The Giddy Delights of Trompe L’Oeil Candy

At the wedding banquet of King Henry IV and Joan of Navarre in 1403, showstopping sugar sculptures were carted out after each of the six courses. Some were shaped like animals; others were recreations of architectural marvels. All of them were as finely chiseled as any likeness carved from stone. Called sotelte (or “subtleties”) in England, culinary masterworks like these were traditionally concocted from a paste of sugar, ground nuts, oils and vegetable gums and gilded or painted with pigments. In Europe, the extravagant sweets first emerged in the late medieval period but, because…