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diff --git a/12293-h/12293-h.htm b/12293-h/12293-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f11bd40 --- /dev/null +++ b/12293-h/12293-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6041 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine, by William Carew Hazlitt</title> +<style type="text/css"> + + <!-- + body {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + p {text-align: justify;} + blockquote {text-align: justify;} + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center;} + pre {font-size: 0.7em;} + + hr {text-align: center; width: 50%;} + html>body hr {margin-right: 25%; margin-left: 25%; width: 50%;} + hr.full {width: 100%;} + html>body hr.full {margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 0%; width: 100%;} + hr.short {text-align: center; width: 20%;} + html>body hr.short {margin-right: 40%; margin-left: 40%; width: 20%;} + + .note {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + + span.pagenum + {position: absolute; left: 1%; right: 91%; font-size: 8pt;} + + .poem + {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem p {margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem p.i2 {margin-left: 1em;} + .poem p.i4 {margin-left: 2em;} + .poem p.i6 {margin-left: 3em;} + .poem p.i8 {margin-left: 4em;} + .poem p.i10 {margin-left: 5em;} + + .figure, .figcenter, .figright + {padding: 1em; margin: 0; text-align: center; font-size: 0.8em;} + .figure img, .figcenter img, .figright img + {border: none;} + .figure p, .figcenter p, .figright p + {margin: 0; text-indent: 1em;} + .figcenter {margin: auto;} + .figright {float: right;} + + .footnote {font-size: 0.9em; margin-right: 10%; margin-left: 10%;} + + .side { float:right; + font-size: 75%; + width: 25%; + padding-left:10px; + border-left: dashed thin; + margin-left: 10px; + text-align: left; + text-indent: 0; + font-weight: bold; + font-style: italic;} + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + pre {font-size: 9pt;} + --> + +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12293 ***</div> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine, by +William Carew Hazlitt</h1> +<br /> +<br /> +<center><b>E-text prepared by David Starner, Alicia Williams,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</b></center> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr class="full" size="5" /> +<br /> +<br /> +<h2>The Book-Lover's Library</h2> + +<h3>Edited by</h3> + +<h3>Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A.</h3> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<h1>OLD COOKERY BOOKS</h1> + +<h2>AND</h2> + +<h1>ANCIENT CUISINE</h1> + +<br /> + + +<h2>BY</h2> + +<h1>W. CAREW HAZLITT</h1> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<h3>POPULAR EDITION</h3> + +<h3>LONDON</h3> + +<h3>1902</h3> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p><i>THE BOOK-LOVERS LIBRARY</i> was first published in the +following styles:</p> + +<p><i>No. 1.—Printed on antique paper, in cloth bevelled with +rough edges, price 4s. 6d.</i></p> + +<p><i>No. 2.—Printed on hand-made paper, in Roxburgh, half +morocco, with gilt top: 250 only are printed, for sale in England, +price 7s. 6d.</i></p> + +<p><i>No. 3.—Large paper edition, on hand-made paper; of +which 50 copies only are printed, and bound in Roxburgh, for sale +in England, price £1 1s.</i></p> + +<p>There are a few sets left, and can be had on application to the +Publisher.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<h2>Table of Contents</h2> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#1">Introductory</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#2">The Early Englishman and His +Food</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#3">Royal Feasts and Savage Pomp</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#4">Cookery Books, part 1</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#5">Cookery Books, part 2, Select Extracts +from an Early Recipt-Book</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#6">Cookery Books, part 3</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#7">Cookery Books, part 4</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#8">Diet of the Yeoman and the Poor</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#9">Meats and Drinks</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#10">The Kitchen</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#11">Meals</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#12">Etiquette of the Table</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#13">Index</a></p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<a name="1"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/004.png" /></center> + +<h2>INTRODUCTORY</h2> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>Man has been distinguished from other animals in various ways; +but perhaps there is no particular in which he exhibits so marked a +difference from the rest of creation—not even in the +prehensile faculty resident in his hand—as in the objection +to raw food, meat, and vegetables. He approximates to his inferior +contemporaries only in the matter of fruit, salads, and oysters, +not to mention wild-duck. He entertains no sympathy with the +cannibal, who judges the flavour of his enemy improved by temporary +commitment to a subterranean larder; yet, to be sure, he keeps his +grouse and his venison till it approaches the condition of +spoon-meat.</p> + +<p>It naturally ensues, from the absence or scantiness of explicit +or systematic information connected with the opening stages of such +inquiries as the present, that the student is compelled to draw his +own inferences from indirect or unwitting allusion; but so long as +conjecture and hypothesis are not too freely indulged, this class +of evidence is, as a rule, tolerably trustworthy, and is, moreover, +open to verification.</p> + +<p>When we pass from an examination of the state of the question as +regarded Cookery in very early times among us, before an even more +valuable art—that of Printing—was discovered, we shall +find ourselves face to face with a rich and long chronological +series of books on the Mystery, the titles and fore-fronts of which +are often not without a kind of fragrance and +<i>goût</i>.</p> + +<p>As the space allotted to me is limited, and as the sketch left +by Warner of the convivial habits and household arrangements of the +Saxons or Normans in this island, as well as of the monastic +institutions, is more copious than any which I could offer, it may +be best to refer simply to his elaborate preface. But it may be +pointed out generally that the establishment of the Norman sway not +only purged of some of their Anglo-Danish barbarism the tables of +the nobility and the higher classes, but did much to spread among +the poor a thriftier manipulation of the articles of food by a +resort to broths, messes, and hot-pots. In the poorer districts, in +Normandy as well as in Brittany, Duke William would probably find +very little alteration in the mode of preparing victuals from that +which was in use in his day, eight hundred years ago, if (like +another Arthur) he should return among his ancient compatriots; but +in his adopted country he would see that there had been a +considerable revolt from the common saucepan—not to add from +the pseudo-Arthurian bag-pudding; and that the English artisan, if +he could get a rump-steak or a leg of mutton once a week, was +content to starve on the other six days.</p> + +<p>Those who desire to be more amply informed of the domestic +economy of the ancient court, and to study the <i>minutiae</i>, +into which I am precluded from entering, can easily gratify +themselves in the pages of "The Ordinances and Regulations for the +Government of the Royal Household," 1790; "The Northumberland +Household Book;" and the various printed volumes of "Privy Purse +Expenses" of royal and great personages, including "The Household +Roll of Bishop Swinfield (1289-90)."</p> + +<p>The late Mr. Green, in his "History of the English People" +(1880-3, 4 vols. 8vo), does not seem to have concerned himself +about the kitchens or gardens of the nation which he undertook to +describe. Yet, what conspicuous elements these have been in our +social and domestic progress, and what civilising factors!</p> + +<p>To a proper and accurate appreciation of the cookery of ancient +times among ourselves, a knowledge of its condition in other more +or less neighbouring countries, and of the surrounding influences +and conditions which marked the dawn of the art in England, and its +slow transition to a luxurious excess, would be in strictness +necessary; but I am tempted to refer the reader to an admirable +series of papers which appeared on this subject in Barker's +"Domestic Architecture," and were collected in 1861, under the +title of "Our English Home: its Early History and Progress." In +this little volume the author, who does not give his name, has +drawn together in a succinct compass the collateral information +which will help to render the following pages more luminous and +interesting. An essay might be written on the appointments of the +table only, their introduction, development, and +multiplication.</p> + +<p>The history and antiquities of the Culinary Art among the Greeks +are handled with his usual care and skill by M.J.A. St. John in his +"Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece," 1842; and in the +<i>Biblia</i> or Hebrew Scriptures we get an indirect insight into +the method of cooking from the forms of sacrifice.</p> + +<p>The earliest legend which remains to us of Hellenic gastronomy +is associated with cannibalism. It is the story of Pelops—an +episode almost pre-Homeric, where a certain rudimentary knowledge +of dressing flesh, and even of disguising its real nature, is +implied in the tale, as it descends to us; and the next in order of +times is perhaps the familiar passage in the <i>Odyssey</i>, +recounting the adventures of Odysseus and his companions in the +cave of Polyphemus. Here, again, we are introduced to a rude +society of cave-dwellers, who eat human flesh, if not as an +habitual diet, yet not only without reluctance, but with relish and +enjoyment.</p> + +<p>The <i>Phagetica</i> of Ennius, of which fragments remain, seems +to be the most ancient treatise of the kind in Roman literature. It +is supposed to relate an account of edible fishes; but in a +complete state the work may very well have amounted to a general +Manual on the subject. In relation even to Homer, the +<i>Phagetica</i> is comparatively modern, following the +<i>Odyssey</i> at a distance of some six centuries; and in the +interval it is extremely likely that anthropophagy had become rarer +among the Greeks, and that if they still continued to be cooking +animals, they were relinquishing the practice of cooking one +another.</p> + +<p>Mr. Ferguson, again, has built on Athenaeus and other +authorities a highly valuable paper on "The Formation of the +Palate," and the late Mr. Coote, in the forty-first volume of +"Archaeologia," has a second on the "Cuisine Bourgeoise" of ancient +Rome. These two essays, with the "Fairfax Inventories" communicated +to the forty-eighth volume of the "Archaeologia" by Mr. Peacock, +cover much of the ground which had been scarcely traversed before +by any scientific English inquirer. The importance of an insight +into the culinary economy of the Romans lies in the obligations +under which the more western nations of Europe are to it for nearly +all that they at first knew upon the subject. The Romans, on their +part, were borrowers in this, as in other, sciences from Greece, +where the arts of cookery and medicine were associated, and were +studied by physicians of the greatest eminence; and to Greece these +mysteries found their way from Oriental sources. But the school of +cookery which the Romans introduced into Britain was gradually +superseded in large measure by one more agreeable to the climate +and physical demands of the people; and the free use of animal +food, which was probably never a leading feature in the diet of the +Italians as a community, and may be treated as an incidence of +imperial luxury, proved not merely innocuous, but actually +beneficial to a more northerly race.</p> + +<p>So little is to be collected—in the shape of direct +testimony, next to nothing—of the domestic life of the +Britons—that it is only by conjecture that one arrives at the +conclusion that the original diet of our countrymen consisted of +vegetables, wild fruit, the honey of wild bees—which is still +extensively used in this country,—a coarse sort of bread, and +milk. The latter was evidently treated as a very precious article +of consumption, and its value was enhanced by the absence of oil +and the apparent want of butter. Mr. Ferguson supposes, from some +remains of newly-born calves, that our ancestors sacrificed the +young of the cow rather than submit to a loss of the milk; but it +was, on the contrary, an early superstition, and may be, on obvious +grounds, a fact, that the presence of the young increased the yield +in the mother, and that the removal of the calf was detrimental. +The Italian invaders augmented and enriched the fare, without, +perhaps, materially altering its character; and the first decided +reformation in the mode of living here was doubtless achieved by +the Saxon and Danish settlers; for those in the south, who had +migrated hither from the Low Countries, ate little flesh, and +indeed, as to certain animals, cherished, according to Caesar, +religious scruples against it.</p> + +<p>It was to the hunting tribes, who came to us from regions even +bleaker and more exacting than our own, that the southern counties +owed the taste for venison and a call for some nourishment more +sustaining than farinaceous substances, green stuff and milk, as +well as a gradual dissipation of the prejudice against the hare, +the goose, and the hen as articles of food, which the +"Commentaries" record. It is characteristic of the nature of our +nationality, however, that while the Anglo-Saxons and their +successors refused to confine themselves to the fare which was more +or less adequate to the purposes of archaic pastoral life in this +island, they by no means renounced their partiality for farm and +garden produce, but by a fusion of culinary tastes and experiences +akin to fusion of race and blood, laid the basis of the splendid +<i>cuisine</i> of the Plantagenet and Tudor periods. Our cookery +is, like our tongue, an amalgam.</p> + +<p>But the Roman historian saw little or nothing of our country +except those portions which lay along or near the southern coast; +the rest of his narrative was founded on hearsay; and he admits +that the people in the interior—those beyond the range of his +personal knowledge, more particularly the northern tribes and the +Scots—were flesh-eaters, by which he probably intends, not +consumers of cattle, but of the venison, game, and fish which +abounded in their forests and rivers. The various parts of this +country were in Caesar's day, and very long after, more distinct +from each other for all purposes of communication and intercourse +than we are now from Spain or from Switzerland; and the foreign +influences which affected the South Britons made no mark on those +petty states which lay at a distance, and whose diet was governed +by purely local conditions. The dwellers northward were by nature +hunters and fishermen, and became only by Act of Parliament +poachers, smugglers, and illicit distillers; the province of the +male portion of the family was to find food for the rest; and a +pair of spurs laid on an empty trencher was well understood by the +goodman as a token that the larder was empty and replenishable.</p> + +<p>There are new books on all subjects, of which it is +comparatively easy within a moderate compass to afford an +intelligible, perhaps even a sufficient, account. But there are +others which I, for my part, hesitate to touch, and which do not +seem to be amenable to the law of selection. "Studies in +Nidderland," by Mr. Joseph Lucas, is one of these. It was a labour +of love, and it is full of records of singular survivals to our +time of archaisms of all descriptions, culinary and gardening +utensils not forgotten. There is one point, which I may perhaps +advert to, and it is the square of wood with a handle, which the +folk in that part of Yorkshire employed, in lieu of the ladle, for +stirring, and the stone ovens for baking, which, the author tells +us, occur also in a part of Surrey. But the volume should be read +as a whole. We have of such too few.</p> + +<p>Under the name of a Roman epicure, Coelius Apicius, has come +down to us what may be accepted as the most ancient European "Book +of Cookery." I think that the idea widely entertained as to this +work having proceeded from the pen of a man, after whom it was +christened, has no more substantial basis than a theory would have +that the "Arabian Nights" were composed by Haroun al Raschid. +Warner, in the introduction to his "Antiquitates Culinariae," 1791, +adduces as a specimen of the rest two receipts from this +collection, shewing how the Roman cook of the Apician epoch was +wont to dress a hog's paunch, and to manufacture sauce for a boiled +chicken. Of the three persons who bore the name, it seems to be +thought most likely that the one who lived under Trajan was the +true godfather of the Culinary Manual.</p> + +<p>One of Massinger's characters (Holdfast) in the "City Madam," +1658, is made to charge the gourmets of his time with all the sins +of extravagance perpetrated in their most luxurious and fantastic +epoch. The object was to amuse the audience; but in England no +"court gluttony," much less country Christmas, ever saw buttered +eggs which had cost £30, or pies of carps' tongues, or +pheasants drenched with ambergris, or sauce for a peacock made of +the gravy of three fat wethers, or sucking pigs at twenty marks +each.</p> + +<p>Both Apicius and our Joe Miller died within £80,000 of +being beggars—Miller something the nigher to that goal; and +there was this community of insincerity also, that neither really +wrote the books which carry their names. Miller could not make a +joke or understand one when anybody else made it. His Roman +foregoer, who would certainly never have gone for his dinner to +Clare Market, relished good dishes, even if he could not cook +them.</p> + +<p>It appears not unlikely that the Romish clergy, whose monastic +vows committed them to a secluded life, were thus led to seek some +compensation for the loss of other worldly pleasures in those of +the table; and that, when one considers the luxury of the old +abbeys, one ought to recollect at the same time, that it was +perhaps in this case as it was in regard to letters and the arts, +and that we are under a certain amount of obligation to the monks +for modifying the barbarism of the table, and encouraging a study +of gastronomy.</p> + +<p>There are more ways to fame than even Horace suspected. The road +to immortality is not one but manifold. A man can but do what he +can. As the poet writes and the painter fills with his inspiration +the mute and void canvas, so doth the Cook his part. There was +formerly apopular work in France entitled "Le Cuisinier Royal," by +MM. Viard and Fouret, who describe themselves as "Hommes de +Bouche." The twelfth edition lies before me, a thick octavo volume, +dated 1805. The title-page is succeeded by an anonymous address to +the reader, at the foot of which occurs a peremptory warning to +pilferers of dishes or parts thereof; in other words, to piratical +invaders of the copyright of Monsieur Barba. There is a preface +equally unclaimed by signatures or initials, but as it is in the +singular number the two <i>hommes de bouche</i> can scarcely have +written it; perchance it was M. Barba aforesaid, lord-proprietor of +these not-to-be-touched treasures; but anyhow the writer had a very +solemn feeling of the debt which he had conferred on society by +making the contents public for the twelfth time, and he concludes +with a mixture of sentiments, which it is very difficult to define: +"Dans la paix de ma conscience, non moins que dans l'orgueil +d'avoir si honorablement rempli cette importante mission, je +m'ecrierai avec le poete des gourmands et des amoureux:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"Exegi monumentum aere perennius</p> + +<p class="i2">Non omnis moriar."