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Not Just the Tudors

Tudor Banquets

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.83K Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Tudors loved a good banquet, to show off their wealth and social status. Guests were plied with the most superb food, made from the most expensive ingredients and displayed in the most outrageous way. Professor Suzannah Lipscomb meets Brigitte Webster to find out more about what the Tudors served at their banquets, how these feasts influenced the habits of the time, and how the availability of sugar - which was thought of as a medicine - transformed their lives (and their dental health!)

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Transcript

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0:00.0

The Tudors loved a good banquet and how extravagant they were. Here the host had the opportunity

0:11.0

to show up her wealth and status by serving her guests the most superb food made from

0:17.5

the most expensive ingredients and displayed in the most beautiful and sometimes the most

0:22.6

outrageous of ways. Here's how George Cavendish, one of Cardinal Thomas Walsy's servants,

0:28.6

described one such banquet prepared for a visiting French Embassy.

0:58.6

I'm Susanne Lipscomb and in this edition of Not Just The Tudors I'm finding out what

1:05.2

the Tudors served at their banquets, how these feasts influence the habits and even the

1:09.9

architecture of the time and how the availability of sugar which was thought of as a medicine

1:15.8

transformed the lives and the dental health of the Tudors.

1:28.6

And I am delighted to say that today I am joined by Brigita Webster because I had the

1:34.3

fortune of meeting Brigita on a tour some years ago that I was leading on Henry VIII and

1:39.2

I discovered that she knows an awful lot more about food in Tudors times than I do.

1:44.4

So to give you an idea, in my research from my new book I wanted to know something about

1:49.5

something called Pink Sugar that features in the account books during Catherine Ragan's

1:54.6

childhood and I asked Brigita if she'd heard of it and sometime later she got back in

1:58.4

touch. She had found and recreated two original recipes for Pink Sugar, one of which involved

2:05.8

rubbing rose petals with sugar, then leaving that in the sun for 30 days and stirring it

2:10.9

daily, 30 days work and she sent me the results of the two methods for me to taste. Now that

2:17.7

my friends is both scholarly and culinary research at its finest.

2:22.4

Brigita and her husband Tom run Tudor and 17th century experience at their amazing house

2:28.0

Old Hall in Norfolk where you can fully immerse yourself in Tudor and Stuart history, living,

2:33.5

dressing, eating, drinking, lighter Tudor. And in fact I have to say that Brigita is the

...

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