Colorless and transparent, the glass receded in favor of its colorful contents, while the play of light, reflection, and shadow visually mediated, interfered with, and enhanced the diner’s perception of the food. In the late- seventeenth century, mounds of fresh and preserved fruits, shaped jellies, small cakes, molded gingerbread, or colorful sugar sculptures floated above the table on stands like this one. By the eighteenth century, ever more elaborate meals saw salvers and sweetmeat dishes stacked precariously atop one another to create towering displays of abundance. Glass tableware was “filled with all kinds of wet and dry sweetmeats in glass, baskets, or little plates; coloured jellies; creams, &c. biscuits, crisped almonds, and little nicknacks, and bottles of flowers prettily intermixed,” 1 transforming these items into kaleidoscopic, highly scented, edible centerpieces. Reviving the pomp and ritual of Tudor-period dining after the austerity of the Commonwealth, household guides and treatises on proper living elevated the visual components of a meal to equal prominence with the gustatory. A 1674 French treatise on good dining captures the sentiment quickly making its way from the Continent to England, relaying the importance of “the politeness and the propriety of [food’s] service… and the general order of things that contribute essentially to the goodness and to the ornament of the meal where the palate and the eye find their charms equally by an ingenious diversity that satisfies the senses.” 2 The English quickly adopted this idea, espoused in a 1708 poem exhorting the primacy of display for the final course in particular:
‘Tis the Desert [sic] that graces all the Feast… Make your transparent Sweet-meats truly nice, With Indian Sugar and Arabian Spice: And let your various Creams incircl’d be With swelling Fruit just ravish’d from the Tree. 3
1 Hannah Glasse, The Complete Confectioner , London: Printed by J.D. Dewick, and sold by R. Dutton, West and Hughes, 1800: 232. 2 Robert Le Sieur, L’art de bien traiter: Divisé en trois parties. Ouvrage nouveau, curieux, et fort galant, utile à toutes personnes, et conditions. Exactement recherché, & mis en lumiere, par L.S.R. , Lyon: Chez Claude Bachelu, 1693: 2. Translation by author. 3 William King, The Art of Cookery , London: Printed for Bernard Lintott at the Cross-Keys between the two Temple Gates in Fleet-Street, [1708]: 89. Emphasis in original. Winterthur’s salver embodies this approach to presentation. Purely a serving vessel, guests found food on it, but would not eat with it, hold it, or use it during the meal. The salver underscores early modern hosts’ meticulous orchestration of every element to impress and delight. Even if numerous courses of heavy foods left guests unable to take another bite,
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