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<a name="2"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/019.png" /></center> + +<h2>THE EARLY ENGLISHMAN AND HIS FOOD.</h2> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>William of Malmesbury particularly dwells on the broad line of +distinction still existing between the southern English and the +folk of the more northerly districts in his day, twelve hundred +years after the visit of Caesar. He says that they were then (about +A.D. 1150) as different as if they had been different races; and so +in fact they were—different in their origin, in their +language, and their diet.</p> + +<p>In his "Folk-lore Relics of Early Village Life," 1883, Mr. Gomme +devotes a chapter to "Early Domestic Customs," and quotes Henry's +"History of Great Britain" for a highly curious clue to the +primitive mode of dressing food, and partaking of it, among the +Britons. Among the Anglo-Saxons the choice of poultry and game was +fairly wide. Alexander Neckani, in his "Treatise on Utensils +(twelfth century)" gives fowls, cocks, peacocks, the cock of the +wood (the woodcock, not the capercailzie), thrushes, pheasants, and +several more; and pigeons were only too plentiful. The hare and the +rabbit were well enough known, and with the leveret form part of an +enumeration of wild animals (<i>animalium ferarum</i>) in a +pictorial vocabulary of the fifteenth century. But in the very +early accounts or lists, although they must have soon been brought +into requisition, they are not specifically cited as current +dishes. How far this is attributable to the alleged repugnance of +the Britons to use the hare for the table, as Caesar apprises us +that they kept it only <i>voluptatis causâ</i>, it is hard to +say; but the way in which the author of the "Commentaries" puts it +induces the persuasion that by <i>lepus</i> he means not the hare, +but the rabbit, as the former would scarcely be domesticated.</p> + +<p>Neckam gives very minute directions for the preparation of pork +for the table. He appears to have considered that broiling on the +grill was the best way; the gridiron had supplanted the hot stones +or bricks in more fashionable households, and he recommends a brisk +fire, perhaps with an eye to the skilful development of the +crackling. He died without the happiness of bringing his +archi-episcopal nostrils in contact with the sage and onions of +wiser generations, and thinks that a little salt is enough. But, as +we have before explained, Neckam prescribed for great folks. These +refinements were unknown beyond the precincts of the palace and the +castle.</p> + +<p>In the ancient cookery-book, the "Menagier de Paris," 1393, +which offers numerous points of similarity to our native culinary +lore, the resources of the cuisine are represented as amplified by +receipts for dressing hedgehogs, squirrels, magpies, and +jackdaws—small deer, which the English experts did not +affect, although I believe that the hedgehog is frequently used to +this day by country folk, both here and abroad, and in India. It +has white, rabbit-like flesh.</p> + +<p>In an eleventh century vocabulary we meet with a tolerably rich +variety of fish, of which the consumption was relatively larger in +former times. The Saxons fished both with the basket and the net. +Among the fish here enumerated are the whale (which was largely +used for food), the dolphin, porpoise, crab, oyster, herring, +cockle, smelt, and eel. But in the supplement to Alfric's +vocabulary, and in another belonging to the same epoch, there are +important additions to this list: the salmon, the trout, the +lobster, the bleak, with the whelk and other shell-fish. But we do +not notice the turbot, sole, and many other varieties, which became +familiar in the next generation or so. The turbot and sole are +indeed included in the "Treatise on Utensils" of Neckam, as are +likewise the lamprey (of which King John is said to have been very +fond), bleak, gudgeon, conger, plaice, limpet, ray, and +mackerel.</p> + +<p>The fifteenth century, if I may judge from a vocabulary of that +date in Wright's collection, acquired a much larger choice of fish, +and some of the names approximate more nearly to those in modern +use. We meet with the sturgeon, the whiting, the roach, the +miller's thumb, the thomback, the codling, the perch, the gudgeon, +the turbot, the pike, the tench, and the haddock. It is worth +noticing also that a distinction was now drawn between the +fisherman and the fishmonger—the man who caught the fish and +he who sold it—<i>piscator</i> and <i>piscarius</i>; and in +the vocabulary itself the leonine line is cited: "Piscator prendit, +quod piscarius bene vendit."</p> + +<p>The whale was considerably brought into requisition for +gastronomic purposes. It was found on the royal table, as well as +on that of the Lord Mayor of London. The cook either roasted it, +and served it up on the spit, or boiled it and sent it in with +peas; the tongue and the tail were favourite parts.</p> + +<p>The porpoise, however, was brought into the hall whole, and was +carved or <i>under-tranched</i> by the officer in attendance. It +was eaten with mustard. The <i>pièce de +résistance</i> at a banquet which Wolsey gave to some of his +official acquaintances in 1509, was a young porpoise, which had +cost eight shillings; it was on the same occasion that His Eminence +partook of strawberries and cream, perhaps; he is reported to have +been the person who made that pleasant combination fashionable. The +grampus, or sea-wolf, was another article of food which bears +testimony to the coarse palate of the early Englishman, and at the +same time may afford a clue to the partiality for disguising +condiments and spices. But it appears from an entry in his Privy +Purse Expenses, under September 8, 1498, that Henry the Seventh +thought a porpoise a valuable commodity and a fit dish for an +ambassador, for on that date twenty-one shillings were paid to +Cardinal Morton's servant, who had procured one for some envoy then +in London, perhaps the French representative, who is the recipient +of a complimentary gratuity of £49 10s. on April 12, 1499, at +his departure from England.</p> + +<p>In the fifteenth century the existing stock of fish for culinary +purposes received, if we may trust the vocabularies, a few +accessions; as, for instance, the bream, the skate, the flounder, +and the bake.</p> + +<p>In "Piers of Fulham (14th century)," we hear of the good store +of fat eels imported into England from the Low Countries, and to be +had cheap by anyone who watched the tides; but the author +reprehends the growing luxury of using the livers of young fish +before they were large enough to be brought to the table.</p> + +<p>The most comprehensive catalogue of fish brought to table in the +time of Charles I. is in a pamphlet of 1644, inserted among my +"Fugitive Tracts," 1875; and includes the oyster, which used to be +eaten at breakfast with wine, the crab, lobster, sturgeon, salmon, +ling, flounder, plaice, whiting, sprat, herring, pike, bream, +roach, dace, and eel. The writer states that the sprat and herring +were used in Lent. The sound of the stock-fish, boiled in wort or +thin ale till they were tender, then laid on a cloth and dried, and +finally cut into strips, was thought a good receipt for +book-glue.</p> + +<p>An acquaintance is in possession of an old cookery-book which +exhibits the gamut of the fish as it lies in the frying-pan, +reducing its supposed lament to musical notation. Here is an +ingenious refinement and a delicate piece of irony, which Walton +and Cotton might have liked to forestall.</p> + +<p>The 15th century <i>Nominale</i> enriches the catalogue of +dishes then in vogue. It specifies almond-milk, rice, gruel, +fish-broth or soup, a sort of <i>fricassee</i> of fowl, collops, a +pie, a pasty, a tart, a tartlet, a charlet (minced pork), +apple-juice, a dish called jussell made of eggs and grated bread +with seasoning of sage and saffron, and the three generic heads of +sod or boiled, roast, and fried meats. In addition to the +fish-soup, they had wine-soup, water-soup, ale-soup; and the flawn +is reinforced by the <i>froise</i>. Instead of one Latin equivalent +for a pudding, it is of moment to record that there are now three: +nor should we overlook the rasher and the sausage. It is the +earliest place where we get some of our familiar articles of +diet—beef, mutton, pork, veal—under their modern names; +and about the same time such terms present themselves as "a broth," +"a browis," "a pottage," "a mess."</p> + +<p>Of the dishes which have been specified, the <i>froise</i> +corresponded to an <i>omelette au lard</i> of modern French +cookery, having strips of bacon in it. The tansy was an omelette of +another description, made chiefly with eggs and chopped herbs. As +the former was a common dish in the monasteries, it is not +improbable that it was one grateful to the palate. In Lydgate's +"Story of Thebes," a sort of sequel to the "Canterbury Tales," the +pilgrims invite the poet to join the supper-table, where there were +these tasty omelettes: moile, made of marrow and grated bread, and +haggis, which is supposed to be identical with the Scottish dish so +called. Lydgate, who belonged to the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds, +doubtless set on the table at Canterbury some of the dainties with +which he was familiar at home; and this practice, which runs +through all romantic and imaginative literature, constitutes, in +our appreciation, its principal worth. We love and cherish it for +its very sins against chronological and topographical +fitness—its contempt of all unities. Men transferred local +circumstances and a local colouring to their pictures of distant +countries and manners. They argued the unknown from what they saw +under their own eyes. They portrayed to us what, so far as the +scenes and characters of their story went, was undeceivingly false, +but what on the contrary, had it not been so, would never have been +unveiled respecting themselves and their time.</p> + +<p>The expenditure on festive occasions seems, from some of the +entries in the "Northumberland Household Book," to present a strong +contrast to the ordinary dietary allowed to the members of a noble +and wealthy household, especially on fish days, in the earlier +Tudor era (1512). The noontide breakfast provided for the Percy +establishment was of a very modest character: my lord and my lady +had, for example, a loaf of bread, two manchets (loaves of finer +bread), a quart of beer and one of wine, two pieces of salt fish, +and six baked herrings or a dish of sprats. My lord Percy and +Master Thomas Percy had half a loaf of household bread, a manchet, +a pottle of beer, a dish of butter, a piece of salt fish, and a +dish of sprats or three white herrings; and the nursery breakfast +for my lady Margaret and Master Ingram Percy was much the same. But +on flesh days my lord and lady fared better, for they had a loaf of +bread, two manchets, a quart of beer and the same of wine, and half +a chine of mutton or boiled beef; while the nursery repast +consisted of a manchet, a quart of beer, and three boiled mutton +breasts; and so on: whence it is deducible that in the Percy +family, perhaps in all other great houses, the members and the +ladies and gentlemen in waiting partook of their earliest meal +apart in their respective chambers, and met only at six to dine or +sup.</p> + +<p>The beer, which was an invariable part of the <i>menu</i>, was +perhaps brewed from hops which, according to Harrison elsewhere +quoted, were, after a long discontinuance, again coming into use +about this time. But it would be a light-bodied drink which was +allotted to the consumption at all events of Masters Thomas and +Ingram Percy, and even of my Lady Margaret. It is clearly not +irrelevant to my object to correct the general impression that the +great families continued throughout the year to support the strain +which the system of keeping open house must have involved. For, as +Warner has stated, there were intervals during which the +aristocracy permitted themselves to unbend, and shook off the +trammels imposed on them by their social rank and responsibility. +This was known as "keeping secret house," or, in other words, my +lord became for a season incognito, and retired to one of his +remoter properties for relaxation and repose. Our kings in some +measure did the same; for they held their revels only, as a rule, +at stated times and places. William I. is said to have kept his +Easter at Winchester, his Whitsuntide at Westminster, and his +Christmas at Gloucester. Even these antique grandees had to work on +some plan. It could not be all mirth and jollity.</p> + +<p>A recital of some of the articles on sale in a baker's or +confectioner's shop in 1563, occurs in Newbery's "Dives +Pragmaticus": simnels, buns, cakes, biscuits, comfits, caraways, +and cracknels: and this is the first occurrence of the bun that I +have hitherto been able to detect. The same tract supplies us with +a few other items germane to my subject: figs, almonds, long +pepper, dates, prunes, and nutmegs. It is curious to watch how by +degrees the kitchen department was furnished with articles which +nowadays are viewed as the commonest necessaries of life.</p> + +<p>In the 17th century the increased communication with the +Continent made us by degrees larger partakers of the discoveries of +foreign cooks. Noblemen and gentlemen travelling abroad brought +back with them receipts for making the dishes which they had tasted +in the course of their tours. In the "Compleat Cook," 1655 and +1662, the beneficial operation of actual experience of this kind, +and of the introduction of such books as the "Receipts for Dutch +Victual" and "Epulario, or the Italian Banquet," to English readers +and students, is manifest enough; for in the latter volume we get +such entries as these: "To make a Portugal dish;" "To make a +Virginia dish;" "A Persian dish;" "A Spanish olio;" and then there +are receipts "To make a Posset the Earl of Arundel's way;" "To make +the Lady Abergavenny's Cheese;" "The Jacobin's Pottage;" "To make +Mrs. Leeds' Cheesecakes;" "The Lord Conway His Lordship's receipt +for the making of Amber Puddings;" "The Countess of Rutland's +receipt of making the Rare Banbury Cake, which was so much praised +as her daughter's (the Right Honourable Lady Chaworth) Pudding," +and "To make Poor Knights"—the last a medley in which bread, +cream, and eggs were the leading materials.</p> + +<p>Warner, however, in the "Additional Notes and Observations" to +his "Antiquitates Culinariae," 1791, expresses himself adversely to +the foreign systems of cookery from an English point of view. +"Notwithstanding," he remarks, "the partiality of our countrymen to +French cookery, yet that mode of disguising meat in this kingdom +(except perhaps in the hottest part of the hottest season of the +year) is an absurdity. It is <i>here</i> the art of <i>spoiling +good meat</i>. The same art, indeed, in the South of France; where +the climate is much warmer, and the flesh of the animal lean and +insipid, is highly valuable; it is the art of making <i>bad meat +eatable</i>." At the same time, he acknowledges the superior thrift +and intelligence of the French cooks, and instances the frog and +the horse. "The frog is considered in this country as a disgusting +animal, altogether unfit for the purposes of the kitchen; whereas, +by the efforts of French cookery, the thighs of this little +creature are converted into a delicate and estimable dish." So +sings, too (save the mark!), <i>our</i> Charles Lamb, so far back +as 1822, after his visit to Paris. It seems that in Elizabeth's +reign a <i>powdered</i>, or pickled horse was considered a suitable +dish by a French general entertaining at dinner some English +officers.</p> + +<p>It is difficult to avoid an impression that Warner has some +reason, when he suggests that the immoderate use of condiments was +brought to us by the dwellers under a higher temperature, and was +not really demanded in such a climate as that of England, where +meat can be kept sweet in ordinary seasons, much longer even than +in France or in Italy. But let us bear in mind, too, how different +from our own the old English <i>cuisine</i> was, and how many +strange beasts calling for lubricants it comprehended within its +range.</p> + +<p>An edifying insight into the old Scottish <i>cuisine</i> among +people of the better sort is afforded by Fynes Morisoh, in his +description of a stay at a knight's house in North Britain in +1598.</p> + +<p>"Myself," he says, "was at a knight's house, who had many +servants to attend him, that brought in his meat with their heads +covered with blue caps, the table being more than half furnished +with great platters of porridge, each having a little piece of +sodden meat; and when the tables were served, the servants did sit +down with us; but the upper mess, instead of porridge, had a pullet +with some prunes in the broth. And I observed no art of cookery, or +furniture of household stuff, but rather rude neglect of both, +though myself and my companion, sent by the Governor of Berwick +upon bordering affairs, were entertained in the best manner. The +Scots ... vulgarly eat hearth-cakes of oats, but in cities have +also wheaten bread, which, for the most part, was bought by +courtiers, gentlemen, and the best sort of citizens. When I lived +at Berwick, the Scots weekly upon the market day <i>obtained leave +in writing of the governor</i> to buy peas and beans, whereof, as +also of wheat, their merchants to this day (1617) send great +quantities from London into Scotland. They drink pure wine, not +with sugar, as the English, yet at feasts they put comfits in the +wine, after the French manner: but they had not our vintners' fraud +to mix their wines."</p> + +<p>He proceeds to say that he noticed no regular inns, with signs +hanging out, but that private householders would entertain +passengers on entreaty, or where acquaintance was claimed. The last +statement is interestingly corroborated by the account which Taylor +the Water-Poet printed in 1618 of his journey to Scotland, and +which he termed his "Penniless Pilgrimage or Moneyless +Perambulation," in the course of which he purports to have depended +entirely on private hospitality.</p> + +<p>A friend says: "The Scotch were long very poor. Only their fish, +oatmeal, and whiskey kept them alive. Fish was very cheap." This +remark sounds the key-note of a great English want—cheaper +fish. Of meat we already eat enough, or too much; but of fish we +might eat more, if it could be brought at a low price to our doors. +It is a noteworthy collateral fact that in the Lord Mayor of +London's Pageant of 1590 there is a representation of the double +advantage which would accrue if the unemployed poor were engaged to +facilitate and cheapen the supply of fish to the City; and here we +are, three centuries forward, with the want still very imperfectly +answered.</p> + +<p>Besides the bread and oatmeal above named, the bannock played +its part. "The Land o' Cakes" was more than a trim and pretty +phrase: there was in it a deep eloquence; it marked a wide national +demand and supply.</p> + +<p>The "Penny Magazine" for 1842 has a good and suggestive paper on +"Feasts and Entertainments," with extracts from some of the early +dramatists and a woodcut of "a new French cook, to devise fine +kickshaws and toys." One curious point is brought out here in the +phrase "boiled <i>jiggets</i> of mutton," which shews that the +French <i>gigot</i> for a leg of mutton was formerly in use here. +Like many other Gallicisms, it lingered in Scotland down to our own +time.</p> + +<p>The cut of the French cook above mentioned is a modern +composition; and indeed some of the excerpts from Ben Jonson and +other writers are of an extravagant and hyperbolical +cast,—better calculated to amuse an audience than to instruct +the student.