No. 3638

Wheelbarrow Filled with Flowers on a Socle

Brouette Garnie de Fleurs sur Socle

Have ready an oval socle made of brown nougat, the same as shown in Fig. 756; decorate it with agricultural implements and leaves of pulled sugar made by hand; the rope around the base of the socle is made with two strings twisted quickly and fastened to the border and around the under base; the top tray is made of green pistachio nougat (No. 3622). On top of the entire socle arrange a wheelbarrow made in four pieces of pink or any other color of pulled sugar, rolled out to three sixteenths of an inch in thickness, then cut out with patterns made beforehand and after the drawing; the shafts and rests are made of wire covered with pulled sugar and bent to the desired shape. The wheel is of pulled sugar; first make a ring and place a round in the center; join the two together by small sticks of pulled sugar; between the shafts and the wheel pass a wire; fasten it on at each side with cooked sugar. The wheelbarrow is upheld and fastened with sugar cooked to "crack;" the flowers that fill the barrow and the border on top are made of pulled sugar to which a little chocolate has been added.

This piece of confectionery may be made of gum paste (No. 3624), either white or any light color; the wheelbarrow can be filled, as well as the one above, with glazed fruits or fancy ices, such as potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc., and the bottom of the socle garnished around with fruits, or fruits in cases glazed with caramel, or with small light waffles dressed in a circle, one overlapping the other.

← No. 3637 Vases of Pulled and Drawn Sugar Large Show Pieces No. 3639 Windmill →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly plan rather than a formula: the sugar work itself lives in the numbered recipes it cross-references, and what is given here is architecture. Read it as a set of joinery instructions for hot sugar.

The hinge: sugar at "crack"The joints the text specifies are made with sugar boiled to the crack stage, somewhere around 290-310F on a modern thermometer, used as glue. Cooler than that and the pieces sag apart; hotter and it colors. Keep a pan of it warm over a low flame while you assemble, and dip the edge of each piece rather than pouring.
Pulled sugar needs heat and dry airPulled (satin) sugar only stays workable while it is kept warm, roughly in the 120-140F range, though it is judged by feel rather than by thermometer; in a period kitchen that meant working beside a warm stove or lamp, in a modern one a heat lamp or warming box. Humidity is the real enemy: on a damp day the finished piece can go tacky and slump, so work in the driest room you have and store the finished showpiece with a desiccant under a cover.
SocleA socle is simply the pedestal or base the whole piece stands on. Here it is a solid oval of brown nougat -- in this book nougat means caramelized sugar bound with chopped nuts, pressed into a mold or sheet, not the soft aerated confection sold under that name today.
Pistachio nougat and colorThe green of the top tray may owe something to the nuts, but nougat of this kind was commonly tinted, so a little green coloring if your pistachios are pale is no betrayal of the intent. Note that the flowers get a little chocolate added, presumably for tone rather than flavor -- it dulls the pink into something closer to a real petal.
Three sixteenths of an inchThat is about 5 mm, and it is thicker than it sounds. Thinner panels will crack when you lift them off the pattern; roll on a lightly oiled marble slab and cut the pieces warm, using paper or card templates made in advance as the text says.
Wire is structure, not foodThe shafts, rests and axle are wire under a sugar skin. Use stainless steel or florist's wire that has not been coated, keep it out of anything anyone will eat, and tell whoever serves the piece which parts are armature.
Gum paste as the easier routeThe alternative given, gum paste, is far more forgiving: it is rolled and cut like pastry, dries hard overnight, and does not care about humidity while you work. Almost every element here can be built from it, and for a first attempt it is the sensible choice.
Filling and yieldThe barrow is a container. Glazed fruits or small molded ices shaped as potatoes, tomatoes and mushrooms were the period filling, and the ices must go in at the last moment. As a centerpiece this serves a table of any size -- it is display first, dessert second.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, included in The Epicurean (1894) a long section of grosses pièces like this one: windmills, vases, baskets and barrows built from cooked sugar and nougat and set on molded pedestals. The form descends from the pièces montées of early nineteenth-century French practice, most associated with Antonin Carême, who treated confectionery as a branch of architecture and published plans for sugar temples and ruins. By Ranhofer's day these pieces were the visible proof of a restaurant's pastry department, and the text is careful to offer glazed fruits and ices as fillings. The trompe-l'oeil ices shaped as potatoes and mushrooms belong to the same taste for edible illusion that ran through Gilded Age banqueting, and the agricultural implements decorating the socle carry that theme down to the base.