For a grand feast, you naturally want some of the dishes to be splendid and memorable.  This can be just for the High Table, and in my book there are bonus points if you can do it for every table.

Colour is a great way of doing that, especially anything heraldic or involving fabulous beasts.

The classic medieval method was “endoring”, baking on a mixture of eggyolk and flour and saffron.  I don’t believe for a minute that they used real saffron for that; I expect they used tumeric (American: turmeric) which they had. (Boke of Marchauntes (late 1400s) refers to “A yelowe spice from Inde, named for saffron but of lesser cost, good for colourynge”; Gerard’s Herbal mentions it in 1597 and the 1633 edition specifically calls it “indian saffron”.)

In the old days (late 80s) you could buy big cheap packets of bright yellow tatrazine food colouring.  Used liberally with eggyolk and some flour, it made a luminous gold on sculpted bread dough or roast poultry.  I think it’s still barely available, but we’re less keen on artificial food colouring these days.

Tumeric does work just fine, so that’s what I use now.

To really make a mark, putting gold leaf on food can be very impressive. Don’t use loose gold leaf, as it will float off around the room.  How do I know?  We did goldleafed smoked trout for the first Principality Investiture in Lochac, and that was the result. Master John of the Hills will testify.

What you want is food-grade gold transfer sheets (80x80mm squares) which works out to $4-5 a sheet. Hunt around online as you may pick it up a bit cheaper.

That works pretty well to put (eg) a dab of gold leaf on top of gingerbread biscuits, but gets very expensive if you want to do large areas of gold for every table.

Personally, I won’t charge the event for such an indulgence, its own penalty for such extravagance.  I love it.