</p> + +<p>Mr. Lucas remarks: "It is probable that we are more dependent +upon animal food than we used to be. In their early days, the +present generation of dalesmen fed almost exclusively upon oatmeal; +either as 'hasty-pudding,'—that is, Scotch oatmeal which had +been <i>ground over again</i>, so as to be nearly as fine as +flour;... or 'lumpy,'—that is, boiled quickly and not +thoroughly stirred; or else in one of the three kinds of cake which +they call 'fermented,' viz., 'riddle cake,' 'held-on cake,' or +'turn-down cake,' which is made from oatcake batter poured on the +'bak' ston'' from the ladle, and then spread with the back of the +ladle. It does not rise like an oatcake. Or of a fourth kind called +'clap cake.' They also made 'tiffany cakes' of wheaten flour, which +was separated from the bran by being worked through a hair-sieve +<i>tiffany</i>, or <i>temse</i>:—south of England +<i>Tammy</i>,—with a brush called the <i>Brush +shank</i>."</p> + +<center><img alt="" src="images/038.png" /></center> + +<br /> + + +<a name="3"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/039.png" /></center> + +<h2>ROYAL FEASTS AND SAVAGE POMP.</h2> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>In Rose's "School of Instructions for the Officers of the +Mouth," 1682, the staff of a great French establishment is +described as a Master of the Household, a Master Carver, a Master +Butler, a Master Confectioner, a Master Cook, and a Master +Pastryman. The author, who was himself one of the cooks in our +royal kitchen, tells Sir Stephen Fox, to whom he dedicates his +book, that he had entered on it after he had completed one of a +very different nature: "The Theatre of the World, or a Prospect of +Human Misery."</p> + +<p>At the time that the "School of Instructions" was written, the +French and ourselves had both progressed very greatly in the Art of +Cookery and in the development of the <i>menu</i>. DelaHay Street, +Westminster, near Bird-Cage Walk, suggests a time when a hedge ran +along the western side of it towards the Park, in lieu of brick or +stone walls; but the fact is that we have here a curious +association with the office, just quoted from Rose, of Master +Confectioner. For of the plot of ground on which the street, or at +any rate a portion of it stands, the old proprieter was Peter +DelaHaye, master confectioner of Charles II. at the very period of +the publication of Rose's book. His name occurs in the title-deeds +of one of the houses on the Park side, which since his day has had +only five owners, and has been, since 1840, the freehold of an old +and valued friend of the present writer.</p> + +<p>It may be worth pointing out, that the Confectionery and Pastry +were two distinct departments, each with its superintendent and +staff. The fondness for confections had spread from +Italy—which itself in turn borrowed the taste from the +East—to France and England; and, as we perceive from the +descriptions furnished in books, these were often of a very +elaborate and costly character.</p> + +<p>The volume is of the less interest for us, as it is a +translation from the French, and consequently does not throw a +direct light on our own kitchens at this period. But of course +collaterally it presents many features of likeness and analogy, and +may be compared with Braithwaite's earlier view to which I shall +presently advert.</p> + +<p>The following anecdote is given in the Epistle to Fox: "Many do +believe the French way of working is cheapest; but let these +examine this book, and then they may see (for their satisfaction) +which is the best husbandry, to extract gold out of herbs, or to +make a pottage of a stone, by the example of two soldiers, who in +their quarters were minded to have a pottage; the first of them +coming into a house and asking for all things necessary to the +making of one, was as soon told that he could have none of these +things there, whereupon he went away, and the other coming in with +a stone in his knap-sack, asked only for a Pot to boil his stone +in, that he might make a dish of broth of it for his supper, which +was quickly granted him; and when the stone had boiled a little +while, then he asked for a small bit of beef, then for a piece of +mutton, and so for veal, bacon, etc., till by little and little he +got all things requisite, and he made an excellent pottage of his +stone, at as cheap a rate (it may be) as the cook extracted Gold +from Herbs."</p> + +<p>The kitchen-staff of a noble establishment in the first quarter +of the seventeenth century we glean from Braithwaite's "Rules and +Orders for the Government of the House of an Earl," which, if the +"M.L." for whom the piece was composed was his future wife, +Mistress Lawson, cannot have seen the light later than 1617, in +which year they were married. He specifies—(1) a yeoman and +groom for the cellar; (2) a yeoman and groom for the pantry; (3) a +yeoman and groom for the buttery; (3a) a yeoman for the ewery; (4) +a yeoman purveyor; (5) a master-cook, under-cooks, and three +pastry-men; (6) a yeoman and groom in the scullery, one to be in +the larder and slaughter-house; (7) an achator or buyer; (8) three +conducts [query, errand-boys] and three kitchen-boys.</p> + +<p>The writer also admits us to a rather fuller acquaintance with +the mode in which the marketing was done. He says that the +officers, among other matters, "must be able to judge, not only of +the prices, but also of the goodness of all kinds of corn, cattle, +and household provisions; and the better to enable themselves +thereto, are oftentimes to ride to fairs and great markets, and +there to have conference with graziers and purveyors." The higher +officers were to see that the master was not deceived by purveyors +and buyers, and that other men's cattle did not feed on my lord's +pastures; they were to take care that the clerk of the kitchen kept +his day-book "in that perfect and good order, that at the end of +every week or month it be pied out," and that a true docket of all +kinds of provisions be set down. They were to see that the powdered +and salted meats in the larder were properly kept; and vigilant +supervision was to be exercised over the cellar, buttery, and other +departments, even to the prevention of paring the tallow +lights.</p> + +<p>Braithwaite dedicates a section to each officer; but I have only +space to transcribe, by way of sample, the opening portion of his +account of "The Officer of the Kitchen:" "The Master-Cook should be +a man of years; well-experienced, whereby the younger cooks will be +drawn the better to obey his directions. In ancient times noblemen +contented themselves to be served with such as had been bred in +their own houses, but of late times none could please some but +Italians and Frenchmen, or at best brought up in the Court, or +under London cooks: nor would the old manner of baking, boiling, +and roasting please them, but the boiled meats must be after the +French fashion, the dishes garnished about with sugar and preserved +plums, the meat covered over with orangeade, preserved lemons, and +with divers other preserved and conserved stuff fetched from the +confectioner's: more lemons and sugar spent in boiling fish to +serve at one meal than might well serve the whole expense of the +house in a day." He goes on to describe and ridicule the new +fashion of placing arms and crests on the dishes. It seems that all +the refuse was the perquisite of the cook and his subordinates in a +regulated proportion, and the same in the bakery and other +branches; but, as may be supposed, in these matters gross abuses +were committed.</p> + +<p>In the "Leisure Hour" for 1884 was printed a series of papers on +"English Homes in the Olden Times." The eleventh deals with service +and wages, and is noticed here because it affords a recital of the +orders made for his household by John Harington the elder in 1566, +and renewed by John Harington the younger, his son and High Sheriff +of Somersetshire, in 1592.</p> + +<p>This code of domestic discipline for an Elizabethan +establishment comprises the observance of decorum and duty at +table, and is at least as valuable and curious as those metrical +canons and precepts which form the volume (Babees' Book) edited for +the Early English Text Society, etc.</p> + +<p>There is rather too general a dislike on the part of antiquaries +to take cognisance of matter inserted in popular periodicals upon +subjects of an archaeological character; but of course the loose +and flimsy treatment which this class of topics as a rule receives +in the light literature of the day makes it perilous to use +information so forthcoming in evidence or quotation. Articles must +be rendered palatable to the general reader, and thus become +worthless for all readers alike.</p> + +<p>Most of the early descriptions and handbooks of instruction +turn, naturally enough, on the demands and enjoyments of the great. +There is in the treatise of Walter de Bibblesworth (14th century) a +very interesting and edifying account of the arrangement of courses +for some important banquet. The boar's head holds the place of +honour in the list, and venison follows, and various dishes of +roast. Among the birds to be served up we see cranes, peacocks, +swans, and wild geese; and of the smaller varieties, fieldfares, +plovers, and larks. There were wines; but the writer only +particularises them as white and red. The haunch of venison was +then an ordinary dish, as well as kid. They seem to have sometimes +roasted and sometimes boiled them. Not only the pheasant and +partridge appear, but the quail,—which is at present scarcer +in this country, though so plentiful abroad,—the duck, and +the mallard.</p> + +<p>In connection with venison, it is worth while to draw attention +to a passage in the "Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VII" where, +under date of August 8, 1505, a woman receives 3s. <i>d</i>. for +clarifying deer suet for the King. This was not for culinary but +for medicinal purposes, as it was then, and much later, employed as +an ointment.</p> + +<p>Both William I. and his son the Red King maintained, as Warner +shews us, a splendid table; and we have particulars of the princely +scale on which an Abbot of Canterbury celebrated his installation +in 1309. The archbishops of those times, if they exercised +inordinate authority, at any rate dispensed in a magnificent manner +among the poor and infirm a large portion of their revenues. They +stood in the place of corporations and Poor Law Guardians. Their +very vices were not without a certain fascinating grandeur; and the +pleasures of the table in which our Plantagenet rulers outstripped +even their precursors, the earlier sovereigns of that line, were +enhanced and multiplied by the Crusades, by the commencing spirit +of discovery, and by the foreign intermarriages, which became so +frequent.</p> + +<p>A far more thorough conquest than that which the day of Hastings +signalised was accomplished by an army of a more pacific kind, +which crossed the Channel piecemeal, bringing in their hands, not +bows and swords, but new dishes and new wines. These invaders of +our soil were doubtless welcomed as benefactors by the proud nobles +of the Courts of Edward II. and Richard II., as well as by Royalty +itself; and the descriptions which have been preserved of the +banquets held on special occasions in the fourteenth and fifteenth +centuries, and even of the ordinary style of living of some, make +our City feasts of to-day shrink into insignificance. But we must +always remember that the extravagant luxury and hospitality of the +old time were germane and proper to it, component parts of the +social framework.</p> + +<p>It is to be remarked that some of the most disturbed and +disastrous epochs in our annals are those to which we have to go +for records of the greatest exploits in gastronomy and lavish +expenditure of public money on comparatively unprofitable objects. +During the period from the accession of Rufus to the death of Henry +III., and again under the rule of Richard II., the taste for +magnificent parade and sumptuous entertainments almost reached its +climax. The notion of improving the condition of the poor had not +yet dawned on the mind of the governing class; to make the artizan +and the operative self-supporting and self-respectful was a +movement not merely unformulated, but a conception beyond the +parturient faculty of a member of the Jacquerie. The king, prince, +bishop, noble, of unawakened England met their constituents at +dinner in a fashion once or twice in a lifetime, and when the +guests below the salt had seen the ways of greatness, they departed +to fulfil their several callings. These were political +demonstrations with a clear and (for the age) not irrational +object; but for the modern public dinner, over which I should be +happy to preach the funeral sermon, there is not often this or any +other plea.</p> + +<p>The redistribution of wealth and its diversion into more +fruitful channels has already done something for the people; and in +the future that lies before some of us they will do vastly more. +All Augaea will be flushed out.</p> + +<p>In some of these superb feasts, such as that at the marriage of +Henry IV. in 1403, there were two series of courses, three of meat, +and three of fish and sweets; in which we see our present fashion +to a certain extent reversed. But at the coronation of Henry V. in +1421, only three courses were served, and those mixed. The taste +for what were termed "subtleties," had come in, and among the +dishes at this latter entertainment occur, "A pelican sitting on +her nest with her young," and "an image of St. Catherine holding a +book and disputing with the doctors." These vagaries became so +common, that few dinners of importance were accounted complete +without one or more.</p> + +<p>One of the minor "subtleties" was a peacock in full panoply. The +bird was first skinned, and the feathers, tail, head and neck +having been laid on a table, and sprinkled with cummin, the body +was roasted, glazed with raw egg-yolk, and after being left to +cool, was sewn back again into the skin and so brought to table as +the last course. In 1466, at the enthronement of Archbishop Nevile, +no fewer than 104 peacocks were dressed.</p> + +<p>The most extraordinary display of fish at table on a single +occasion took place at the enthronement feast of Archbishop Warham +in 1504; it occurred on a fast day; and consequently no meat, +poultry or game was included in the <i>menu</i>, but ample +compensation was found in the lavish assortment of confectionery, +spices, beer and wine. Of wine of various vintages there were +upwards of 12 pipes, and of ale and beer, thirty tuns, including +four of London and six of Kentish ale.</p> + +<p>The narratives which have descended to us of the prodigious +banquets given on special occasions by our early kings, prelates +and nobles, are apt to inspire the general reader with an +admiration of the splendid hospitality of bygone times. But, as I +have already suggested, these festivities were occasional and at +long intervals, and during the intervening space the great ones and +the small ones of mediaeval and early England did not indulge in +this riotous sort of living, but "kept secret house," as it was +called, both after their own fashion. The extremes of prodigality +and squalor were more strongly marked among the poorer classes +while this country was in a semi-barbarous condition, and even the +aristocracy by no means maintained the same domestic state +throughout the year as their modern representatives. There are not +those ostentatious displays of wealth and generosity, which used to +signalise certain political events, such as the coronation of a +monarch or the enthronement of a primate; the mode of living has +grown more uniform and consistent, since between the vilain and his +lord has interposed himself the middle-class Englishman, with a +hand held out to either.</p> + +<p>A few may not spend so much, but as a people we spend more on +our table. A good dinner to a shepherd or a porter was formerly +more than a nine days' wonder; it was like a beacon seen through a +mist. But now he is better fed, clothed and housed than the bold +baron, whose serf he would have been in the good old days; and the +bold baron, on his part, no longer keeps secret house unless he +chooses, and observes, if a more monotonous, a more secure and +comfortable tenor of life. This change is of course due to a cause +which lies very near the surface—to the gradual effacement of +the deeply-cut separating lines between the orders of society, and +the stealthy uprise of the class, which is fast gathering all power +into its own hands.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<a name="4"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/054.png" /></center> + +<h2>COOKERY BOOKS</h2> + +<h3>PART 1.</h3> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>The first attempt to illustrate this branch of the art must have +been made by Alexander Neckam in the twelfth century; at least I am +not aware of any older treatise in which the furniture and +apparatus of a kitchen are set forth.</p> + +<p>But it is needless to say that Neckam merely dealt with a theme, +which had been familiar many centuries before his time, and +compiled his treatise, "De Utensilibus," as Bishop Alfric had his +earlier "Colloquy," with an educational, not a culinary, object, +and with a view to facilitate the knowledge of Latin among his +scholars. It is rather interesting to know that he was a native of +St. Albans, where he was born in 1157. He died in 1217, so that the +composition of this work of his (one of many) may be referred to +the close of the twelfth century. Its value is, in a certain sense, +impaired by the almost complete absence of English terms; Latin and +(so called) Norman-French being the languages almost exclusively +employed in it. But we have good reason indeed to be grateful for +such a legacy in any shape, and when we consider the tendency of +ways of life to pass unchanged from one generation to another, and +when we think how many archaic and (to our apprehension) almost +barbarous fashions and forms in domestic management lingered within +living recollection, it will not be hazarding much after all to +presume that the particulars so casually supplied to us by Neckam +have an application alike before and after.</p> + +<p>A student should also bear in mind that, from the strong +Anglo-Gallic complexion of our society and manners in early days, +the accounts collected by Lacroix are largely applicable to this +country, and the same facilities for administering to the comfort +and luxuries of the table, which he furnishes as illustrative of +the gradual outgrowth from the wood fire and the pot-au-feu among +his own countrymen, or certain classes of them, may be received as +something like counterparts of what we possessed in England at or +about the same period. We keep the phrase <i>pot luck</i>; but, for +most of those who use it, it has parted with all its meaning. This +said production of Neckam of St. Albans purports to be a guide to +young housekeepers. It instructs them what they will require, if +they desire to see their establishment well-ordered; but we soon +perceive that the author has in view the arrangements indispensable +for a family of high rank and pretensions; and it may be once for +all observed that this kind of literature seldom proves of much +service to us in an investigation of the state of the poor, until +we come to the fifteenth or even sixteenth century, when the +artists of Germany and the Low Countries began to delineate those +scenes in industrial and servile life, which time and change have +rendered so valuable.</p> + +<p>Where their superiors in rank regarded them as little more than +mechanical instruments for carrying on the business of life, the +poor have left behind them few records of their mode of sustenance +and of the food which enabled them to follow their daily toil. The +anecdotes, whatever they may be worth, of Alfred and the burnt +cakes, and of Tom Thumb's mamma and her Christmas pudding, made in +a bowl, of which the principal material was pork, stand almost +alone; for we get, wherever we look, nothing but descriptions by +learned and educated men of their equals or betters, how they fed +and what they ate—their houses, their furniture, their +weapons, and their dress. Even in the passage of the old fabliau of +the "King and the Hermit" the latter, instead of admitting us to a +cottage interior, has a servant to wait on him, brings out a +tablecloth, lights two candles, and lays before his disguised guest +venison and wine. In most of our own romances, and in the epics of +antiquity, we have to be satisfied with vague and splendid +generalisations. We do not learn much of the dishes which were on +the tables, how they were cooked, and how [Greek: oi polloi] cooked +theirs.