H.F.F. 6.9: Centerpiece

The Challenge: Centerpiece. Make a dish that's meant to impress or be the focal point of a meal. Time to experiment with plating and presentation!

The Recipe: "How To Dish Up Cherries" from The Royal English and Foreign Confectioner by Francatelli (with recourse to the preceding "Remarks on the Manner and Method for Dishing up Fruits.")

 

The Date/Year and Region: 1862, London

How Did You Make It: 

 

Step 1, procure a dessert dish (necessarily quite deep) and 2 pounds of cherries (the minimum to make a good pyramid).

 

Step 2: Fill the hollow of the bowl with rolled paper.

Dish with paper tampion.

Step 3: Place cut-to-fit pasteboard over the paper filler.

 

Never doing this with a scalloped dish again.

Step 4: Cover with moss.

Getting the moss to a uniform height actually ends up being really important.

 

Step 5: Lay leaves over the moss.

I ran out, so the leaves mostly just went around the edges.

Step 6: Make a conical heap of cherries, building outward from the center. [Alternatively, make a square or triangle of cherries, fill in the interior, and build a pyramid of smaller successive layers.]

 

Time to Complete: One eternity, or between 30-60 minutes.

Total Cost: $8 for cherries. The moss came out of the garden budget, and the leaves from the garden itself.

How Successful Was It?: Very frustrating, but educational. The tower fell at least 8 times that I counted; it was like playing Jenga with round pieces. I initially tried to make a 3-sided pyramid, then a 4-sided one, but couldn't get the sides even and secure. This was definitely my own fault--I cut the central piece of moss a little taller than the sides, creating an almost imperceptible slope, while the small gaps around the scallops  (filled in only with leaves, no moss) created additional pitfalls which made it hard to keep the base stabilized. I eventually gave up on getting the neat organized tower that was intended, and just tried to get the whole two pounds worth of fruit staying in place.

This also absolved my lingering guilt that stacking cherries isn't really a "recipe"--if I'd made glacé cherries to practice with, more than half of them would have been ruined.

For all that, I think this was a good learning project, with useful ideas for future plating. With a more regular-shaped bowl, and more evenly cut moss, I think this could make a lovely centerpiece. I also think I picked the worst fruit to start: larger items like peaches would have fewer pieces to stack, while smaller berries are supposed to just be "heaped" in position. Cherries and large strawberries are basically the worst choices here, since they are supposed to be neatly positioned, but also have the most components.

How Accurate Is It?: All the materials I used are period. I ended up pulling off the stems of the cherries instead of cutting them to 1" or less (as instructed) because the illustration doesn't show any stems at all, and I didn't fancy trying to tuck the stems in as well. I also didn't have access to vine leaves, and so substituted mint as the only nontoxic leaf readily available in my garden (with some parsnip leaves stuck under the moss and mint to cover small gaps where the cardboard was visible).