MERRY GOURMET MINIATURES
1/12^th Scale miniature replica English
Food from the Medieval, Tudor,
Georgian and Victorian times.

Tudor Dining Foods


Tudor Kitchen Foods


Georgian Dining Foods


Georgian Kitchen Foods


Victorian Dining Foods


Victorian Kitchen Foods


Market Baskets
thru  the ages

Copyright © Merry Gourmet Miniatures

The later Georgian dinner table was by 1800 very colourful
with its porcelain hand painted dinner service and mirror
plateaux.  These had become very fashionable by the mid
18th Century. Starting out with elaborate 'parterres' (formal
garden patterns) made of marizpan, coloured sugar or sand
and decorated with white sugar paste figures and moving on
as the century progressed to elaborate tableaux featuring
cottages, temples and landscapes in barley sugar, sugar paste
or wax.   Then moving from sugar paste, early figurines were
made in biscuit (unglazed white) porcelain, before long these
gave way to coloured decorated porcelain  coming from famous
factories, both in England and abroad, including Minton,
Sevres and Meissen.

This type of centrepeice not only reflected light from the
table candles but held small individual sweetmeat dishes in
silver or decorated china for each guest and small bowls of
flowers sometimes fresh, some in wax or sugar paste, these
later evolved into the small ceramic posy bowls which eventually, along with the china figurines, moved from the table to
Victorian mantlepieces and 'What nots' when the table fashion
moved on to larger central flower arrangements for upper class
dining.

Although the elaborate centre decorations were still popular
for grand Royal dinners and State Occasions,  one plateaux
used by the Prince of Wales in 1811 ran the whole length of
the tables set for 200 people and  in 1817 at a banquet again
for the Prince Regent, the famous French Chef Careme created
a "Tableaux en Plateaux" which included the ruins of Antioch,
a Syrian Hermitage, a Turkish Mosque and a Chinese
Hermitage, using a variety of materials to construct these
pieces from lumps of lard to spun sugar.

 

All our miniature food items are hand made with slight variations in colour and texture. All items shown are for dolls house food and miniature food collectors, they are not toys and are not suitable for small children. care has been taken in the production of our replica food but some substances used may be harmful to small children.