</p> + +<p>The <i>Liber</i>, or rather <i>Codex, Princeps</i> in the very +long and extensive catalogue of works on English Cookery, is a +vellum roll called the Form of Cury, and is supposed to have been +written about the beginning of the fifteenth century by the +master-cook of Richard II who reigned from 1377 to 1399, and spent +the public money in eating and drinking, instead of wasting it, as +his grandfather had done, in foreign wars. This singular relic was +once in the Harleian collection, but did not pass with the rest of +the MSS. to the British Museum; it is now however, Additional MS. +5016, having been presented to the Library by Mr. Gustavus Brander. +It was edited by Dr. Pegge in 1780, and included by Warner in his +"Antiquitates Culinariae," 1791. The Roll comprises 196 receipts, +and commences with a sort of preamble and a Table of Contents. In +the former it is worth noting that the enterprise was undertaken +"by the assent and avisement of masters of physic and of +philosophy, that dwelled in his (Richard II.'s) court," which +illustrates the ancient alliance between medicine and cookery, +which has not till lately been dissolved. The directions were to +enable a man "to make common pottages and common meats for the +household, as they should be made, craftily and wholesomely;" so +that this body of cookery was not prepared exclusively for the use +of the royal kitchen, but for those who had not the taste or wish +for what are termed, in contra-distinction, in the next sentence, +"curious pottages, and meats, and subtleties." It is to be +conjectured that copies of such a MS. were multiplied, and from +time to time reproduced with suitable changes; but with the +exception of two different, though nearly coeval, collections, +embracing 31 and 162 receipts or nyms, and also successively +printed by Pegge and Warner, there is no apparent trace of any +systematic compilation of this nature at so remote a date.</p> + +<p>The "Form of Cury" was in the 28 Eliz., in the possession of the +Stafford family, and was in that year presented to the Queen by +Edward, Lord Stafford, as is to be gathered from a Latin memorandum +at the end, in his lordship's hand, preserved by Pegge and Warner +in their editions. The fellowship between the arts of healing and +cooking is brought to our recollection by a leonine verse at the +end of one of the shorter separate collections above +described:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"Explicit de Coquina</p> + +<p class="i2">Quae est optima Medicina."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The "Form of Cury" will amply remunerate a study. It presents +the earliest mention, so far as I can discern, of olive oil, +cloves, mace, and gourds. In the receipts for making Aigredouce and +Bardolf, sugar, that indispensable feature in the <i>cuisine</i>, +makes its appearance; but it does so, I should add, in such a way +as to lead to the belief that the use of sugar was at this time +becoming more general. The difficulty, at first, seems to have been +in refining it. We encounter here, too, onions under the name +borrowed from the French instead of the Anglo-Saxon form "ynne +leac"; and the prescriptions for making messes of almonds, pork, +peas, and beans are numerous. There is "Saracen sauce," moreover, +possibly as old as the Crusades, and pig with sage stuffing (from +which it was but one step to duck). More than one species of +"galantine" was already known; and I observe the distinction, in +one of the smaller collections printed by Warner, between the +tartlet formed of meat and the tartlet <i>de fritures</i>, of which +the latter approaches more nearly our notion. The imperfect +comprehension of harmonies, which is illustrated by the prehistoric +bag-pudding of King Arthur, still continued in the unnatural union +of flesh with sweets. It is now confined to the cottage, whence +Arthur may have himself introduced it at Court and to the Knights +of the Round Table.</p> + +<p>In this authority, several of the dishes were to be cooked in +<i>white grease</i>, which Warner interprets into <i>lard</i>; +others demanded olive oil; but there is no allusion to butter. +Among the receipts are some for dishes "in gravy"; rabbits and +chickens were to be treated similarly; and the gravy appears to +have consisted merely of the broth in which they were boiled, and +which was flavoured with pounded almonds, powdered ginger, and +sugar.</p> + +<p>The "Liber Cure Cocorum," which is apparently extant only in a +fifteenth century MS., is a metrical treatise, instructing its +readers how to prepare certain dishes, condiments and accessories; +and presents, for the most part, a repetition of what has already +occurred in earlier and more comprehensive undertakings. It is a +curious aid to our knowledge of the manner in which the table of +the well-to-do Englishman was furnished in the time of Henry VI., +and it is so far special, that it deals with the subject more from +a middle-class point of view than the "Regulations for the Royal +Household," and other similar compilations, which I have to bring +under notice. The names, as usual, are often misleading, as in +<i>blanc manger</i>, which is very different from our +<i>blanc-mange</i>; and the receipt for "goose in a hog pot" leaves +one in doubt as to its adaptability to the modern palate. The +poetical ambition of the author has proved a source of +embarrassment here and there; and in the receipt "for a service on +a fish-day" the practitioner is prayed within four lines to cover +his white herring for God's sake, and lay mustard over his red for +God's love, because <i>sake</i> and <i>love</i> rhyme with +<i>take</i> and <i>above</i>.</p> + +<p>The next collection of receipts, which exists in a complete and +homogeneous shape, is the "Noble Book of Cookery," of which an +early MS. copy at Holkham was edited in 1882 by Mrs. Napier, but +which had already been printed by Pynson in 1500, and subsequently +by his successor, John Byddell. This interesting and important +volume commences with a series of descriptions of certain royal and +noble entertainments given on various occasions from the time of +Henry IV. to that of Edward IV., and then proceeds to furnish a +series of directions for the cook of a king's or prince's +household; for, although both at the outset and the conclusion we +are told that these dishes were calculated for all estates, it is +abundantly obvious that they were such as never then, or very long +subsequently, reached much lower than the court or the aristocracy. +There is a less complete copy here of the feast at the enthronement +of Archbishop Nevile. I regret that neither of the old printed +copies is at present accessible. That of 1500 was formerly in the +library at Bulstrode, and I was given by the late Mr. Bradshaw to +understand that the same copy (no other being known) is probably at +Longleat. By referring to Herbert's "Typographical Antiquities," +anyone may see that, if his account (so far as it goes) is to be +trusted, the printed copy varies from the Holkham MS. in many +verbal particulars, and gives the date of Nevile's Feast as +1465.</p> + +<p>The compilation usually known as the "Book of St. Albans," 1486, +is, perhaps, next to the "Noble Book of Cookery," the oldest +receptacle for information on the subject in hand. The former, +however, deals with cookery only in an incidental and special way. +Like Arnold's Chronicle, the St. Albans volume is a miscellany +comprehending nearly all the matters that were apt to interest the +few educated persons who were qualified to peruse its pages; and +amid a variety of allied topics we come here across a catalogue of +terms used in speaking of certain dishes of that day. The reference +is to the prevailing methods of dressing and carving. A deer was +said to be broken, a cony unlaced, a pheasant, partridge, or quail +winged, a pigeon or a woodcock thighed, a plover minced, a mallard +unbraced. They spoke of a salmon or a gurnard as chined, a sole as +loined, a haddock as sided, an eel as trousoned, a pike as +splatted, and a trout as gobbeted.</p> + +<p>It must, I think, be predicated of Tusser's "Husbandry," of +which the last edition published in the writer's lifetime is that +of 1580, that it seems rather to reproduce precepts which occur +elsewhere than to supply the reader with the fruits of his own +direct observation. But there are certain points in it which are +curious and original. He tells the ploughman that, after confession +on Shrove Tuesday, he may go and thresh the fat hen, and if he is +blindfold, kill her, and then dine on fritters and pancakes. At +other times, seed-cakes, wafers, and other light confections.</p> + +<p>It appears to have been usual for the farmer at that date to +allow his hinds roast meat twice a week, on Sundays and on Thursday +nights; but perhaps this was a generous extreme, as Tusser is +unusually liberal in his ideas.</p> + +<p>Tobias Venner, a Somersetshire man, brought out in 1620 his "Via +Recta ad Vitam Longam." He was evidently a very intelligent person, +and affords us the result of his professional experience and +personal observation. He considered two meals a day sufficient for +all ordinary people,—breakfast at eleven and supper at six +(as at the universities); but he thought that children and the aged +or infirm could not be tied by any rule. He condemns "bull's beef" +as rank, unpleasant, and indigestible, and holds it best for the +labourer; which seems to indicate more than anything else the low +state of knowledge in the grazier, when Venner wrote: but there is +something beyond friendly counsel where our author dissuades the +poor from eating partridges, because they are calculated to promote +asthma. "Wherefore," he ingenuously says, "when they shall chance +to meet with a covey of young partridges, they were much better to +bestow them upon such, for whom they are convenient!"</p> + +<p>Salmon, turbot, and sturgeon he also reckoned hard of digestion, +and injurious, if taken to excess; nor does he approve of herrings +and sprats; and anchovies he characterises as the meat of +drunkards. It is the first that we have heard of them.</p> + +<p>He was not a bad judge of what was palatable, and prescribes as +an agreeable and wholesome meal a couple of poached eggs with a +little salt and vinegar, and a few corns of pepper, some bread and +butter, and a draught of pure claret. He gives a receipt—the +earliest I have seen in print—for making metheglin or +hydromel. He does not object to furmety or junket, or indeed to +custards, if they are eaten at the proper seasons, and in the +middle or at the end of meals. But he dislikes mushrooms, and +advises you to wash out your mouth, and rub your teeth and gums +with a dry cloth, after drinking milk.</p> + +<p>The potato, however, he praises as nutritious and pleasant to +the taste, yet, as Gerarde the herbalist also says, flatulent. +Venner refers to a mode of sopping them in wine as existing in his +time. They were sometimes roasted in the embers, and there were +other ways of dressing them. John Forster, of Hanlop, in Bucks, +wrote a pamphlet in 1664 to shew that the more extended cultivation +of this root would be a great national benefit.</p> + +<p>Venner, who practised in the spring and autumn at Bath as a +physician, had no relish for the poorer classes, who did not fare +well at the hands of their superiors in any sense in the excellent +old days. But he liked the Quality, in which he embraced the +Universities, and he tenders them, among other little hints, the +information that green ginger was good for the memory, and conserve +of roses (not the salad of roses immortalised by Apuleius) was a +capital posset against bed-time. "A conserve of rosemary and sage," +says he, "to be often used by students, especially mornings +fasting, doth greatly delight the brain."</p> + +<p>The military ascendency of Spain did not fail to influence the +culinary civilisation of those countries to which it temporarily +extended its rule; and in a Venetian work entitled "Epulario, or +the Italian Banquet," printed in 1549, we recognise the Spanish +tone which had in the sixteenth century communicated itself to the +cookery of the Peninsula, shewing that Charles V. and his son +carried at least one art with them as an indemnity for the havoc +which they committed.</p> + +<p>The nursery rhyme of "Sing a song of sixpence" receives a +singular and diverting illustration from the pages of this +"Epulario," where occurs a receipt "to make Pies that the Birds may +be alive in them, and fly out when it is cut up." Some of the other +more salient beads relate to the mode of dressing sundry dishes in +the Roman and Catalonian fashion, and teach us how to seethe +gourds, as they did in Spain, and to make mustard after the manner +of Padua.</p> + +<p>I propose here to register certain contributions to our +acquaintance with early culinary ideas and practices, which I have +not specifically described:—</p> + +<p>1. The Book of Carving. W. de Worde. 4to, 1508, 1513. Reprinted +down to 1613.</p> + +<p>2. A Proper New Book of Cookery. 12mo, 1546. Often reprinted. It +is a recension of the "Book of Cookery," 1500.</p> + +<p>3. The Treasury of Commodious Conceits and Hidden Secrets. By +John Partridge. 12mo, 1580, 1586; and under the title of "Treasury +of Hidden Secrets," 4to, 1596, 1600, 1637, 1653.</p> + +<p>4. A Book of Cookery. Gathered by A.W. 12mo, 1584, 1591, +etc.</p> + +<p>5. The Good Housewife's Jewel. By Thomas Dawson. In two Parts, +12mo, 1585. A copy of Part 2 of this date is in the British +Museum.</p> + +<p>6. The Good Housewife's Treasury. 12 mo, 1588.</p> + +<p>7. Cookery for all manner of Dutch Victual. Licensed in 1590, +but not otherwise known.</p> + +<p>8. The Good Housewife's Handmaid for the Kitchen. 8vo, 1594.</p> + +<p>9. The Ladies' Practice; or, a plain and easy direction for +ladies and gentlewomen. By John Murrell. Licensed in 1617. Printed +in 1621, and with additions in 1638, 1641, and 1650.</p> + +<p>10. A Book of Cookery. By George Crewe. Licensed in 1623, but +not known.</p> + +<p>11. A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen. 12mo, 1630.</p> + +<p>12. The Ladies' Cabinet Opened. By Patrick, Lord Ruthven. 4to, +1639; 8vo, 1655.</p> + +<p>13. A Curious Treasury of Twenty Rare Secrets. Published by La +Fountaine, an expert Operator. 4to, 1649.</p> + +<p>14. A New Dispensatory of Fourty Physical Receipts. Published by +Salvatore Winter of Naples, an expert Operator. 4to, 1649. Second +edition, enlarged: same date.</p> + +<p>The three last are rather in the class of miscellanies.</p> + +<p>15. Health's Improvement; or, Rules comprising the discovering +the Nature, Method, and Manner of preparing all sorts of Food used +in this Nation. By Thomas Muffet (or Moffat), M.D. Corrected and +enlarged by Christopher Bennett, M.D. 4to, 1655.</p> + +<p>16. The Queen's Closet opened. Incomparable secrets in physick, +chirurgery, Preserving, Candying, and Cookery.... Transcribed from +the true copies of her Majesties own Receipt Books. By W.M., one of +her late Servants.... London, 1655, 8vo. The same, corrected and +revised, with many new and large Additions. 8vo, 1683.</p> + +<p>17. The Perfect Cook: being the most exact directions for the +making all kinds of pastes, with the perfect way teaching how to +raise, season, and make all sorts of pies.... As also the Perfect +English Cook.... To which is added the way of dressing all manner +of Flesh. By M. Marmette. London, 1686, 12mo.</p> + +<p>The writer of the "French Gardener," of which I have had +occasion to say a good deal in my small volume on that subject, +also produced, "Les Délices de la Campagne," which Evelyn +excused himself from translating because, whatever experience he +had in the garden, he had none, he says, in the shambles; and it +was for those who affected such matters to get it done, but not by +him who did the "French Cook" [Footnote: I have not seen this book, +nor is it under that title in the catalogue of the British Museum]. +He seems to imply that the latter, though an excellent work in its +way, had not only been marred in the translation, but was not so +practically advantageous to us as it might have been, "for want of +skill in the kitchen"—in other words, an evil, which still +prevails, was then appreciated by intelligent observers—the +English cook did not understand her business, and the English +mistress, as a rule, was equally ignorant.</p> + +<p>One of the engravings in the "French Gardener" represents women +rolling out paste, preparing vegetables, and boiling conserves.</p> + +<p>There is a rather quaint and attractive class of miscellaneous +receipt-books, not made so on account of any particular merit in +their contents, but by reason of their association with some person +of quality. MS. Sloane 1367, is a narrow octavo volume, for +instance, containing "My Lady Rennelagh's choice Receipts: as also +some of Capt. Gvilt's, who valued them above gold." The value for +us, however, is solely in the link with a noble family and the +little touch about the Captain. There are many more such in public +and private libraries, and they are often mere transcripts from +printed works—select assemblages of directions for dressing +food and curing diseases, formed for domestic reference before the +advent of Dr. Buchan, and Mrs. Glasse, and Mrs. Rundell.</p> + +<p>Among a valuable and extensive assemblage of English and foreign +cookery books in the Patent Office Library, Mr. Ordish has +obligingly pointed out to me a curious 4to MS., on the cover of +which occurs, "Mrs. Mary Dacres her booke, 1666."</p> + +<p>Even in the latter part of the seventeenth century the +old-fashioned dishes, better suited to the country than to the +Court taste, remained in fashion, and are included in +receipt-books, even in that published by Joseph Cooper, who had +been head-cook to Charles I, and who styles his 1654 volume "The +Art of Cookery Refined and Augmented." He gives us two varieties of +oatmeal pudding, French barley pudding, and hasty pudding in a bag. +There is a direction for frying mushrooms, which were growing more +into favour at the table than in the days when Castelvetri, whom I +cite in my monograph on Gardening, was among us. Another dainty is +an ox-palate pie.</p> + +<p>Cooper's Preface is quaint, and surely modest enough. "Though +the cheats," says he, "of some preceding pieces that treated on +this subject (whose Title-pages, like the contents of a weekly +Pamphlet, promised much more than the Books performed) may have +provided this but a cold intertainment at its first coming abroad; +yet I know it will not stay long in the world, before every +rational reader will clear it of all alliance to those false +pretenders. Ladies, forgive my confidence, if I tell you, that I +know this piece will prove your favourite."</p> + +<p>Yet Cooper's performance, in spite of its droll, self-complacent +vein in the address to the Reader, is a judicious and useful +selection, and was, in fact, far more serviceable to the +middle-class gentry than some of those which had gone before. It +adapted itself to sundry conditions of men; but it kept in view +those whose purses were not richly lined enough to pay for dainties +and "subtleties." It is pleasant to see that, after the countless +centuries which had run out since Arthur, the bag-pudding and +hot-pot maintained their ground—good, wholesome, country +fare.</p> + +<p>After the fall of the Monarchy in 1648, the <i>chef de +cuisine</i> probably found his occupation gone, like a greater man +before him; and the world may owe to enforced repose this +condescension to the pen by the deposed minister of a king.</p> + +<p>Soon after the Restoration it was that some Royalist brought out +a small volume called "The Court and Kitchen of Elizabeth, commonly +called Joan Cromwell, the wife of the late Usurper, truly described +and represented," 12mo, 1664. Its design was to throw ridicule on +the parsimony of the Protectoral household. But he recites some +excellent dishes which made their appearance at Oliver's table: +Dutch puddings, Scotch collops of veal, marrow puddings, sack +posset, boiled woodcocks, and warden pies. He seems to have +understood that eight stone of beef were cooked every morning for +the establishment, and all scraps were diligently collected, and +given alternately to the poor of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and +St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The writer acquaints us that, when the +Protector entertained the French ambassador and the Parliament, +after the Sindercome affair, he only spent £1,000 over the +banquet, of which the Lady Protectress managed to save £200. +Cromwell and his wife, we are told, did not care for suppers, but +contented themselves with eggs and slops.