The 5.5m (18.04ft) x 1.5m (4.92ft) banquet table consisted of towering sugar sculptures, gold gilded jelly and a galaxy of custard tarts. A quarter of a tonne of sugar was used for the sculptures along with dried sturgeon stomach, 24 carat gold at £26 a gramme, whale vomit and pigs bladder skins.
Bompas said: "To come up with 300 different dishes in any circumstances is tricky. "To come up with 300 Elizabethan dishes, which is a whole culinary world very different to our own, we thought was impossible to start with but a lot of hard work and we are there.
"One of my particular favourites is Ambergris otherwise known as whale vomit. They are also cooked with 24 carat gold ... when you are trying to impress someone like Queen Elizabeth I, you just want to put it over all the dishes, it's bound to win favour."
With news video.
4 comments:
Precious hamburgers?
What do they stick down the whale's throat to make it vomit? ;)
Whale vomit? Sounds like a Chinese delicacy, not a British one.
I thought the British were known for their boring food!
Although I was pretty sure I'd never seen/heard the term "whale vomit" before, the word "ambergris" was kind of familiar-sounding somehow. So I googled it.
Turns out, ambergris (which is vomited up by whales and seems to be the whalish equivalent of a cat's hairball) is apparently found floating on the surface of the ocean and was once commonly used in perfume.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambergris
Post a Comment