769 receipt for Steeple Creams with Wine Sours, instruct us to turn the little set creams out of the conical glasses made specifically for jellies. Round about this time the Staffordshire potteries started producing specialist ceramic moulds in either salt glazed stoneware or creamware, which enabled the cook to turn out these creams in more sophisticated shapes than was possible with a wine or jelly glass. It was discovered that a conical jelly, though stable at the base possessed the ability to wobble in a most suggestive and amusing way. This was particularly the case if the mould was made in stepped form.

A medley of late eighteenth century creamware pyramid and steeple moulds by Wedgewood. The large one  in the middle is an early version of the kind of stepped steeple mould that was destined to become one of most popular of all English jelly moulds

Spode and Minton copied Wedgewood's idea and were still marketing this particular steeple mould in the early twentieth century

In my long career I have come across a large number of these moulds, both in the antique trade and in collections. The reason for their enduring popularity is easy to understand. They must have provided a great deal of hilarious amusement to generations of diners. Watch this brief video and you will immediately appreciate what I mean by this. The second sequence in the video shows an attempt to travel with a steeple cream on my lap as a car passenger. As you can see the journey rapidly ends in disaster as the jelly self-destructs as the car goes over over a speed bump. The third sequence shows the sensual contortions of a Solomon's Temple in Flummery, another wobbly creature which I have already dealt with in a previous post.

Not all occasions were suitable for cavorting wobbly jellies - sometimes something more elegant was required. In the 1780s Wedgewood started producing two part pyramid, obelisk and steeple moulds which had an inner core decorated with flowers and other ornamentation. Their outer moulds were filled with clear calves foot jelly, so that the decorations could be seen through a thin film of transparent jelly.

Some steeple jellies were stiffened with a ceramic core decorated with flowers. Very beautiful, but  rather stiff and not half as amusing

These lovely Wedgewood ceramic cores have been separated from their outer moulds 

Stiffness and wobbliness combined. When unmoulded this core jelly has a very wobbly top. If you have watched the video above, you will understand the mirth that must have greeted it when it was placed on the table

A 1790s Neale and Co. obelisk mould and decorated core in my collection. The obelisk has been coated with a thin layer of transparent jelly

As a postscript to all this, a few years ago I was visited by Patrick Furlong, the producer of Heston Blumenthal's first Feast television series made for Channel 4. This was about a month before they started filming. Heston had suggested to him that I came on board the series as an historical advisor. I gave Patrick lunch and for his pudding served him a steeple cream similar to the one in the video above. He filmed the very amusing way that it cavorted and wobbled on his camera and showed it to Heston, who was knocked out by it. As a result Heston and his team made a giant conical jelly in a large stainless steel mould in one of the programmes. It swung dangerously from side to side when it was brought to his guests' table, but it did not have anywhere near the remarkable sensitivity to movement of the original jelly that inspired it. You can see Heston's jelly perform on YouTube on the link below. Sorry Heston - my jelly is wobblier than your jelly!!

Heston Blumenthal's modern wobbly absinthe jelly

Macedoine and Other Eccentric Jellies

A Jelly made using a macedoine mould in my collection

Perhaps the most singular culinary expression of the advance of the Industrial Revolution in Victorian Britain was the extraordinary popularity of mass-produced copper jelly moulds. By the middle of the nineteenth century the fashion for this kind of kitchen kit had accelerated into a gastronomic craze. This was the result of the convergence of two emerging phenomena - the availability of cheap factory made gelatine and the increasing use of powerful pneumatic presses to stamp out copper into ever more intricate shapes. After a hundred years of being an unloved, even despised children's party food, a jelly revival has once again recently hit the fashionable food sector. This was started about twenty years ago by my dear genius friend Peter Brears and to a lesser extent by myself, when both of us started running country house events where we recreated jellies and other moulded foods for the public using original period moulds. I also started running courses on the subject in the early 1990s. More recently, Sam Bompas and Harry Parr, both attendees of my courses who have always kindly acknowledged the debt they owe to Peter and myself, have made a career for themselves out of the genre. However, despite modern computer 3D printing technology, the moulds available to the contemporary aspiring jelly maker just cannot compete with those of the Victorian kitchen. Just look at these!