</p> + +<p>A story is told here of Cromwell and his wife sitting down to a +loin of veal, and his calling for an orange, which was the sauce he +preferred to that joint, and her highness telling him that he could +not have one, for they were not to be had under a groat.</p> + +<p>The Mansion House still retains the ancient usage of +distributing the relics of a great feast afterwards among the poor, +as Cromwell is said just above to have made a rule of his +household. It was a practice highly essential in the absence of any +organised system of relief.</p> + +<p>The reign of Charles II., which witnessed a relationship with +France of a very different character from that which the English +maintained during the Plantagenet and earlier Tudor rule, was +favourable to the naturalisation of the Parisian school of cookery, +and numerous works were published at and about that time, in which +the development of knowledge in this direction is shown to have +taken place <i>pari passu</i> with the advance in gardening and +arboriculture under the auspices of Evelyn.</p> + +<p>In 1683 we come to a little volume entitled "The Young Cook's +Monitor," by M.H., who made it public for the benefit of his (or +her) scholars; a really valuable and comprehensive manual, wherein, +without any attempt at arrangement, there is an ample assemblage of +directions for preparing for the table all kinds of joints, made +dishes, soups and broths, <i>frigacies</i>, puddings, pies, tarts, +tansies, and jellies. Receipts for pickling are included, and two +ways are shown how we should treat turnips after this wise. Some of +the ingredients proposed for sauces seem to our ears rather +prodigious. In one place a contemporary peruser has inserted an +ironical calculation in MS. to the effect that, whereas a cod's +head could be bought for fourpence, the condiments recommended for +it were not to be had for less than nine shillings. The book +teaches us to make Scotch collops, to pickle lemons and quinces, to +make French bread, to collar beef, pork, or eels, to make +gooseberry fool, to dry beef after the Dutch fashion, to make sack +posset two ways, to candy flowers (violets, roses, etc.) for +salads, to pickle walnuts like mangoes, to make flummery, to make a +carp pie, to pickle French beans and cucumbers, to make damson and +quince wines, to make a French pudding (called a Pomeroy pudding), +to make a leg of pork like a Westphalia ham, to make mutton as +beef, and to pot beef to eat like venison.</p> + +<p>These and many other precepts has M.H. left behind him; and a +sort of companion volume, printed a little before, goes mainly over +the same ground, to wit, "Rare and Excellent Receipts Experienced +and Taught by Mrs. Mary Tillinghast, and now printed for the use of +her scholars only," 1678. The lady appealed to a limited +constituency, like M.H.; but her pages, such as they are (for there +are but thirty), are now <i>publici juris</i>. The lesson to be +drawn from Mistress Tillinghast's printed labours is that, among +our ancestors in 1678, pies and pasties of all sorts, and sweet +pastry, were in increased vogue. Her slender volume is filled with +elucidations on the proper manufacture of paste of various sorts; +and in addition to the pies designated by M.H. we encounter a +Lombard pie, a Battalia pie, an artichoke pie, a potato (or secret) +pie, a chadron [Footnote: A pie chiefly composed of a calf's +chadroa] pie, and a herring pie. The fair author takes care to +instruct us as to the sauces or dressings which are to accompany +certain of her dishes.</p> + +<p>"The Book of Cookery," 1500, of which there was a reprint by +John Byddell about 1530 was often republished, with certain +modifications, down to 1650, under the titles of "A Proper New Book +of Cookery," or "The Book of Cookery." Notwithstanding the presence +of many competitors, it continued to be a public favourite, and +perhaps answered the wants of those who did not desire to see on +their tables the foreign novelties introduced by travellers, or +advertised in collections of receipts borrowed from other +languages.</p> + +<p>In fact, the first half of the seventeenth century did not +witness many accessions to the store of literature on this subject. +But from the time of the Commonwealth, the supply of works of +reference for the housekeeper and the cook became much more regular +and extensive. In 1653, Selden's friend, the Countess of Kent, +brought out her "Choice Manual of Physic and Chirurgery," annexing +to it receipts for preserving and candying; and there were a few +others, about the same time, of whose works I shall add here a +short list:—</p> + +<p>1. The Accomplished Cook. By Robert May. 8vo, 1660. Fifth +edition, 8vo, 1685.</p> + +<p>2. The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected. By Will. Rabisha. 8vo, +1661.</p> + +<p>3. The Queen-like Closet: a Rich Cabinet, stored with all manner +of rare receipts. By Hannah Wolley. 8vo, 1670.</p> + +<p>4. The True Way of Preserving and Candying, and making several +sorts of Sweetmeats. Anon. 8vo, 1681.</p> + +<p>5. The Complete Servant-Maid. 12 mo, 1682-3.</p> + +<p>6. A Choice Collection of Select Remedies.... Together with +excellent Directions for Cooking, and also for Preserving and +Conserving. By G. Hartman [a Chemist]. 8vo, 1684.</p> + +<p>7. A Treatise of Cleanness in Meats and Drinks, of the +Preparation of Food, etc. By Thomas Tryon. 4to, 1682.</p> + +<p>8. The Genteel Housekeeper's Pastime; or, The mode of Carving at +the Table represented in a Pack of Playing Cards. 8vo, 1693.</p> + +<p>9. A New Art of Brewing Beer, Ale, and other sorts of Liquors. +By T. Tryon. 12mo, 1690-91.</p> + +<p>10. The Way to get Wealth; or, A New and Ready Way to make +twenty-three sorts of Wines, equal to that of France ... also to +make Cyder.... By the same. 12mo, 1702.</p> + +<p>11. A Treatise of Foods in General. By Louis Lemery. Translated +into English. 8vo, 1704.</p> + +<p>12. England's Newest Way in all sorts of Cookery. By Henry +Howard, Free Cook of London. Second edition, 8vo, 1708.</p> + +<p>13. Royal Cookery; or, the Complete Court-Cook. By Patrick Lamb, +Esq., near 50 years Master-Cook to their late Majesties King +Charles II., King James II., King William, Mary, and to her present +Majesty, Queen Anne. 8vo, 1710. Third edition, 8vo, 1726.</p> + +<p>14. The Queen's Royal Cookery. By J. Hall, Free Cook of London. +12mo, 1713-15.</p> + +<p>15. Mrs. Mary Eales' Receipts, Confectioner to her late Majesty, +Queen Anne. 8vo, 1718.</p> + +<p>16. A Collection of three hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physic, +and Surgery. In two parts, 8vo, 1729.</p> + +<p>17. The Complete City and Country Cook. By Charles Carter. 8vo, +1732.</p> + +<p>18. The Complete Housewife. Seventh edition, 8vo, 1736.</p> + +<p>19. The Complete Family Piece: A very choice Collection of +Receipts. Second edition, 8vo, 1737.</p> + +<p>20. The Modern Cook. By Vincent La Chapelle, Cook to the Prince +of Orange. Third edition. 8vo, 1744.</p> + +<p>21. A Treatise of all sorts of Foods. By L. Lemery. Translated +by D. Hay, M.D. 8vo, 1745.</p> + +<p>This completes the list of books, so far as they have fallen in +my way, or been pointed out by the kindness of friends, down to the +middle of the last century.</p> + +<p>It was probably Charles, Duke of Bolton (1698-1722), who was at +one time Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and who in the beginning of +his ducal career, at all events, resided in St. James's Street, +that possessed successively as head-cooks John Nott and John +Middleton. To each of these artists we owe a volume of considerable +pretensions, and the "Cook's and Confectioner's Dictionary," 1723, +by the former, is positively a very entertaining and cyclopedic +publication. Nott inscribes his book "To all Good Housewives," and +declares that he placed an Introduction before it merely because +fashion had made it as strange for a book to appear without one as +for a man to be seen in church without a neckcloth or a lady +without a hoop-petticoat. He congratulates himself and his readers +on living in a land flowing with milk and honey, quotes the saw +about God sending meat and somebody else sending cooks, and +accounts for his omission of pigments by saying, like a gallant +man, that his countrywomen little needed such things. Nott opens +with <i>Some Divertisements in Cookery, us'd at Festival-Times, as +Twelfth-Day, etc.</i>, which are highly curious, and his dictionary +itself presents the novelty of being arranged, lexicon-wise, +alphabetically. He seems to have been a fairly-read and intelligent +man, and cites, in the course of his work, many celebrated names +and receipts. Thus we have:—To brew ale Sir Jonas Moore's +way; to make Dr. Butler's purging ale; ale of health and strength, +by the Viscount St. Albans; almond butter the Cambridge way; to +dress a leg of mutton <i>à la Dauphine</i>; to dress mutton +the Turkish way; to stew a pike the City way. Dr. Twin's, Dr. +Blacksmith's, and Dr. Atkin's almond butter; an amber pudding, +according to the Lord Conway's receipt; the Countess of Rutland's +Banbury cake; to make Oxford cake; to make Portugal cakes; and so +on. Nott embraces every branch of his subject, and furnishes us +with bills of fare for every month of the year, terms and rules of +carving, and the manner of setting out a dessert of fruits and +sweetmeats. There is a singular process explained for making China +broth, into which an ounce of china is to enter. Many new ways had +been gradually found of utilising the materials for food, and +vegetables were growing more plentiful. The carrot was used in +soups, puddings, and tarts. Asparagus and spinach, which are +wanting in all the earlier authorities, were common, and the +barberry had come into favour. We now begin to notice more frequent +mention of marmalades, blanc-manges, creams, biscuits, and sweet +cakes. There is a receipt for a carraway cake, for a cabbage +pudding, and for a chocolate tart.</p> + +<p>The production by his Grace of Bolton's other <i>chef</i>, John +Middleton, is "Five Hundred New Receipts in Cookery, Confectionary, +Pastry, Preserving, Conserving, Pickling," and the date is 1734. +Middleton doubtless borrowed a good deal from his predecessor; but +he also appears to have made some improvements in the science. We +have here the methods, to dress pikes <i>à la sauce +Robert</i>, to make blackcaps (apples baked in their skins); to +make a Wood Street cake; to make Shrewsbury cakes; to dress a leg +of mutton like a gammon of bacon; to dress eggs <i>à la +Augemotte</i>; to make a dish of quaking pudding of several +colours; to make an Italian pudding, and to make an Olio. The eye +seems to meet for the first time with hasty pudding, plum-porridge +(an experiment toward the solidification of the older plum-broth), +rolled beef-steaks, samphire, hedgehog cream (so called from its +shape, currants being used for the eyes, and cut almonds for the +bristles), cocks'-combs, orange, spinach and bean tarts, custards +in cups (the 1723 book talks of jellies served on china plates), +and lastly, jam—the real jam of these days, made to last, as +we are told, the whole year. There is an excellent prescription for +making elderberry wine, besides, in which Malaga raisins are to be +largely used. "In one year," says our <i>chef</i>, "it will be as +good and as pleasant as French wine."</p> + +<p>Let us extract the way "to make Black-caps":—"Take a dozen +of good pippins, cut them in halves, and take out the cores; then +place them on a right Mazarine dish with the skins on, the cut side +downwards; put to them a very little water, scrape on them some +loaf sugar, put them in a hot oven till the skins are burnt black, +and your apples tender; serve them on Plates strew'd over with +sugar."</p> + +<p>Of these books, I select the preface to "The Complete +Housewife," by E. Smith, 1736, because it appears to be a somewhat +more ambitious endeavour in an introductory way than the authors of +such undertakings usually hazard. From the last paragraph we +collect that the writer was a woman, and throughout she makes us +aware that she was a person of long practical experience. Indeed, +as the volume comprehends a variety of topics, including medicines, +Mrs. or Miss Smith must have been unusually observant, and have had +remarkable opportunities of making herself conversant with matters +beyond the ordinary range of culinary specialists. I propose +presently to print a few samples of her workmanship, and a list of +her principal receipts in that section of the book with which I am +just now concerned. First of all, here is the Preface, which +begins, as we see, by a little piece of plagiarism from Nott's +exordium:—</p> + +<p>"<i>PREFACE.</i></p> + +<p>"It being grown as unfashionable for a book now to appear in +publick without a preface, as for a lady to appear at a ball +without a hoop-petticoat, I shall conform to custom for +fashion-sake, and not through any necessity. The subject being both +common and universal, needs no arguments to introduce it, and being +so necessary for the gratification of the appetite, stands in need +of no encomiums to allure persons to the practice of it; since +there are but few now-a-days who love not good eating and drinking. +Therefore I entirely quit those two topicks; but having three or +four pages to be filled up previous to the subject it self, I shall +employ them on a subject I think new, and not yet handled by any of +the pretenders to the art of cookery; and that is, the antiquity of +it; which if it either instruct or divert, I shall be satisfied, if +you are so.</p> + +<p>"Cookrey, confectionary, &c., like all other sciences and +arts, had their infancy, and did not arrive at a state of maturity +but by slow degrees, various experiments, and a long tract of time: +for in the infant-age of the world, when the new inhabitants +contented themselves with the simple provision of nature, viz. the +vegetable diet, the fruits and production of the teeming ground, as +they succeeded one another in their several peculiar seasons, the +art of cookery was unknown; apples, nuts, and herbs, were both meat +and sauce, and mankind stood in no need of any additional sauces, +ragoes, &c., but a good appetite; which a healthful and +vigorous constitution, a clear, wholesome, odoriferous air, +moderate exercise, and an exemption from anxious cares, always +supplied them with.</p> + +<p>"We read of no palled appetites, but such as proceeded from the +decays of nature by reason of an advanced old age; but on the +contrary a craving stomach, even upon a death-bed, as in Isaac: nor +no sicknesses but those that were both the first and the last, +which proceeded from the struggles of nature, which abhorred the +dissolution of soul and body; no physicians to prescribe for the +sick, nor no apothecaries to compound medicines for two thousand +years and upwards. Food and physick were then one and the same +thing.</p> + +<p>"But when men began to pass from a vegetable to an animal diet, +and feed on flesh, fowls, and fish, then seasonings grew necessary, +both to render it more palatable and savoury, and also to preserve +that part which was not immediately spent from stinking and +corruption: and probably salt was the first seasoning discover'd; +for of salt we read, Gen. xiv.</p> + +<p>"And this seems to be necessary, especially for those who were +advanced in age, whose palates, with their bodies, had lost their +vigour as to taste, whose digestive faculty grew weak and impotent; +and thence proceeded the use of soops and savoury messes; so that +cookery then began to become a science, though luxury had not +brought it to the height of an art. Thus we read, that Jacob made +such palatable pottage, that Esau purchased a mess of it at the +extravagant price of his birthright. And Isaac, before by his last +will and testament he bequeathed his blessing to his son Esau, +required him to make some savoury meat, such as his soul loved, +<i>i.e.</i>, such as was relishable to his blunted palate.</p> + +<p>"So that seasonings of some sort were then in use; though +whether they were salt, savoury herbs, or roots only; or spices, +the fruits of trees, such as pepper, cloves, nutmeg; bark, as +cinnamon; roots, as ginger, &c., I shall not determine.</p> + +<p>"As for the methods of the cookery of those times, boiling or +stewing seems to have been the principal; broiling or roasting the +next; besides which, I presume scarce any other were used for two +thousand years and more; for I remember no other in the history of +Genesis.</p> + +<p>"That Esau was the first cook, I shall not presume to assert; +for Abraham gave order to dress a fatted calf; but Esau is the +first person mentioned that made any advances beyond plain +dressing, as boiling, roasting, &c. For though we find indeed, +that Rebecca his mother was accomplished with the skill of making +savoury meat as well as he, yet whether he learned it from her, or +she from him, is a question too knotty for me to determine.</p> + +<p>"But cookery did not long remain a simple science, or a bare +piece of housewifry or family ceconomy, but in process of time, +when luxury entered the world, it grew to an art, nay a trade; for +in I Sam. viii. 13. when the Israelites grew fashionists, and would +have a king, that they might be like the rest of their neighbours, +we read of cooks, confectioners, &c.</p> + +<p>"This art being of universal use, and in constant practice, has +been ever since upon the improvement; and we may, I think, with +good reason believe, is arrived at its greatest height and +perfection, if it is not got beyond it, even to its declension; for +whatsoever new, upstart, out-of-the-way messes some humourists have +invented, such as stuffing a roasted leg of mutton with pickled +herring, and the like, are only the sallies of a capricious +appetite, and debauching rather than improving the art itself.</p> + +<p>"The art of cookery, &c., is indeed diversified according to +the diversity of nations or countries; and to treat of it in that +latitude would fill an unportable volume; and rather confound than +improve those that would accomplish themselves with it. I shall +therefore confine what I have to communicate within the limits of +practicalness and usefulness, and so within the compass of a +manual, that shall neither burthen the hands to hold, the eyes in +reading, nor the mind in conceiving.</p> + +<p>"What you will find in the following sheets, are directions +generally for dressing after the best, most natural, and wholesome +manner, such provisions as are the product of our own country, and +in such a manner as is most agreeable to English palates: saving +that I have so far temporized, as, since we have to our disgrace so +fondly admired the French tongue, French modes, and also French +messes, to present you now and then with such receipts of French +cookery, as I think may not be disagreeable to English palates.</p> + +<p>"There are indeed already in the world various books that treat +on this subject, and which bear great names, as cooks to kings, +princes, and noblemen, and from which one might justly expect +something more than many, if not most of these I have read, +perform, but found my self deceived in my expectations; for many of +them to us are impracticable, others whimsical, others unpalatable, +unless to depraved palates; some unwholesome, many things copied +from old authors, and recommended without (as I am persuaded) the +copiers ever having had any experience of the palatableness, or had +any regard to the wholesomness of them; which two things ought to +be the standing rules, that no pretenders to cookery ought to +deviate from. And I cannot but believe, that those celebrated +performers, notwithstanding all their professions of having +ingenuously communicated their art, industriously concealed their +best receipts from the publick.