As refined sugar became increasingly available, hosts and hostesses used it to sweeten everything from carrots to meat and to create extravegant conceits such as marzipan sculptures, sugarwork cups, and three dimensional confectionary scenes designed to awe guests.
Hannah Woolley offers her readers instructions detailing how to make these dazzling sugared sculptures:
To Cast All Kinds of Shapes, What You Please, And to Color Them:
"Take 1/2 pound of refined sugar. Boil it to a candy heigh with as much rosewater as will melt it. Then take molds made of alabaster and lay them in waer one hour before you put in the hot sugar. Then when you have put in your sugar, turn the mold about inm your hand until it be cool. Then take it out of the mold, and color it according to the nature of the fruit you would have it resemble."
From Hannah Woolley, The queen-like closet. London, 1675.