A few nineteenth manufacturers designed and produced highly specialised multi-part moulds for creating very unusual jellies with mysterious internal components, such as spiral columns and pyramids of fruit. Some of these striking British designs were even admired from afar by important chefs on the other side of the English Channel. In Cosmopolitan Cookery (London: 1870), the great Second Empire French chef Felix Urbain Dubois illustrated two of these extraordinary English inventions together with recipes he designed for them. He probably encountered them in London when he was exiled there during the Franco-Prussian War. One he illustrated was the macedoine mould, a fancy copper mould with a dome shaped internal liner, both clipped together with three metal pins. Here is Dubois's illustration -

This mould was utilised by pouring a transparent jelly into the gap between the mould and the liner. Once the jelly had set, warm water was poured into the liner, which enabled it to be removed. Small pieces of fruit (the 'macedoine') and more jelly could then be used to fill up the resulting cavity. The finished dish was a striking hollow jelly containing a mosaic of coloured fruit, which distorted into an abstract pattern because of the effects of refraction caused by the flutings on the mould. I am fortunate enough to own a complete macedoine mould and used it to make the jelly at the top of this posting. However, my example is a different design from that which Dubois illustrates, though in principle it functions in exactly the same way. Although macedoine moulds are extremely rare - I have only ever seen two others, which lacked their liners. My example is the only one I have ever encountered which is complete. Here are some photographs.

Macedoine Jelly from above

Another Macedoine Jelly made with this mould

Cross section through the macedoine jelly above

The chained pins ensure that the inner liner is kept stable and at an equal distance from the outer mould.

Macedoine jellies were also be made in plain moulds. The striking example above is from Jules Gouffé, The Royal Book of Pastry and Confectionery (London: 1874). A large plain charlotte mould would have been used to make this. It has been garnished with jelly croutons to create the crest around the top and is surmounted by a gum paste or nougat tazza filled with real or ice cream strawberries. Although a very weak jelly with a light 'mouth feel' was used to make a macedoine, the fruit inside acted as a very strong armature which could support a decorative structure like the tazza above.

Even rarer than the macedoine mould illustrated by Dubois is this remarkable and lovely version, which reminds me of a Maya pyramid or ziggurat. It has a liner very similar to the other one and makes the most wonderful jelly filled with a pyramid of fruit. I have never ever seen another in this design.

A Jelly containing a pyranid of apricots made in the stepped macedoine mould above

The second English mould illustrated by Dubois in Cosmopolitan Cookery (1870) is a version of a very popular novelty mould first marketed by Temple and Reynolds of Belgravia in 1850. The location of their shop gave the name to this particular dish, the most extraordinary of all Victorian novelty jellies, the Belgrave. The outer copper moulds are quite common, but a complete set with a full compliment of pewter spiral liners is a rare find. Two versions were made, the round and the oval, the latter being very scarce now, especially with liners. The liners were placed into a jelly mould which was filled with clear jelly. When the jelly had set, the liners were literally 'screwed' out of the jelly by pouring hot water into them. This resulted in a number of spiral cavities which could then be filled with a coloured jelly or blancmange.

Urbain Dubois's 1870 illustrations of the Belgrave Mould

An illustration and instructions for making a Belgrave Jelly from a very late edition of Eliza Acton, Modern Cookery (London: 1905) 

My very rare oval Belgrave mould with pewter liners

Oval Belgrave Jelly made with the mould above

The more orthodox round Belgrave Jelly

The two most common jelly moulds which included liners to create striking internal features were the Alexandra Cross and Brunswick Star. These were designed to celebrate the wedding of Queen Victoria's eldest son Edward Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The Alexandra Cross jelly had the Danish Flag running all the way through it, while the Brunswick Star had a white Garter Star running through it, both rather like a stick of rock. Here is an advertisement from the 1890s published by the cookery teacher and mould retailer Mrs Agnes Marshall. Surviving liners are almost unknown.

To make both, coloured jellies were poured into the mould in a particular order and then the liners were inserted. The rest of the jelly was poured in around the liner, which was removed by pouring hot water into it. The cavity was then filled with white blancmange.

A finished Alexandra Cross jelly

A finished Brunswick Star jelly

Slices of Brunswick Star jelly

Jelly extravaganza in Harewood House. There is an oval Belgrave jelly in the centre of the table

About three years ago I manned the wonderful period kitchen at Harewood House and demonstrated period jelly making to the general public. As the jellies came from the moulds, I dressed the dining room with a typical Victorian entremet course using Princess Mary's priceless Venetian glass dessert service. Last week I was at Harewood again, this time dressing the kitchen and gallery (the most wonderful room in England) with Regency period food for a major forthcoming BBC drama production, which I will tell you more about after it has been transmitted at Christmas. I made a large number of jellies and blancmanges for this production using Staffordshire ceramic moulds made in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. To whet your appetite, here are a few photos. As you can see, the Victorians were not the only ones to have beautiful moulded foods - the late Georgians could give them (and Bompas and Parr) a real run for their money.

Man in the Moon and Star flummeries made in early nineteenth century Staffordshire moulds

A flummery hedgehog made in an early nineteenth century ceramic mould

Pineapple flummery made in a 1790s Wedgewood mould

A footman struggles with two flummery Solomon's Temples, one of my Georgian signature dishes

There is a little more on these remarkable jellies here