</p> + +<p>"But what I here present the world with is the product of my own +experience, and that for the space of thirty years and upwards; +during which time I have been constantly employed in fashionable +and noble families, in which the provisions ordered according to +the following directions, have had the general approbation of such +as have been at many noble entertainments.</p> + +<p>"These receipts are all suitable to English constitutions and +English palates, wholesome, toothsome, all practicable and easy to +be performed. Here are those proper for a frugal, and also for a +sumptuous table, and if rightly observed, will prevent the spoiling +of many a good dish of meat, the waste of many good materials, the +vexation that frequently attends such mismanagements, and the +curses not unfrequently bestowed on cooks with the usual +reflection, that whereas God sends good meat, the devil sends +cooks.</p> + +<p>"As to those parts that treat of confectionary, pickles, +cordials, English wines, &c., what I have said in relation to +cookery is equally applicable to them also.</p> + +<p>"It is true, I have not been so numerous in receipts as some who +have gone before me, but I think I have made amends in giving none +but what are approved and practicable, and fit either for a genteel +or a noble Table; and altho' I have omitted odd and fantastical +messes, yet I have set down a considerable number of receipts.</p> + +<p>"The treatise is divided into ten parts: cookery contains above +an hundred receipts, pickles fifty, puddings above fifty, pastry +above forty, cakes forty, creams and jellies above forty, +preserving an hundred, made wines forty, cordial waters and powders +above seventy, medicines and salves above two hundred; in all near +eight hundred.</p> + +<p>"I have likewise presented you with schemes engraven on +copper-plates for the regular disposition or placing the dishes of +provision on the table according to the best manner, both for +summer and winter, first and second courses, &c.</p> + +<p>"As for the receipts for medicines, salves, ointments, good in +several diseases, wounds, hurts, bruises, aches, pains, &c., +which amount to above two hundred, they are generally family +receipts, that have never been made publick; excellent in their +kind, and approved remedies, which have not been obtained by me +without much difficulty; and of such efficacy in distempers, +&c., to which they are appropriated, that they have cured when +all other means have failed; and a few of them which I have +communicated to a friend, have procured a very handsome +livelihood.</p> + +<p>"They are very proper for those generous, charitable, and +Christian gentlewomen that have a disposition to be serviceable to +their poor country neighbours, labouring under any of the afflicted +circumstances mentioned; who by making the medicines, and +generously contributing as occasions offer, may help the poor in +their afflictions, gain their good-will and wishes, entitle +themselves to their blessings and prayers, and also have the +pleasure of seeing the good they do in this world, and have good +reason to hope for a reward (though not by way of merit) in the +world to come.</p> + +<p>"As the whole of this collection has cost me much pains and a +thirty years' diligent application, and I have had experience of +their use and efficacy, I hope they will be as kindly accepted, as +by me they are generously offered to the publick: and if they prove +to the advantage of many, the end will be answered that is proposed +by her that is ready to serve the publick in what she may."</p> + +<br /> + + +<center><img alt="" src="images/100.png" /></center> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<a name="5"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/101.png" /></center> + +<h2>COOKERY BOOKS.</h2> + +<h3>PART II.</h3> + +<h3>SELECT EXTRACTS FROM AN EARLY RECEIPT-BOOK.</h3> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>The earliest school of English Cookery, which had such a marked +Anglo-Norman complexion, has been familiarised to us by the +publication of Warner's <i>Antiquitates Culinaricae</i>, 1791, and +more recently by the appearance of the "Noble Book of Cookery" in +Mrs. Napier's edition, not to mention other aids in the same way, +which are accessible; and it seemed to be doing a better service, +when it became a question of selecting a few specimens of old +receipts, to resort to the representative of a type of culinary +philosophy and sentiment somewhere midway between those which have +been rendered easy of reference and our own. I have therefore given +in the few following pages, in a classified shape, some of the +highly curious contents of E. Smith's "Compleat Housewife," 1736, +which maybe securely taken to exhibit the state of knowledge in +England upon this subject in the last quarter of the seventeenth +century and first quarter of the succeeding one. In the work itself +no attempt at arrangement is offered.</p> + +<h4>I.—MEAT, POULTRY, ETC.</h4> + +<p><i>To make Dutch-beef</i>:—Take the lean part of a buttock +of beef raw; rub it well with brown sugar all over, and let it lie +in a pan or tray two or three hours, turning it three or four +times; then salt it well with common salt and salt-petre, and let +it lie a fortnight, turning it every day; then roll it very strait +in a coarse cloth, and put it in a cheese-press a day and a night, +and hang it to dry in a chimney. When you boil it, you must put it +in a cloth: when 'tis cold, it will cut out into shivers as +Dutch-beef.</p> + +<p><i>To dry Mutton to cut out in Shivers as +Dutch-Beef</i>:—Take a middling leg of mutton, then take half +a pound of brown sugar, and rub it hard all over your mutton, and +let it lie twenty-four hours; then take an ounce and half of +saltpetre, and mix it with a pound of common salt, and rub that all +over the mutton every other day, till 'tis all on, and let it lie +nine days longer; keep the place free from brine, then hang it up +to dry three days, then smoke it in a chimney where wood is burnt; +the fire must not be too hot; a fortnight will dry it. Boil it like +other hams, and when 'tis cold, cut it out in shivers like +Dutch-beef.</p> + +<p><i>To stuff a Shoulder or Leg of Mutton with +Oysters</i>:—Take a little grated bread, some beef-suet, +yolks of hard eggs, three anchovies, a bit of an onion, salt and +pepper, thyme and winter-savoury, twelve oysters, some nutmeg +grated; mix all these together, and shred them very fine, and work +them up with raw eggs like a paste, and stuff your mutton under the +skin in the thickest place, or where you please, and roast it; and +for sauce take some of the oyster-liquor, some claret, two or three +anchovies, a little nutmeg, a bit of an onion, the rest of the +oysters: stew all these together, then take out the onion, and put +it under the mutton.</p> + +<p><i>To marinade a Leg of Lamb</i>:—Take a leg of lamb, cut +it in pieces the bigness of a half-crown; hack them with the back +of a knife; then take an eschalot, three or four anchovies, some +cloves, mace, nutmeg, all beaten; put your meat in a dish, and +strew the seasoning over it, and put it in a stew-pan, with as much +white-wine as will cover it, and let it be two hours; then put it +all together in a frying-pan, and let it be half enough; then take +it out and drain it through a colander, saving the liquor, and put +to your liquor a little pepper and salt, and half a pint of gravy; +dip your meat in yolks of eggs, and fry it brown in butter; thicken +up your sauce with yolks of eggs and butter, and pour it in the +dish with your meat: lay sweet-breads and forc'd-meat balls over +your meat; dip them in eggs, and fry them. Garnish with lemon.</p> + +<p><i>A Leg of Mutton à-la-Daube</i>:—Lard your meat +with bacon through, but slant-way; half roast it; take it off the +spit, and put it in a small pot as will boil it; two quarts of +strong broth, a pint of white-wine, some vinegar, whole spice, +bay-leaves, green onions, savoury, sweet-marjoram; when 'tis stew'd +enough, make sauce of some of the liquor, mushrooms, lemon cut like +dice, two or three anchovies: thicken it with browned butter. +Garnish with lemon.</p> + +<p><i>To fry Cucumbers for Mutton Sauce</i>:—You must brown +some butter in a pan, and cut the cucumbers in thin slices; drain +them from the water, then fling them into the pan, and when they +are fried brown, put in a little pepper and salt, a bit of an onion +and gravy, and let them stew together, and squeeze in some juice of +lemon; shake them well, and put them under your mutton.</p> + +<p><i>To make Pockets</i>:—Cut three slices out of a leg of +veal, the length of a finger, the breadth of three fingers, the +thickness of a thumb, with a sharp penknife; give it a slit through +the middle, leaving the bottom and each side whole, the thickness +of a straw; then lard the top with small fine lards of bacon; then +make a forc'd-meat of marrow, sweet-breads, and lamb-stones just +boiled, and make it up after 'tis seasoned and beaten together with +the yolks of two eggs, and put it into your pockets as if you were +filling a pincushion; then sew up the top with fine thread, flour +them, and put melted butter on them, and bake them; roast three +sweet-breads to put between, and serve them with gravy-sauce.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Florendine of Veal</i>:—Take the kidney of a +loin of veal, fat and all, and mince it very fine; then chop a few +herbs, and put to it, and add a few currants; season it with +cloves, mace, nutmeg, and a little salt; and put in some yolks of +eggs, and a handful of grated bread, a pippin or two chopt, some +candied lemon-peel minced small, some sack, sugar, and +orange-flower-water. Put a sheet of puff-paste at the bottom of +your dish; put this in, and cover it with another; close it up, and +when 'tis baked, scrape sugar on it; and serve it hot.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Tureiner</i>:—Take a china pot or bowl, and +fill it as follows: at the bottom lay some fresh butter; then put +in three or four beef-steaks larded with bacon; then cut some +veal-steaks from the leg; hack them, and wash them over with the +yolk of an egg, and afterwards lay it over with forc'd-meat, and +roll it up, and lay it in with young chickens, pigeons and rabbets, +some in quarters, some in halves; sweet-breads, lamb-stones, +cocks-combs, palates after they are boiled, peeled, and cut in +slices: tongues, either hogs or calves, sliced, and some larded +with bacon: whole yolks of hard eggs, pistachia-nuts peeled, forced +balls, some round, some like an olive, lemon sliced, some with the +rind on, barberries and oysters: season all these with pepper, +salt, nutmeg, and sweet-herbs, mix'd together after they are cut +very small, and strew it on every thing as you put it in your pot: +then put in a quart of gravy, and some butter on the top, and cover +it close with a lid of puff-paste, pretty thick. Eight hours will +bake it.</p> + +<p><i>To make Hams of Pork like Westphalia</i>:—To two large +hams, or three small ones, take three pounds of common salt, and +two pounds and half of brown coarse sugar; mix both together, and +rub it well into the hams, and let them lie seven days, turning +them every day, and rub the salt in them, when you turn them; then +take four ounces of salt-petre beat small, and mix with two +handfuls of common salt, and rub that well in your hams, and let +them lie a fortnight longer: then hang them up high in a chimney to +smoke.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Ragoo of Pigs-Ears</i>:—Take a quantity of +pigs-ears, and boil them in one half wine and the other water; cut +them in small pieces, then brown a little butter, and put them in, +and a pretty deal of gravy, two anchovies, an eschalot or two, a +little mustard, and some slices of lemon, some salt, and nutmeg; +stew all these together, and shake it up thick. Garnish the dish +with barberries.</p> + +<p><i>To collar a Pig</i>:—Cut off the head of your pig; then +cut the body asunder; bone it, and cut two collars off each side; +then lay it in water to take out the blood; then take sage and +parsley, and shred them very small, and mix them with pepper, salt, +and nutmeg, and strew some on every side, or collar, and roll it +up, and tye it with coarse tape; so boil them in fair water and +salt, till they are very tender: put two or three blades of mace in +the kettle, and when they are enough, take them up, and lay them in +something to cool; strain out some of the liquor, and add to it +some vinegar and salt, a little white-wine, and three or four +bay-leaves; give it a boil up, and when 'tis cold put it to the +collars, and keep them for use.</p> + +<p><i>A Fricasy of Double Tripe</i>:—Cut your tripe in +slices, two inches long, and put it into a stew-pan; put to it a +quarter of a pound of capers, as much samphire shred, half a pint +of strong broth, as much white-wine, a bunch of sweet-herbs, a +lemon shred small; stew all these together till 'tis tender; then +take it off the fire, and thicken up the liquor with the yolks of +three or four eggs, a little parsley boiled green and chopp'd, some +grated nutmeg and salt; shake it well together. Serve it on +sippets. Garnish with lemon.</p> + +<p><i>To pot a Swan</i>:—Bone and skin your swan, and beat +the flesh in a mortar, taking out the strings as you beat it; then +take some clear fat bacon, and beat with the swan, and when 'tis of +a light flesh colour, there is bacon enough in it; and when 'tis +beaten till 'tis like dough, 'tis enough; then season it with +pepper, salt, cloves, mace, and nutmeg, all beaten fine; mix it +well with your flesh, and give it a beat or two all together; then +put it in an earthen pot, with a little claret and fair water, and +at the top two pounds of fresh butter spread over it; cover it with +coarse paste, and bake it with bread; then turn it out into a dish, +and squeeze it gently to get out the moisture; then put it in a pot +fit for it; and when 'tis cold, cover it over with clarified +butter, and next day paper it up. In this manner you may do goose, +duck, or beef, or hare's flesh.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Poloe</i>:—Take a pint of rice, boil it in as +much water as will cover it; when your rice is half boiled, put in +your fowl, with a small onion, a blade or two of mace, some whole +pepper, and some salt; when 'tis enough, put the fowl in the dish, +and pour the rice over it.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Pulpatoon of Pigeons</i>:—Take mushrooms, +palates, oysters, sweet-breads, and fry them in butter; then put +all these into a strong gravy; give them a heat over the fire, and +thicken up with an egg and a bit of butter; then half roast six or +eight pigeons, and lay them in a crust of forc'd-meat as follows: +scrape a pound of veal, and two pounds of marrow, and beat it +together in a stone mortar, after 'tis shred very fine; then season +it with salt, pepper, spice, and put in hard eggs, anchovies and +oysters; beat all together, and make the lid and sides of your pye +of it; first lay a thin crust into your pattipan, then put on your +forc'd-meat; then lay an exceeding thin crust over them; then put +in your pigeons and other ingredients, with a little butter on the +top. Bake it two hours.</p> + +<p><i>To keep Green Peas till Christmas</i>:—Shell what +quantity you please of young peas; put them in the pot when the +water boils; let them have four or five warms; then first pour them +into a colander, and then spread a cloth on a table, and put them +on that, and dry them well in it: have bottles ready dry'd, and +fill them to the necks, and pour over them melted mutton-fat, and +cork them down very close, that no air come to them: set them in +your cellar, and when you use them, put them into boiling water, +with a spoonful of fine sugar, and a good piece of butter: and when +they are enough, drain and butter them.</p> + +<h4>II.—MEAT PIES AND PUDDINGS.</h4> + +<p><i>A Battalia Pye</i>:—Take four small chickens, four +squab pigeons, four sucking rabbets; cut them in pieces, season +them with savoury spice, and lay 'em in the pye, with four +sweet-breads sliced, and as many sheep's-tongues, two shiver'd +palates, two pair of lamb-stones, twenty or thirty coxcombs, with +savoury-balls and oysters. Lay on butter, and close the pye. A +lear.</p> + +<p><i>To make an Olio Pye</i>:—Make your pye ready; then take +the thin collops of the but-end of a leg of veal; as many as you +think will fill your pye; hack them with the back of a knife, and +season them with pepper, salt, cloves, and mace; wash over your +collops with a bunch of feathers dipped in eggs, and have in +readiness a good hand-full of sweet-herbs shred small; the herbs +must be thyme, parsley, and spinage; and the yolks of eight hard +eggs, minced, and a few oysters parboiled and chopt; some beef-suet +shred very fine. Mix these together, and strew them over your +collops, and sprinkle a little orange-flower-water on them, and +roll the collops up very close, and lay them in your pye, strewing +the seasoning that is left over them; put butter on the top, and +close up your pye; when 'tis drawn, put in gravy, and one anchovy +dissolved in it, and pour it in very hot: and you may put in +artichoke-bottoms and chesnuts, if you please, or sliced lemon, or +grapes scalded, or what else is in season; but if you will make it +a right savoury pye leave them out.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Lumber Pye</i>:—Take a pound and a half of +veal, parboil it, and when 'tis cold chop it very small, with two +pound of beef-suet, and some candied orange-peel; some sweet-herbs, +as thyme, sweet-marjoram, and an handful of spinage; mince the +herbs small before you put them to the other; so chop all together, +and a pippin or two; then add a handful or two of grated bread, a +pound and a half of currants, washed and dried; some cloves, mace, +nutmeg, a little salt, sugar and sack, and put to all these as many +yolks of raw eggs, and whites of two, as will make it a moist +forc'd-meat; work it with your hands into a body, and make it into +balls as big as a turkey's egg; then having your coffin made put in +your balls. Take the marrow out of three or four bones as whole as +you can: let your marrow lie a little in water, to take out the +blood and splinters; then dry it, and dip it in yolk of eggs; +season it with a little salt, nutmeg grated, and grated bread; lay +it on and between your forc'd-meat balls, and over that sliced +citron, candied orange and lemon, eryngo-roots, preserved +barberries; then lay on sliced lemon, and thin slices of butter +over all; then lid your pye, and bake it; and when 'tis drawn, have +in readiness a caudle made of white-wine and sugar, and thicken'd +with butter and eggs, and pour it hot into your pye.</p> + +<p><i>Very fine Hogs Puddings</i>:—Shred four pounds of +beef-suet very fine, mix with it two pounds of fine sugar powder'd, +two grated nutmegs, some mace beat, and a little salt, and three +pounds of currants wash'd and pick'd; beat twenty-four yolks, +twelve whites of eggs, with a little sack; mix all well together, +and fill your guts, being clean and steep'd in orange-flower-water; +cut your guts quarter and half long, fill them half full; tye at +each end, and again thus oooo. Boil them as others, and cut them in +balls when sent to the table.</p> + +<p><i>To make Plumb-Porridge</i>:—Take a leg and shin of beef +to ten gallons of water, boil it very tender, and when the broth is +strong, strain it out, wipe the pot, and put in the broth again; +slice six penny-loaves thin, cutting off the top and bottom; put +some of the liquor to it, cover it up, and let it stand a quarter +of an hour, and then put it in your pot, let it boil a quarter of +an hour, then put in five pounds of currants, let them boil a +little, and put in five pounds of raisins, and two pounds of +prunes, and let them boil till they swell; then put in three +quarters of an ounce of mace, half an ounce of cloves, two nutmegs, +all of them beat fine, and mix it with a little liquor cold, and +put them in a very little while, and take off the pot, and put in +three pounds of sugar, a little salt, a quart of sack, and a quart +of claret, the juice of two or three lemons; you may thicken with +sagoe instead of bread, if you please; pour them into earthen pans, +and keep them for use.</p> + +<h4>III.—SWEET-PUDDINGS, PIES, ETC.