Victorian cakes and architecture

Author(s): Donald Bassett

Source: The British Art Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2010/11), pp. 76-81
Published by: British Art Journal
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41615421
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We BRITISH ART Journal Volume XI, No. 2

Victorian cakes and architecture

Donald Bassett

1 Instructions for a Venetian Villa of Pâte d'office and nougat. Mrs Beeton,
Book of Household Management, 6th edn, 1891
fectionary' in the 1891 edition of Mrs Beeton's Book of
The Household fectionary' section in Management
Household Management headedstriking
contains several the 1891pic-'Recipes edition contains for of making Mrs several Beeton's ices striking and Book con- pic- of 2 Bride-cake from Robert Wells, Ornamental Confectionary , 1897
tures of buildings. They turn out to be cakes.
3 Cake made by Gunters and exhibited at the Great Exhibition, 1851. Served
The most impressive is a 'Venetian villa' made of nougat as a model for the Princess Royal's bride-cake, 1858
(nuts, sugar & lemon juice), set upon foundations of sweet
paste, or, as the book calls it 'pâte d'office' (PI 1), reflecting
the wide-spread acknowledgement that in culinary matters
the French tongue lent unsurpassed authority. The villa was tures and buildings called trionfi di tavola were made for the
to have a chocolate-coated railing. A perspective view, foun- courts of the Medici, the Sforza, and other great families. The
dations, elevations and ground plan are provided, along with workshop of Giambologna was particularly busy in the late
instructions on how to make it.1 Ensuing pages reveal draw- 16th century, replicating the artist's bronze figurai sculptures
ings for further architectural cakes as well. A Chinese pagoda in sugar. It seems that sugar buildings were also common.3
(PI 5), a Swiss Chalet and a rustic summer house, all of Probably the most famous of all examples of edible archi-
nougat and sweet paste, jostle with a barley sugar bridge and tecture is to be found in the Brothers Grimm account of the

a couple of swans in Italian biscuit.2 Elsewhere puddings old German legend of Hansel & Gretei, where the lost chil-
heaped high on pedestal dishes approach the architectural; dren find the witch's house made of ginger-bread and
and instructions are provided for the presentation of an ox- hungrily set upon it.4 Grimm's fairy tales were well known in
tongue in the form of a bridge. 19th-century Britain, with English translations dating from at
A link between cakes and architecture can be traced at latest the 1820s. It was not until well into the second half of
least as far back as the Renaissance. Spectacular sugar the century however that British confectionery took-archi-
sculp-

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 Volume XI, No. 2 The BRITISH ART Journal

