Csapó Katalin - Füreder Balázs - Sári Zsolt: Reneszánsz ételek – Ételek reneszánsza Időszaki kiállítás 2008. március–május (Budapest, 2008)

real distinction of this course was that 'tout ce service fut doré'- all the food was apparently gilded, or at least given the appearance of being golden. [...] Following a fifth course which included tarts, darioles (small moulded dishes, sweet in this case) and fried oranges, another entremet* came forth. In terms of sheer spectacle this must have eclipsed everything that went before. Twenty-four men were needed to bring it into the hall, an indication as to both its size and weight. It was a mountain containing two fountains, one of which spouted rosewater, the other 'eau de muscade'. [...] The sixth course consisted of dessert, red hippocras served with certain kinds of wafer called 'oublies'and 'roles', after which came a final entremet. [...J This, we are told, was the most admired of all the entremets, a/though what followed in the way of food as a finale must have been equally extraordinary. It involved a heraldic menagerie sculpted in sugar: lions, stags, monkeys and various other birds and beasts, each ho/ding in paw or beak the arms of the Hungarian king. (Roy Strong: Feast: A History of Grand Eating, pp. 73-74.) *An entremet originally meant the pause between courses, but by that time it had come to mean the spectacle performed during those pauses. In modern French it means sweet pastry after the roasts, a closing dish, that is, a dessert. Judging by the menu and the programme it can be said that the French host went to great lengths to entertain his guests. To the Hungarians soup must have been a novelty. Soups did not appear on the dinner table of the Hungarian higher nobility until the middle and end of the seventeenth century. (Unlike in France where soups - mostly thick vegetable broths - were being made as early as in the fourteenth century.) 54. Illustration from the Histoire de Renaud de Montauban, Brussels, 1468-1470