</h4> + +<p><i>To make New-College Puddings</i>:—Grate a penny stale +loaf, and put to it a like quantity of beef-suet finely shred, and +a nutmeg grated, a little salt, some currants, and then beat some +eggs in a little sack, and some sugar, and mix all together, and +knead it as stiff as for manchet, and make it up in the form and +size of a turkey-egg, but a little flatter; then take a pound of +butter, and put it in a dish, and set the dish over a clear fire in +a chafing-dish, and rub your butter about the dish till 'tis +melted; put your puddings in, and cover the dish, but often turn +your puddings, until they are all brown alike, and when they are +enough, scrape sugar over them, and serve them up hot for a side +dish.</p> + +<p>You must let the paste lie a quarter of an hour before you make +up your puddings.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Spread-Eagle pudding</i>:—Cut off the crust +of three half-penny rolls, then slice them into your pan; then set +three pints of milk over the fire, make it scalding hot, but not +boil; so pour it over your bread, and cover it close, and let it +stand an hour; then put in a good spoonful of sugar, a very little +salt, a nutmeg grated, a pound of suet after 'tis shred, half a +pound of currants washed and picked, four spoonfuls of cold milk, +ten eggs, but five of the whites; and when all is in, stir it, but +not till all is in; then mix it well, butter a dish; less than an +hour will bake it.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Cabbage Pudding</i>:—Take two pounds of the +lean part of a leg of veal; take of beef-suet the like quantity; +chop them together, then beat them together in a stone mortar, +adding to it half a little cabbage, scalded, and beat that with +your meat; then season it with mace and nutmeg, a little pepper and +salt, some green gooseberries, grapes, or barberries in the time of +year. In the winter put in a little verjuice; then mix all well +together, with the yolks of four or five eggs well beaten; then +wrap it up in green cabbage leaves; tye a cloth over it, boil it an +hour: melt butter for sauce.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Calf's Foot Pudding</i>:—Take two calf's feet +finely shred; then of biskets grated, and stale mackaroons broken +small, the quantity of a penny loaf; then add a pound of beef-suet, +very finely shred, half a pound of currants, a quarter of a pound +of sugar; some cloves, mace and nutmeg, beat fine; a very little +salt, some sack and orange-flower-water, some citron and candied +orange-peel; work all these well together, with yolks of eggs; if +you boil it, put it in the caul of a breast of veal, and tie it +over with a cloth; it must boil four hours. For sauce, melt butter, +with a little sack and sugar; if you bake it, put some paste in the +bottom of the dish, but none on the brim; then melt half a pound of +butter, and mix with your stuff, and put it in your dish, and stick +lumps of marrow in it; bake it three or four hours; scrape sugar +over it, and serve it hot.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Chestnut Pudding</i>:—Take a dozen and half +of chestnuts, put them in a skillet of water, and set them on the +fire till they will blanch; then blanch them, and when cold, put +them in cold water, then stamp them in a mortar, with +orange-flower-water and sack, till they are very small; mix them in +two quarts of cream, and eighteen yolks of eggs, the whites of +three or four; beat the eggs with sack, rose-water and sugar; put +it in a dish with puff-paste; stick in some lumps of marrow or +fresh butter, and bake it.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Brown-bread Pudding</i>:—Take half a pound of +brown bread, and double the weight of it in beef-suet; a quarter of +a pint of cream, the blood of a fowl, a whole nutmeg, some +cinnamon, a spoonful of sugar, six yolks of eggs, three whites: mix +it all well together, and boil it in a wooden dish two hours. Serve +it with sack and sugar, and butter melted.</p> + +<p><i>To make a baked Sack Pudding</i>:—Take a pint of cream, +and turn it to a curd with a sack; then bruise the curd very small +with a spoon; then grate in two Naples-biskets, or the inside of a +stale penny-loaf, and mix it well with the curd, and half a nutmeg +grated; some fine sugar, and the yolks of four eggs, the whites of +two, beaten with two spoonfuls of sack; then melt half a pound of +fresh butter, and stir all together till the oven is hot. Butter a +dish, and put it in, and sift some sugar over it, just as 'tis +going into the oven half an hour will bake it.</p> + +<p><i>To make an Orange Pudding</i>:—Take two large Sevil +oranges, and grate off the rind, as far as they are yellow; then +put your oranges in fair water, and let them boil till they are +tender; shift the water three or four times to take out the +bitterness; when they are tender, cut them open, and take away the +seeds and strings, and beat the other part in a mortar, with half a +pound of sugar, till 'tis a paste; then put in the yolks of six +eggs, three or four spoonfuls of thick cream, half a Naples-biscuit +grated; mix these together, and melt a pound of very good fresh +butter, and stir it well in; when 'tis cold, put a bit of fine +puff-paste about the brim and bottom of your dish, and put it in +and bake it about three quarters of an hour.</p> + +<p><i>Another sort of Orange Pudding</i>:—Take the outside +rind of three Sevil oranges, boil them in several waters till they +are tender; then pound them in a mortar with three quarters of a +pound of sugar; then blanch and beat half a pound of almonds very +fine, with rose-water to keep them from oiling; then beat sixteen +eggs, but six whites, and a pound of fresh butter; beat all these +together very well till 'tis light and hollow; then put it in a +dish, with a sheet of puff-paste at the bottom, and bake it with +tarts; scrape sugar on it, and serve it up hot.</p> + +<p><i>To make a French-Barley Pudding</i>:—Take a quart of +cream, and put to it six eggs well beaten, but three of the whites; +then season it with sugar, nutmeg, a little salt, +orange-flower-water, and a pound of melted butter; then put to it +six handfuls of French-barley that has been boiled tender in milk: +butter a dish, and put it in, and bake it. It must stand as long as +a venison-pasty, and it will be good.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Skirret Pye</i>:—Boil your biggest skirrets, +and blanch them, and season them with cinamon, nutmeg, and a very +little ginger and sugar. Your pye being ready, lay in your +skirrets; season also the marrow of three or four bones with +cinamon, sugar, a little salt and grated bread. Lay the marrow in +your pye, and the yolks of twelve hard eggs cut in halves, a +handful of chesnuts boiled and blanched, and some candied +orange-peel in slices. Lay butter on the top, and lid your pye. Let +your caudle be white-wine, verjuice, some sack and sugar; thicken +it with the yolks of eggs, and when the pye is baked, pour it in, +and serve it hot. Scrape sugar on it.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Cabbage-Lettuce Pye</i>:—Take some of the +largest and hardest cabbage-lettuce you can get; boil them in salt +and water till they are tender; then lay them in a colander to +drain dry; then have your paste laid in your pattipan ready, and +lay butter on the bottom; then lay in your lettuce and some +artichoke-bottoms, and some large pieces of marrow, and the yolks +of eight hard eggs, and some scalded sorrel; bake it, and when it +comes out of the oven, cut open the lid; and pour in a caudle made +with white-wine and sugar, and thicken with eggs; so serve it +hot.</p> + +<p><i>Potato, or Lemon Cheesecakes</i>:—Take six ounces of +potatoes, four ounces of lemon-peel four ounces of sugar, four +ounces of butter; boil the lemon-peel til tender, pare and scrape +the potatoes, and boil them tender and bruise them; beat the +lemon-peel with the sugar, then beat all together very well, and +melt all together very well, and let it lie till cold: put crust in +your pattipans, and fill them little more than half full: bake them +in a quick oven half an hour, sift some double-refined sugar on +them as they go into the oven; this quantity will make a dozen +small pattipans.</p> + +<p><i>To make Almond Cheesecakes</i>:—Take a good handful or +more of almonds, blanch them in warm water, and throw them in cold; +pound them fine, and in the pounding put a little sack or +orange-flower-water to keep them from oiling; then put to your +almonds the yolks of two hard eggs, and beat them together: beat +the yolks of six eggs, the whites of three, and mix with your +almonds, and half a pound of butter melted, and sugar to your +taste; mix all well together, and use it as other cheesecake +stuff.</p> + +<p><i>To make the light Wigs</i>:—Take a pound and half of +flour, and half a pint of milk made warm; mix these together, and +cover it up, and let it lie by the fire half an hour; then take +half a pound of sugar, and half a pound of butter; then work these +in the paste, and make it into wigs, with as little flour as +possible. Let the oven be pretty quick, and they will rise very +much.</p> + +<p><i>To make very good Wigs</i>:—Take a quarter of a peck of +the finest flour, rub into it three quarters of a pound of fresh +butter, till 'tis like grated bread, something more than half a +pound of sugar, half a nutmeg, and half a race of ginger grated; +three eggs, yolks and whites beaten very well, and put to them half +a pint of thick ale-yeast, three or four spoonfuls of sack. Make a +hole in your flour, and pour in your yeast and eggs, and as much +milk just warm, as will make it into a light paste. Let it stand +before the fire to rise half an hour; then make it into a dozen and +half of wigs; wash them over with eggs just as they go into the +oven; a quick oven, and half an hour will bake them.</p> + +<p><i>To make Carrot or Parsnip Puffs</i>:—Scrape and boil +your carrots or parsnips tender; then scrape or mash them very +fine, add to a pint of pulp the crumb of a penny-loaf grated, or +some stale biscuit, if you have it, some eggs, but four whites, a +nutmeg grated, some orange-flower-water, sugar to your taste, a +little sack, and mix it up with thick cream. They must be fry'd in +rendered suet, the liquor very hot when you put them in; put in a +good spoonful in a place.</p> + +<p><i>A Tansy</i>:—Boil a quart of cream or milk with a stick +of cinamon, quarter'd nutmeg, and large mace; when half cold, mix +it with twenty yolks of eggs, and ten whites; strain it, then put +to it four grated biskets, half a pound of butter, a pint of +spinage-juice, and a little tansy, sack, and orange-flower-water, +sugar, and a little salt; then gather it to a body over the fire, +and pour it into your dish, being well butter'd. When it is baked, +turn it on a pye-plate; squeeze on it an orange, grate on sugar, +and garnish it with slic'd orange and a little tansy. Made in a +dish; cut as you please.</p> + +<p><i>To make Sack Cream</i>:—Take the yolks of two eggs, and +three spoonfuls of fine sugar, and a quarter of a pint of sack: mix +them together, and stir them into a pint of cream; then set them +over the fire till 'tis scalding hot, but let it not boil. You may +toast some thin slices of white bread, and dip them in sack or +orange-flower-water, and pour your cream over them.</p> + +<p><i>To make Quince Cream</i>:—Take quinces, scald them till +they are soft; pare them, and mash the clear part of them, and pulp +it through a sieve; take an equal weight of quince, and +double-refin'd sugar beaten and sifted, and the whites of eggs, and +beat it till it is as white as snow, then put it in dishes.</p> + +<p><i>To make Pistachia Cream</i>:—Peel your pistachias, and +beat them very fine, and boil them in cream; if 'tis not green +enough, add a little juice of spinage; thicken it with eggs, and +sweeten to your taste; pour it in basons, and set it by till 'tis +cold.</p> + +<p><i>To make white Jelly of Quinces</i>:—Pare your quinces, +and cut them in halves; then core them and parboil your quinces; +when they are soft, take them up, and crush them through a +strainer, but not too hard, only the clear juice. Take the weight +of the juice in fine sugar; boil the sugar candy-height, and put in +your juice, and let it scald awhile, but not boil; and if any froth +arise, scum it off, and when you take it up, have ready a white +preserved quince cut in small slices, and lay them in the bottom of +your glasses, and pour your jelly to them, it will candy on the top +and keep moist on the bottom a long time.</p> + +<p><i>To make Hart's-Horn Jelly</i>:—Take a large gallipot, +and fill it full of hart's-horn, and then fill it full with +spring-water, and tie a double paper over the gallipot, and set it +in the baker's oven with household bread; in the morning take it +out, and run it through a jelly-bag, and season it with juice of +lemons, and double-refin'd sugar, and the whites of eight eggs well +beaten; let it have a boil, and run it thro' the jelly-bag again +into your jelly-glasses; put a bit of lemon-peel in the bag.</p> + +<h4>IV.—CHEESES.</h4> + +<p><i>The Queen's Cheese</i>:—Take six quarts of the best +stroakings, and let them stand till they are cold; then set two +quarts of cream on the fire till 'tis ready to boil; then take it +off, and boil a quart of fair water, and take the yolks of two +eggs, and one spoonful of sugar, and two spoonfuls of runnet; +mingle all these together, and stir it till 'tis blood warm: when +the cheese is come, use it as other cheese; set it at night, and +the third day lay the leaves of nettles under and over it: it must +be turned and wiped, and the nettles shifted every day, and in +three weeks it will be fit to eat. This cheese is made between +Michaelmas and Alhallontide.</p> + +<p><i>To make a Slip-coat Cheese</i>:—Take new milk and +runnet, quite cold, and when 'tis come, break it as little as you +can in putting it into the cheese-fat, and let it stand and whey +itself for some time; then cover it, and set about two pound weight +on it, and when it will hold together, turn it out of that +cheese-fat, and keep it turning upon clean cheese-fats for two or +three days, till it has done wetting, and then lay it on +sharp-pointed dock-leaves till 'tis ripe: shift the leaves +often.</p> + +<p><i>To make a New-market Cheese to cut at two Years +old</i>:—Any morning in September, take twenty quarts of new +milk warm from the cow, and colour it with marigolds: when this is +done, and the milk not cold, get ready a quart of cream, and a +quart of fair water, which must be kept stirring over the fire till +'tis scalding hot, then stir it well into the milk and runnet, as +you do other cheese; when 'tis come, lay cheese-cloths over it, and +settle it with your hands; the more hands the better; as the whey +rises, take it away, and when 'tis clean gone, put the curd into +your fat, breaking it as little as you can; then put it in the +press, and press it gently an hour; take it out again, and cut it +in thin slices, and lay them singly on a cloth, and wipe them dry; +then put it in a tub, and break it with your hands as small as you +can, and mix with it a good handful of salt, and a quart of cold +cream; put it in the fat, and lay a pound weight on it till next +day; then press and order it as others.</p> + +<h4>V.—CAKES.</h4> + +<p><i>To make Shrewsbury Cakes</i>:—Take to one pound of +sugar, three pounds of the finest flour, a nutmeg grated, some +beaten cinamon; the sugar and spice must be sifted into the flour, +and wet it with three eggs, and as much melted butter, as will make +it of a good thickness to roll into a paste; mould it well and roll +it, and cut it into what shape you please. Perfume them, and prick +them before they go into the oven.</p> + +<p><i>To make Whetstone Cakes</i>:—Take half a pound of fine +flour, and half a pound of loaf sugar searced, a spoonful of +carraway-seeds dried, the yolk of one egg, the whites of three, a +little rose-water, with ambergrease dissolved in it; mix it +together, and roll it out as thin as a wafer; cut them with a +glass; lay them on flour'd paper, and bake them in a slow oven.</p> + +<p><i>To make Portugal Cakes</i>:—Take a pound and a quarter +of fine flour well dried, and break a pound of butter into the +flour and rub it in, add a pound of loaf-sugar beaten and sifted, a +nutmeg grated, four perfumed plums, or some ambergrease; mix these +well together, and beat seven eggs, but four whites, with three +spoonfuls of orange-flower-water; mix all these together, and beat +them up an hour; butter your little pans, and just as they are +going into the oven, fill them half full, and searce some fine +sugar over them; little more than a quarter of an hour will bake +them. You may put a handful of currants into some of them; take +them out of the pans as soon as they are drawn, keep them dry, they +will keep good three months.</p> + +<p><i>To make Jumbals</i>:—Take the whites of three eggs, +beat them well, and take off the froth; then take a little milk, +and a little flour, near a pound, as much sugar sifted, a few +carraway-seeds beaten very fine; work all these in a very stiff +paste, and make them into what form you please bake them on white +paper.</p> + +<p><i>To make March-pane</i>:—Take a pound of Jordan almonds, +blanch and beat them in a marble mortar very fine; then put to them +three-quarters of a pound of double-refin'd sugar, and beat with +them a few drops of orange-flower-water; beat all together till +'tis a very good paste, then roll it into what shape you please; +dust a little fine sugar under it as you roll it to keep it from +sticking. To ice it, searce double-refined sugar as fine as flour, +wet it with rose-water, and mix it well together, and with a brush +or bunch of feathers spread it over your march-pane: bake them in +an oven that is not too hot: put wafer-paper at the bottom, and +white paper under that, so keep them for use.</p> + +<p><i>To make the Marlborough Cake</i>:—Take eight eggs, +yolks and whites, beat and strain them, and put to them a pound of +sugar beaten and sifted; beat it three-quarters of an hour +together; then put in three-quarters of a pound of flour well +dried, and two ounces of carraway-seeds; beat it all well together, +and bake it in a quick oven in broad tin-pans.</p> + +<p><i>To make Wormwood Cakes</i>:—Take one pound of +double-refin'd sugar sifted; mix it with the whites of three or +four eggs well beat; into this drop as much chymical oil of +wormwood as you please. So drop them on paper; you may have some +white, and some marble, with specks of colours, with the point of a +pin; keep your colours severally in little gallipots. For red, take +a dram of cochineel, a little cream of tartar, as much of allum; +tye them up severally in little bits of fine cloth, and put them to +steep in one glass of water two or three hours. When you use the +colour, press the bags in the water, and mix some of it with a +little of the white of egg and sugar. Saffron colours yellow; and +must be tyed in a cloth, as the red, and put in water. Powder-blue, +mix'd with the saffron-water, makes a green; for blue, mix some dry +powder-blue with some water.</p> + +<p><i>A French Cake to eat hot</i>:—Take a dozen of eggs, and +a quart of cream, and as much flour as will make it into a thick +batter; put to it a pound of melted butter, half a pint of sack, +one nutmeg grated, mix it well, and let it stand three or four +hours; then bake it in a quick oven, and when you take it out, +split it in two, and pour a pound of butter on it melted with +rose-water; cover it with the other half, and serve it up hot.</p> + +<p><i>To make the thin Dutch Bisket</i>:—Take five pounds of +flour, and two ounces of carraway-seeds, half a pound of sugar, and +something more than a pint of milk. Warm the milk, and put into it +three-quarters of a pound of butter; then make a hole in the middle +of your flour, and put in a full pint of good ale-yeast; then pour +in the butter and milk, and make these into a paste, and let it +stand a quarter of an hour by the fire to rise; then mould it, and +roll it into cakes pretty thin; prick them all over pretty much or +they will blister; so bake them a quarter of an hour.