tectural shape even though an analogy between architecture principal ornament of a cake.'7 Unstoppable, he continued:
and food is to be found in the first edition of Mrs Beeton's If we had to make a cake and put a castle on the top, it would not
Book of Household Management (1861). In her introduction be beyond our capacity to make the cake roughly represent a nat-
she writes of the evolution of architecture 'from plain orhill, with rocks, woods, waterfalls, &c., about it, so that it
ural
rudely carved stones, tumuli or mounds of earth... to beau- should look like a model of a natural object. It might be shaped
tifully-proportioned columns... triumphal arches' and with the a knife first, and then covered with almond paste and sugar-
likes. A similar progress in the history of food is discerned,
work.8
'from a state of eating merely in order to live, to a situation
He perceived risks however. When elaborate architecture
where there are new needs... immeasurably extending the
with naturalistic detailing was involved, care needed to be
bounds of human enjoyments. Everything that is edible, and
taken to avoid incongruities of scale. In his drive for natural-
passes under the hands of the cook, is more or less changed
ism, Wells argued, for instance, that oversized foliage should
and assumes new forms.'5
not be placed too close to the sugar paste building. Study of
By 1897, Robert Wells (who styled himself, 'practical baker,
the illustrations in his book hardly confirms this principle in
confectioner and pastrycook', although he was also the practice, however (PI 2). The Venetian villa of Mrs Beeton is
author of numerous texts on the subject), placed architec- more successful in this respect.
tural designs foremost among the types of decoration for
Such florid developments seem to have belonged to the
cakes in his guide-book, Ornamental Confectionary. He list- very end of the Victorian period. The cakes illustrated in the
ed three categories of ornament that would be suitable: the
first edition of Mrs Beeton are not very architectural at all,
architectural, the floral, and what he called the 'nondescript'.
exceptions being dishes cast in moulds which have the
It rapidly becomes clear that the first two categories were not
appearance of sand-castles. A particularly elaborate rice-cake
necessarily to be kept completely apart, a position that con-
resembles a toy fort with corner towers and a central dome.9
forms with architectural theory itself. In The Seven Lamps of
Savoy moulds of architectural appearance feature in other
Architecture (first published in 1849), John Ruskin drew publications of the period.10
analogies between architecture and nature, and declared that
Descriptions (and occasional illustrations) of cakes in
'All beauty is founded on the laws of natural forms'.6 Details
Victorian fiction reveal little of architectural significance. As
of both Classical and Gothic buildings were recognised as late as 1872, John Tenniel's drawing of the plum cake in the
schématisations of nature.
'Lion and Unicorn' chapter of Through the Looking Glass is a
Noting that the 'best' architecture had always borrowed its
simple round confection.11 Dickens' novels, of earlier date,
ornaments from natural objects, Robert Wells argued that the
again offer little on this subject.
confectioner should do likewise. But schematised leaf and
The 'tower' of Yorkshire cake in Barnaby Rudge alludes to
branch forms were hardly what he had in mind. Rather, he
the arrangement rather than the food-stuff itself - which, in
declared that, 'Not only castles and towers and temples, but
any event (served as it is with roast beef at the Varden house-
rocks, waterfalls, pines, glaciers, snow-capped mountains, vol-
hold's breakfast), is what is more commonly known as
canoes, and scores of other natural objects are suitable for the

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 Volume XI, No. 2 The BRITISH ART Journal

