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1 1 Banquet Tables to Trophy Displays Here in abundance he may take All that he will; for, built of cake Are all the houses and the doors Of honey cake, while steps and floors Are fine mosaic work, inlaid, And of the best candies made . . . —Hans Sachs, “Das Schlaraffenland” (1530) Written long before corn palaces were built on the Great Plains, Hans Sachs’s description of mythical houses made of cake is a reminder that people have been shaping food into fanciful forms for centuries, both through the imagination of folktales and in literal food-art constructions.1 In order to understand the history of turn-of-the-century corn palaces, crop art, and butter sculptures, it is necessary to first consider the history of food art. Eating may be a biological necessity, but how one does it involves cultural ritual. This chapter recounts the history of using food for sculptural and architectural constructions and then places that tradition within the legend of the land of Cockaigne, a place of plenty defined by its abundance of food. It concludes with an examination of the development of the idea of “trophy,” the visual expression of abundance at the industrial fairs. Banquets and Sugar Art One of the earliest descriptions of banquet food sculpture is in the Satyricon, a first-century CE Roman satire probably written during the reign of Nero.2 The narrator tells of the fantastic constructions that were part of “The Dinner of Trimalchio,” an over-the-top BAN QUET TABL E S T O TROPHY DISPLAYS 2 banquet put on by a nouveau riche ex-slave who was trying to impress his betters. For one of the courses, four dancers removed the cover of a tray to reveal an arrangement that featured a hare equipped with wings to resemble Pegasus, while at each corner, figures of Marsyas appeared to be urinating a sauce onto swimming fish. Another course featured a roasted boar with faux suckling pigs made of pastry arranged about it and live birds hidden inside the carcass. When the boar was cut open, the birds were released, to the surprise and delight of the banquet guests.3 The descriptions were exaggerated for comic effect, yet satire works only if the audience knows the reference; scholars think there was already a well-established tradition of elaborate, allegorical food constructions, and archaeologists confirm that assumption. Scholars have found molds used from ancient Babylon to Roman Britain to shape pastry, breads, and puddings into human and animal forms. Terra-cotta baking pans from the second millennium BCE, such as those found at the Old Babylonian Palace at Mari, depict animals, trees, and nude figures.4 At Silchester, England, an excavation discovered a third-century CE mold representing Emperor Septimius Severus, his wife, and his son, probably made to celebrate a Roman victory over the Caledonians.5 Although such banquet pieces could be made of nearly any food material, sugar emerged as a particularly important ingredient in the late medieval and Renaissance periods, especially because of its sculptural possibilities. In his pioneering book Sweetness and Power, Sidney Mintz points out that cane sugar came to Europe from the Middle East by the eighth century. At first it was a luxury limited to the tables of the powerful and wealthy, but by the late medieval period it appeared in many recipes. Once cooks discovered that mixing sugar with oils and gums could make a paste, sugar also became a prime medium for decorative sculptural forms. Marchpane, or marzipan, a paste made from a mixture of almonds and sugar, was traditionally used in the Middle East and North Africa, and appeared in Europe by the end of the twelfth century. The eleventh-century Egyptian caliph al-Zahir is reported to have held elaborate feasts featuring sugar-paste art, including table-size castles with hundreds of small figures. Sugar sculpture arrived in Europe probably via Venice, a leading sugar center by the thirteenth century. Scholars have documented sugar statues as part of festive banquets for grand-ducal weddings in Italy in the fifteenth century, and the popularity of the form spread throughout Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sculptural molds were often employed to make sugar art, and there are examples of sugar art that duplicate existing bronzes.6 Called trionfi in Italy and “subtleties” or “sotelties” in England, figures of men, women, gods, goddesses, animals, trees, and castles were put before guests at the end of each course or laid...

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