Yorkshire pudding not sugar confectionery. The most inter- altar with various medallions, crowns, portraits, figurines of
esting cake in Dickens is surprisingly (and satirically) at the the royal couple etc. This basic format, with its height, pro-
Pecksniff establishment where young Martin Chuzzlewit isvided the model for further royal nuptial confectionary over
regaled with what is described as a 'highly geological home the ensuing decades.
made cake'. It is sufficiently unusual in the diet of that house- An evolution can be discerned from cakes 'that happened
hold that Tom Pinch's astonishment is great and his to have been baked for weddings, to highly distinctive struc-
consumption of it (and the currant wine) immoderate, to thetures, instantly announcing their association with a wedding',
indignation of Pecksniff and his daughters. The most famous as Simon Charsley puts it.15 Height was acquired in the first
cake in Dickens, Miss Haversham's 'bride-cake', is so reduced instance by means of concentric drums of decreasing size,
by yellowing mould, a net of cobwebs and the ravages of micebaked separately and set directly one on the other, creating a
that Pip initially takes it for an epergne or centre-piece.12 stepped profile. Icing concealed the joins. Lesser royal wed-
Mid-century accounts of 'bride-cakes' of the royal family are dings of the 1870s and '80s saw three-tiered cakes of this
instructive, their level of ornamentation presumably signalling sort.16 In 1893, the cake made for the future King George Y
a peak of lavishness for the time. Queen Victoria's own cake then the Duke of York, on his marriage to Princess May of
(1840) was a fairly unornamented 'great beast of a plum cake' Teck, had four tiers, with flowers on top.17 All the layers were
- three yards across and fourteen inches deep.13 Eighteen cake which was not always so. Frequently, the big bottom tier
years later, her daughter, the Princess Royal (on her marriageor the lesser upper ones were dummies.
to Prince Frederick William of Prussia, 1858) had something Separating the tiers by means of pillars seems to have been
much more stupendous - six or seven feet high, and delayed till the very end of the century These pillars, for
approaching the architectural. It was based on a model from which a broom stick was recommended, rested on a board
Gunter 's of Berkeley Square, 'confectioners to Her Majesty', beneath each cake. This development greatly increased the
that had been exhibited in 1851 at the Great Exhibition (Pi 3). height of cakes and their architectural potential. For those
The Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue to that exhibition said who could not afford grand architectural effects, however,
it was designed by 'a clever Italian artist, M. Conté'; and the fashionable upward momentum was generally achieved
acknowledged that few readers who had not seen the original by placing a vase of real flowers on top of the cake.
cake at the exhibition would have realised from the engraving Robert Wells (1897), with his enthusiasm for naturalistic
what the picture referred to. Indeed it most closely resembled detail, is full of suggestions for the embellishment of tall
a fountain. Impressed, the catalogue urged that the design be cakes: 'Around the edges of the various tiers, why not run
'perpetuated in more enduring material'.14 balustrades, parapets, &c., into recesses and windows, with
The princess's cake seems to have been modified slightly. correct tracery? In these might be placed the maiden at the
Hers, which was pictured in the Illustrated london News , window, and the lover below.'18
had a dome of open work on the top, on which rested a The growing enthusiasm for height was associated with a
crown. Eight columns supported the dome and enclosed an general trend with regard to table settings and the etiquette

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 Volume XI, No. 2 The BRITISH ART Journal

4 Service à la Russe. Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management , new

edn, 1906

5 Chinese Pagoda in nougat. Mrs Beeton, Book of Household Management ,

6th edn, 1892

of the dining-room. Large sculptural centre-pieces

(epergnes), towering vases of flowers, and the tazza or
pedestal dish for presenting food were the rage in the latter
half of the nineteenth century. The 1906 edition of the Book
of Household Management reports that so universal was the
craze for elaborate table decoration that it had emerged as a
distinct profession.19 'Care should be taken to not overload
the table with flowers and ornaments,' the reader is cau-
tioned, though illustrations hardly support the advice.
The 1906 edition of Mrs Beeton writes of two different
approaches to the serving of food. One (which was in gener-
al use from the beginning of the nineteenth century) was
called Service à la Française. It promoted maximum display
of food involving the placement of numerous dishes simulta-
neously on the table for each course. The guests helped
themselves and each other in a manner that no doubt facili-

tated conversation even if guests risked missing out on

dishes at the far end of the table.
This method was favoured by Mrs Beeton in her first edi-
tion for reasons of economics and staffing even though by
that date the other system, Service à la Russe , was well-estab-
lished in British society.20 That was only practical in big and
affluent households and posed headaches for the mistress
and for the guests, so rigorous was the etiquette that it
entailed. It had very little to do with Russia. Like the other sys-
On the subject of materials, Mrs Beeton's Venetian villa was
tem (and so much else to do with cuisine and fashion) it came
from France. The à la Russe method was very formal. An army
to be constructed, as has been said, from nougat upon a
foundation of what she calls pâte d'office or sweet paste. This
of servants was needed since guests were waited on for every-
substance was a mixture of flour, sugar and water: it was not
thing. Even passing the salt to your neighbour was frowned
very interesting to eat. Nor was 'Gum paste' any tastier, being
upon. A batterie of cutlery and crockery was needed. With
the same mixture with the addition of gum tragacanth or
tables divided up by towering floral arrangements and centre-
'gum dragon', a mucilaginous substance from a plant of the
pieces (not food), communication was greatly constrained -
legume family.24 Robert Wells enthused about it in his 1897
this was partly its purpose - but at least guests were assured
book, regretting that in recent years it had fallen into relative
of getting everything and it would be hot (PI 4). 21
disuse. Its virtue was its stiffness. It was used to cement
The point of this move, as with tall and architectural food
together the sweet paste sections of the Venetian villa and
generally was display. Rank and money were best demon-
was excellent for arches and pillars for small rotundas on top
strated by quantity of things such as china and silver, as well
of cakes.25 By contrast, royal icing or 'glace royale' (egg
as by formality of protocol. It also reflected the mounting
whites and icing sugar) required small wires for support
obsession with segregation and differentiation that charac-
when used for that purpose.26 The greenery with which the
terised house planning and all aspects of domestic life. The
lavish display of flowers and non-edible items was alsovilla was to be smothered was to be effected by the addition
of spinach to the sugar. While the villa itself (made as it was
intended to heighten expectation, as Robert Wells reports:
of nougat) would have been pleasant to eat, much of this
'Nothing can give at an entertainment so much of the plea-
elaborate edifice was purely for show.
sure of anticipation as to observe a table sumptuously
Stylistically, architectural cakes copied Victorian architec-
decorated with elegant and appropriate devices, giving splen-
dour to the fête, an appetite to the most delicate, andture itself. Many felt that it too was all for show. The defining
characteristics of Victorian architecture were historicism and
gratification to all.' Even with regard to the food itself he
eclecticism. It was a matter of ornamentation. Ruskin argued
instructs that taste is all very well, asking, But what are all
that it was in the ornament that the distinction between
[the cook's] efforts if the eye is not satisfied?'22
'architecture' and 'engineering' was to be found. Beavers,
Indeed flavour was only one consideration for the chef.
birds and rats all built nests. Men made 'architecture'.
Not all architectural confectionary was intended for con-
Appropriate and uplifting ornamental reference was what
sumption. Some of the vastest and most detailed examples
made the difference.27 But many felt that the ornamentation
were conceived within the context of business promotion.
One such case was the model in sugar of the Industrial Hall,
of typical Victorian buildings was far from meaningful &
appropriate. Ornament was derived from every country of
Glasgow, exhibited by the Bermaline Bakery at the
International Exhibition there, 1901. Constructed from the world and every period but the present, making some
commentators wonder if there was such a thing as 'Victorian'
repeated parts made of sugar cast in moulds, this edifice was
architecture at all. Innovations in iron were dismissed as
enormous. It was presented to the Corporation of Glasgow
engineering.
and resided for a time in the newly built art galleries there.23

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The BRITISH ART Journal Volume XI, No. 2

6 Railway Station, Dunedin, New Zealand, 1904-7. Sir George Troup

In line with this, the sweet-paste architectural cakes in the most platform, which was a green meadow with rocks, pools of
British publication, The Book of Household Management , jam and boats of nutshell, stood a little Cupid, poised on a choco-
1891, not only found their style everywhere but at home, but late swing whose uprights had two real rose-buds for knobs at the
also echoed examples from up to a hundred years earlier. As top.32
well as the Venetian villa, there was the Chinese pagoda (PI 5)
To sum up then. Where Victorian architecture, cakes and
and a Swiss chalet. Sir William Chambers' pagoda at Kew
table settings are all concerned, things were rarely what they
dates from 1761-2; the Swiss Cottage public house in London
seemed. The typical building looked as if it belonged to any
seems to date from cl840, a descendent of the late Georgian
time or place other than the present. Critics dismissed them
taste for the cottage orné. The rustic summer house in as little better than cakes. The cakes themselves resembled
nougat and sweet paste which Beeton also included smacks
buildings and often couldn't be eaten. The urge for display
of 18th-century speculations on the origins of architecture.28
and etiquette led to table-settings where communication was
If edible architecture took its note from actual buildings, the
well-nigh impossible. It was a triumph of the artificial.
latter in the age of decoration looked to some like food. The Modernist reaction was inevitable. One of its earliest
'Ginger-bread' architecture was the usual term of abuse.
and most vocal exponents was the anglophile Austrian, Adolf
George Troup, architect of the Dunedin Railway Station, was
Loos. The England he loved was the England of industrial
dubbed 'Ginger-bread George' (PI 6). 29
progress, the vast railway sheds, the Arts and Crafts
The English liked to blame the French for the worst extrav-
Movement, and good commonsense walking shoes. His most
agances.30 A type of French Rococo revival was especially
famous essay was entitled 'Ornament & Crime' (1908),
popular in design through much of the Victorian period.
wherein, with great rhetoric, he equated ornament in design
Critics inveighed against the influence of 'Three French
and architecture generally with the 'primitive'. For him, 'The
Kings' (Louis Xiy XV & XVI) which was felt in its varying
evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of orna-
forms of decoration throughout the nineteenth century. The
ment from objects of daily use'. At one point, he allowed his
Louis Quinze style which was the most popular at the Great
argument to take a gastronomic course:
Exhibition was denounced as 'the most debased taste in
To me, and to all cultivated people, ornament does not increase
design ever tolerated'.31
the pleasure of life. If I want to eat a piece of gingerbread I will
Perhaps significantly, one of the earliest and most extrava-
choose one that is completely plain and not a piece which repre-
gant excursions into stylistic eclecticism in cakes is to be
sents a baby in the arms of a horserider, a piece which is covered
found in French literature. At the wedding feast of Emma and
over and over with decoration. . . I am not denying myself! To me,
Charles Bovary a tiered cake is brought in
it tastes better this way. The dishes of the past centuries which
. . .that made them all cry out. It started off at the base with a
used decoration to make the peacocks, pheasants and lobsters
square of blue cardboard representing a temple with porticoes
appear more appetising produce the opposite effect on me. I
and colonnades, with stucco statuettes all round it in recesses
look on such culinary display with horror when I think of having
studded with gilt-paper stars; on the second layer was a castle-
to eat these stuffed animal corpses. I eat roast beef.33
keep in Savoy cake, surrounded by tiny fortifications in angelica,
almonds, raisins and quarters of orange; and finally, on the upper-
He could as easily have said, 'I eat rich plum cake'.

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1 Isabella Beeton, The Book of
Household Management. New
ed., London, 1891, ppl072-6.
Mrs Beeton herself died in 1865
aged not quite 29. The
publication of The Book of
Household Management was
continued first by her husband,
and after his death (1877) by
usually anonymous editors.
2 Ibid, pp 1077-9
3 Georgina Masson, 'Food as a fine
art in seventeenth-century
Rome', Apollo , May 1966, pp338-
341; Katharine J Watson, 'Sugar
sculpture for Grand Ducal
weddings from the Giambologna
Workshop', Connoisseur ,
September 1978, pp20-6.
4 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm,
Children's and Household Tales.
Published in German 1812.
5 Isabella Beeton, The Book of
household Management ,1861,
p39
6 John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of
Architecture. 2nd edn,
Orpington, 1880, pl05 (reprint
Dover Books, 1989) (1st edn
1849).
7 Robert Wells, Ornamental
confectionary; a guide for
bakers , confectioners , &
pastrycooks including a variety
of modern recipes, & remarks
on decorative & coloured work
with upwards of 100 original
examples , 2nd edn, London,
1897, p2.
8 Wells, p5.
9 Beeton, 1861, p862, no. 1772.
10 See for instance T Percy Lewis
and AG Bromley, The Book of
Cakes, London, 1903, ppl55-
157.
11 Lewis Carroll, Through the
Looking-Glass , 1872).
12 The term 'wedding cake' was
This content downloaded from 195.70.223.102 on Thu, 26 Oct 2017 23:29:07 UTC
not in general use until the
1870s. See Simon R Charsley,
Wedding Cakes and cultural
History, London, 1992. An early
usage is by Dickens in Cricket
on the Hearth, 1846, pl21: '...
it's my belief that if you was to
pack a wedding-cake up in a tea-
chest, or a turn-up bedstead, or
a pickled salmon keg, or any
unlikely thing, a woman would
be sure to find it out directly.'
Mrs Beeton (1861) uses 'bride-
cake' (p854) but then 'wedding
cake (p858). In her popular
Every-day Cookery and
Housekeeping Book, 1872, she
uses the chapter heading 'Rich
Wedding-cake' (Charsley, p36).
13 Charsley, pp83-4.
14 The Crystal Palace Exhibition.
Illustrated catalogue, London
1851. An Unabridged
republication of The Art Journal
special issue, with a new
introduction by John Gloag. New
York, 1970, p81.
15 Charsley, pl21.
16 See Charsley, pp86-7, on the
weddings of Princess Louise
(1872) and Prince Leopold
(1882).
17 Charsley, p87. It was illustrated
in the Illustrated London News,
10 July 1893. A model was
displayed at the second Annual
Confectioners' and Bakers'
Exhibition, London, September
1894.
18 Wells, p2.
19 Beeton, 1906, pl695.
20 Dinner a la Russe was
introduced into England in the
latter half of the 19th century,
and after a few years' rivalry with 29 Peter Shaw, New Zealand
the dinner à la Française
'almost succeeded in banishing
it.' Beeton, 1906, pl685-
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
21 See Kathryn Hughes, The Short 30 An example of franco-phobia in
life and long times of Mrs
Beeton, London, 2005, pp262-4.
22 Wells, pl.
23 Lewis & Bromley, p263.
24 Gum paste = 2oz gum
tragacanth; lA lb starch powder;
lib flour; XA pint of water; sugar.
Sweet paste (pâte d'office) = 21b
flour; 1 lb pounded sugar; 1 pint
water. Beeton (1891), ppl071-2.
25 Wells, p8. Gum paste is used for
the pillars of small classical
rotundas in his figs 61 and 63.
Lewis and Bromley (p53)
recommended gum paste for
shields and panels, but felt it did
not compare favourably on
aesthetic grounds with pure
piping work.
26 Wells, pl2.
27 See, for example, John Ruskin,
The Seven Lamps of
Architecture, 2nd edn,
Orpington, 1880, p9 (reprint
Dover Books, 1989) (1st edn,
1849).
28 The notion that Classical temple
architecture was a translation
into stone of 'primitive huts'
which had been fashioned from
still living trees dates back as far
as Vitruvius in ancient Rome. It
was resurrected during the Neo-
classical period, notably by the
French cleric, the Abbé Laugier,
the second edition of whose
Essai sur l'architecture (1755)
contained an engraving in which
the 'Genius of Architecture'
points to such a hut. See Allan
Braham, The Architecture of the
French Enlightenment, Berkeley,
1980, p48.
Architecture; from Polynesian
beginnings to 1990, Auckland,
1991, p72.
Volume XI, No. 2 The BRITISH ART Journal
general is to be found in
Elizabeth Gaskell, The Cage at
Cranford, first published 1863.
Miss Pole's cook 'muttered
abóut [the cage] being of a piece
with French things - French
cooks, French plums (nasty
dried-up things), French rolls (as
had no substance in 'em).' See
Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford; The
Cage at Cranford; The
Moorland Cottage, London,
1934, p256.
31 See Ralph N Wornum, 'The
Exhibition as a lesson in taste',
The Crystal Palace Exhibition.
Illustrated catalogue, London
1851 . An Unabridged
republication of The Art Journal
special issue, with a new
introduction by John Gloag. New
York, Dover Publications, 1970,
pp v***-VI***.
32 Gustave Flaubert, Madame
Bovary; a story of provincial
life (first published 1857), trans
Alan Russell. Harmondsworth,
1950, pp41-2.
33 Adolf Loos, 'Ornament and
Crime' (1908), Ornament and
Crime. Essays, ed A and D Opel,
Riverside, Cal, 1998, plOl.
81