</p> + +<p><i>To make Dutch Ginger-bread</i>:—Take four pounds of +flour, and mix with it two ounces and a half of beaten ginger; then +rub in a quarter of a pound of butter, and add to it two ounces of +carraway-seeds, two ounces of orange-peel dried and rubb'd to +powder, a few coriander-seeds bruised, two eggs: then mix all up in +a stiff paste, with two pounds and a quarter of treacle; beat it +very well with a rolling-pin, and make it up into thirty cakes; put +in a candied citron; prick them with a fork: butter papers three +double, one white, and two brown; wash them over with the white of +an egg; put them into an oven not too hot, for three-quarters of an +hour.</p> + +<p><i>To make Cakes of Flowers</i>:—Boil double-refin'd sugar +candy-high, and then strew in your flowers, and let them boil once +up; then with your hand lightly strew in a little double-refin'd +sugar sifted; and then as quick as may be, put it into your little +pans, made of card, and pricked full of holes at bottom. You must +set the pans on a pillow, or cushion; when they are cold, take them +out.</p> + +<h4>VI.—CAUDLES AND POSSETS.</h4> + +<p><i>To make a Posset with Ale: King-William's +Posset</i>:—Take a quart of cream, and mix with it a pint of +ale, then beat the yolks of ten eggs, and the whites of four; when +they are well beaten, put them to the cream and ale, sweeten it to +your taste, and slice some nutmeg in it; set it over the fire, and +keep it stirring all the while, and when 'tis thick, and before it +boils, take it off, and pour it into the bason you serve it in to +the table.</p> + +<p><i>To make the Pope's Posset</i>:—Blanch and beat +three-quarters of a pound of almonds so fine, that they will spread +between your fingers like butter, put in water as you beat them to +keep them from oiling; then take a pint of sack or sherry, and +sweeten it very well with double-refin'd sugar, make it boiling +hot, and at the same time put half a pint of water to your almonds, +and make them boil; then take both off the fire, and mix them very +well together with a spoon; serve it in a china dish.</p> + +<p><i>To make Flummery Caudle</i>:—Take a pint of fine +oatmeal, and put to it two quarts of fair water: let it stand all +night, in the morning stir it, and strain it into a skillet, with +three or four blades of mace, and a nutmeg quartered; set it on the +fire, and keep it stirring, and let it boil a quarter of an hour; +if it is too thick, put in more water, and let it boil longer; then +add a pint of Rhenish or white-wine; three spoonfuls of +orange-flower-water, the juice of two lemons and one orange, a bit +of butter, and as much fine sugar as will sweeten it; let all these +have a warm, and thicken it with the yolks of two or three eggs. +Drink it hot for a breakfast.</p> + +<p><i>To make Tea Caudle</i>:—Make a quart of strong green +tea, and pour it out into a skillet, and set it over the fire; then +beat the yolks of four eggs and mix with them a pint of white-wine, +a grated nutmeg, sugar to your taste, and put all together; stir it +over the fire till 'tis very hot, then drink it in china dishes as +caudle.</p> + +<h4>VII.—CONSERVES, DRIED AND CAN-DIED FRUITS, MARMALADES, +ETC.</h4> + +<p><i>To dry Apricocks like Prunella's</i>:—Take a pound of +Apricocks; being cut in halves or quarters, let them boil till they +be very tender in a thin syrup; let them stand a day or two in the +stove, then take them out of the syrup, and lay them drying till +they be as dry as prunello's, then box them: you may make your +syrup red with the juice of red plums; if you please you may pare +them.</p> + +<p><i>To candy Angelica</i>:—Take angelica that is young, and +cut it in fit lengths, and boil it till it is pretty tender, +keeping it close covered; then take it up and peel off all the +strings; then put it in again, and let it simmer and scald till +'tis very green; then take it up and dry it in a cloth, and weigh +it, and to every pound of angelica take a pound of double-refin'd +sugar beaten and sifted; put your angelica in an earthen pan, and +strew the sugar over it, and let it stand two days; then boil it +till it looks very clear, put it in a colander to drain the syrup +from it, and take a little double-refin'd sugar and boil it to +sugar again; then throw in your angelica, and take it out in a +little time, and put it on glass plates. It will dry in your stove, +or in an oven after pyes are drawn.</p> + +<p><i>To candy Orange-Flowers</i>:—Take half a pound of +double-refin'd sugar finely beaten, wet it with +orange-flower-water, then boil it candy-high, then put in a handful +of orange-flowers, keeping it stirring, but let it not boil, and +when the sugar candies about them, take it off the fire, drop it on +a plate, and set it by till 'tis cold.</p> + +<p><i>To make Conserve of Red-Roses, or any other +Flowers</i>:—Take rose-buds, and pick them, and cut off the +white part from the red, and put the red flowers, and sift them +through a sieve to take out the seeds; then weigh them, and to +every pound of flowers take two pounds and a half of loaf-sugar, +beat the flowers pretty fine in a stone mortar; then by degrees put +the sugar to them, and beat it very well till 'tis well +incorporated together; then put it into gallipots, and tye it over +with paper, and over that leather, and it will keep seven +years.</p> + +<p><i>To preserve white Pear Plumbs</i>:—Take pear plumbs +when they are yellow, before they are too ripe; give them a slit in +the seam, and prick them behind; make your water almost scalding +hot, and put a little sugar to it to sweeten it, and put in your +plumbs and cover them close; set them on the fire to coddle, and +take them off sometimes a little, and set them on again: take care +they do not break; have in readiness as much double-refin'd sugar +boiled to a height as will cover them, and when they are coddled +pretty tender, take them out of that liquor, and put them into your +preserving-pan to your syrup, which must be but blood-warm when +your plumbs go in. Let them boil till they are clear, scum them and +take them off, and let them stand two hours; then set them on again +and boil them, and when they are thoroughly preserved, take them up +and lay them in glasses; boil your syrup till 'tis thick; and when +'tis cold, put in your plumbs; and a month after, if your syrup +grows thin, you must boil it again, or make a fine jelly of +pippins, and put on them. This way you may do the pimordian plumb, +or any white plumb, and when they are cold, paper them up.</p> + +<p><i>To preserve Mulberries whole</i>:—Set some mulberries +over the fire in a skillet, and draw from them a pint of juice, +when 'tis strained. Then take three pounds of sugar, beaten very +fine; wet the sugar with the pint of juice; boil up your sugar, and +scum it, and put in two pounds of ripe mulberries, and let them +stand in the syrup till they are thoroughly warm; then set them on +the fire, and let them boil very gently; do them but half enough, +so put them by in the syrup till next day; then boil them gently +again, and when the syrup is pretty thick, and will stand in a +round drop when 'tis cold, they are enough; so put all together in +a gallipot for use.</p> + +<p><i>To preserve whole Quinces white</i>:—Take the largest +quinces of the greenest colour, and scald them till they are pretty +soft; then pare them and core them with a scoop; then weigh your +quinces against so much double-refin'd sugar, and make a syrup of +one half, and put in your quinces, and boil them as fast as you +can; then you must have in readiness pippin liquor; let it be very +strong of the pippins, and when 'tis strained out, put in the other +half of your sugar, and make it a jelly, and when your quinces are +clear, put them into the jelly, and let them simmer a little; they +will be very white; so glass them up, and when they are cold, paper +them and keep them in a stove.</p> + +<p><i>To make white Quince Marmalade</i>:—Scald your quinces +tender, take off the skin and pulp them from the core very fine, +and to every pound of quince have a pound and half of +double-refin'd sugar in lumps, and half a pint of water; dip your +sugar in the water and boil and scum it till 'tis a thick syrup: +then put in your quince, boil and scum it on a quick fire a quarter +of an hour, so put it in your pots.</p> + +<p><i>To make red Quince Marmalade</i>:—Pare and core a pound +of quince, beat the parings and cores and some of your worst +quinces, and strain out the juice; and to every pound of quince +take ten or twelve spoonfuls of that juice, and three-quarters of a +pound of loaf-sugar; put all into your preserving-pan, cover it +close, and let it stew over a gentle fire two hours; when 'tis of +an orange-red, uncover and boil it up as fast as you can: when of a +good colour, break it as you like it, give it a boil, and pot it +up.</p> + +<p><i>To make Melon Mangoes</i>:—Take small melons, not quite +ripe, cut a slip down the side, and take out the inside very clean; +beat mustard-seeds, and shred garlick, and mix with the seeds, and +put in your mangoes; put the pieces you cut out into their places +again, and tye them up, and put them into your pot, and boil some +vinegar (as much as you think will cover them) with whole pepper, +and some salt, and Jamaica pepper, and pour in scalding hot over +your mangoes, and cover them close to keep in the steam; and so do +every day for nine times together, and when they are cold cover +them with leather.</p> + +<p><i>To make Conserve of Hips</i>:—Gather the hips before +they grow soft, cut off the heads and stalks, slit them in halves, +and take out all the seed and white that is in them very clean; +then put them in an earthen pan, and stir them every day, else they +will grow mouldy; let them stand till they are soft enough to rub +through a coarse hair-sieve; as the pulp comes, take it off the +sieve; they are a dry berry, and will require pains to rub it +through; then add its weight in sugar, and mix it well together +without boiling; keeping it in deep gallipots for use.</p> + +<p><i>To make clear Cakes of Gooseberries</i>:—Take your +white Dutch gooseberries when they are thorough ripe, break them +with your fingers and squeeze out all the pulp into a fine piece of +cambrick or thick muslin to run thro' clear; then weigh the juice +and sugar one against the other; then boil the juice a little +while, then put in your sugar and let it dissolve, but not boil; +scum it and put it into glasses, and stove it in a warm stove.</p> + +<p><i>To make white Quince Paste</i>:—Scald the quinces +tender to the core, and pare them, and scrape the pulp clean from +the core, beat it in a mortar, and pulp it through a colander; take +to a pound of pulp a pound and two ounces of sugar, boil the sugar +till 'tis candy-high; then put in your pulp, stir it about +constantly till you see it come clear from the bottom of the +preserving-pan; then take it off, and lay it on plates pretty thin: +you may cut it in what shape you please, or make quince chips of +it; you must dust it with sugar when you put it into the stove, and +turn it on papers in a sieve, and dust the other side; when they +are dry, put them in boxes with papers between. You may make red +quince paste the same way as this, only colour the quince with +cochineel.</p> + +<p><i>To make Syrup of any flower</i>:—Clip your flowers, and +take their weight in sugar; then take a high gallipot, and a row of +flowers, and a strewing of sugar, till the pot is full; then put in +two or three spoonfuls of the same syrup or still'd water; tye a +cloth on the top of the pot, and put a tile on that, and set your +gallipot in a kettle of water over a gentle fire, and let it infuse +till the strength is out of the flowers, which will be in four or +five hours; then strain it thro' a flannel, and when 'tis cold +bottle it up.</p> + +<h4>VIII.—PICKLES.</h4> + +<p><i>To pickle Nasturtium-Buds</i>:—Gather your little knobs +quickly after your blossoms are off; put them in cold water and +salt for three days, shifting them once a day; then make a pickle +(but do not boil it at all) of some white-wine, some white-wine +vinegar, eschalot, horse-radish, pepper, salt, cloves, and mace +whole, and nutmeg quartered; then put in your seeds and stop them +close; they are to be eaten as capers.</p> + +<p><i>To keep Quinces in Pickle</i>:—Cut five or six quinces +all to pieces, and put them in an earthen pot or pan, with a gallon +of water and two pounds of honey; mix all these together well, and +then put them in a kettle to boil leisurely half an hour, and then +strain your liquor into that earthen pot, and when 'tis cold, wipe +your quinces clean, and put them into it: they must be covered very +close, and they will keep all the year.</p> + +<p><i>To pickle Ashen-keys</i>:—Take ashen-keys as young as +you can get them, and put them in a pot with salt and water; then +take green whey, when 'tis hot, and pour over them; let them stand +till they are cold before you cover them, so let them stand; when +you use them, boil them in fair water; when they are tender take +them out, and put them in salt and water.</p> + +<p><i>To pickle Pods of Radishes</i>:—Gather the youngest +pods, and put them in water and salt twenty-four hours; then make a +pickle for them of vinegar, cloves, mace, whole pepper: boil this, +and drain the pods from the salt and water, and pour the liquor on +them boiling hot: put to them a clove of garlick a little +bruised.</p> + +<p><i>To pickle Broom-Buds</i>:—Put your broom-buds into +little linnen-bags, tie them up, and make a pickle of bay-salt and +water boiled, and strong enough to bear an egg; put your bags in a +pot, and when your pickle is cold, put it to them; keep them close, +and let them lie till they turn black; then shift them two or three +times, till they change green; then take them out, and boil them as +you have occasion for them: when they are boiled, put them out of +the bag: in vinegar they will keep a month after they are +boiled.</p> + +<p><i>To pickle Purslain Stalks</i>:—Wash your stalks, and +cut them in pieces six inches long; boil them in water and salt a +dozen walms; take them up, drain them, and when they cool, make a +pickle of stale beer, white-wine vinegar, and salt, put them in, +and cover them close.</p> + +<h4>IX.—WINES.</h4> + +<p><i>To make strong Mead</i>:—Take of spring-water what +quantity you please, and make it more than blood-warm, and dissolve +honey in it till 'tis strong enough to bear an egg, the breadth of +a shilling; then boil it gently near an hour, taking off the scum +as it rises; then put to about nine or ten gallons, seven or eight +large blades of mace, three nutmegs quarter'd, twenty cloves, three +or four sticks of cinamon, two or three roots of ginger, and a +quarter of an ounce of Jamaica pepper; put these spices into the +kettle to the honey and water, a whole lemon, with a sprig of +sweet-briar, and a sprig of rosemary; tie the briar and rosemary +together, and when they have boiled a little while, take them out +and throw them away; but let your liquor stand on the spice in a +clean earthen pot till the next day; then strain it into a vessel +that is fit for it; put the spice in a bag, and hang it in the +vessel, stop it, and at three months draw it into bottles. Be sure +that 'tis fine when 'tis bottled; after 'tis bottled six weeks 'tis +fit to drink.</p> + +<p><i>To make small White Mead</i>:—Take three gallons of +spring-water and make it hot, and dissolve in it three quarts of +honey and a pound of loaf sugar; and let it boil about half an +hour, and scum it as long as any rises, then pour it out into a +tub, and squeeze in the juice of four lemons; put in the rinds of +but two; twenty cloves, two races of ginger, a top of sweet-briar, +and a top of rosemary. Let it stand in a tub till 'tis but blood +warm; then make a brown toast and spread it with two or three +spoonfuls of ale-yeast, put it into a vessel fit for it; let it +stand four or five days, then bottle it out.</p> + +<p><i>To make Frontiniac Wine</i>:—Take six gallons of water +and twelve pounds of white sugar, and six pounds of raisins of the +sun cut small; boil these together an hour; then take of the +flowers of elder, when they are falling and will shake off, the +quantity of half a peck; put them in the liquor when 'tis almost +cold, the next day put in six spoonfuls of syrup of lemons, and +four spoonfuls of ale-yeast, and two days after put it in a vessel +that is fit for it, and when it has stood two months bottle it +off.</p> + +<p><i>To make English Champagne, or the fine Currant +Wine</i>:—Take to three gallons of water nine pounds of +Lisbon sugar; boil the water and sugar half an hour, scum it clean, +then have one gallon of currants pick'd, but not bruised, pour the +liquor boiling-hot over them, and when cold, work it with half a +pint of balm two days; then pour it through a flannel or sieve, +then put it into a barrel fit for it with half an ounce of +ising-glass well bruised; when it has done working, stop it close +for a month, then bottle it, and in every bottle put a very small +lump of double-refin'd sugar. This is excellent wine, and has a +beautiful colour.</p> + +<p><i>To make Saragossa Wine, or English Sack</i>:—To every +quart of water, put a sprig of rue, and to every gallon a handful +of fennel-roots, boil these half an hour, then strain it out, and +to every gallon of this liquor put three pounds of honey; boil it +two hours, and scum it well, and when 'tis cold pour it off and +turn it into a vessel, or such cask that is fit for it; keep it a +year in the vessel, and then bottle it; 'tis a very good sack.</p> + +<p><i>Mountain Wine</i>:—Pick out the big stalks of your +Malaga raisins, then chop them very small, five gallons to every +gallon of cold spring-water, let them steep a fortnight or more, +squeeze out the liquor and barrel it in a vessel fit for it; first +fume the vessel with brimstone; don't stop it up till the hissing +is over.</p> + +<p><i>To make Quince Wine</i>;—Take your quinces when they +are thorough ripe, wipe off the fur very clean; then take out the +cores and bruise them as you do apples for cyder, and press them, +and to every gallon of juice put two pounds and a half of fine +sugar, stir it together till 'tis dissolved; then put it in your +cask, and when it has done working stop it close; let it stand till +March before you bottle it. You may keep it two or three years, it +will be better.</p> + +<p><i>To make Plumb Wine</i>:—Take twenty pounds of Malaga +raisins, pick, rub, and shred them, and put them into a tub; then +take four gallons of fair water and boil it an hour, and let it +stand till 'tis blood-warm; then put it to your raisins; let it +stand nine or ten days, stirring it once or twice a day, strain out +your liquor, and mix with it two quarts of damson juice, put it in +a vessel, and when it has done working, stop it close; at four or +five months bottle it.</p> + +<p><i>To make Birch Wine</i>:—In March bore a hole in a tree, +and put in a faucet, and it will run two or three days together +without hurting the tree; then put in a pin to stop it, and the +next year you may draw as much from the same hole; put to every +gallon of the liquor a quart of good honey, and stir it well +together, boil it an hour, scum it well, and put in a few cloves, +and a piece of lemon-peel; when 'tis almost cold, put to it so much +ale-yeast as will make it work like new ale, and when the yeast +begins to settle, put it in a runlet that will just hold it: so let +it stand six weeks or longer if you please; then bottle it, and in +a month you may drink it. It will keep a year or two. You may make +it with sugar, two pounds to a gallon, or something more, if you +keep it long. This is admirably wholesome as well as pleasant, an +opener of obstructions, good against the phthisick, and good +against the spleen and scurvy, a remedy for the stone, it will +abate heat in a fever or thrush, and has been given with good +success.</p> + +<p><i>To make Sage Wine</i>:—Boil twenty-six quarts of +spring-water a quarter of an hour, and when 'tis blood-warm, put +twenty-five pounds of Malaga raisins pick'd, rubb'd and shred into +it, with almost half a bushel of red sage shred, and a porringer of +ale-yeast; stir all well together, and let it stand m a tub cover'd +warm six or seven days, stirring it once a day; then strain it out, +and put it in a runlet. Let it work three or four days, stop it up; +when it has stood six or seven days put in a quart or two of Malaga +sack, and when 'tis fine bottle it.</p> + +<p><i>Sage Wine another way</i>:—Take thirty pounds of Malaga +raisins pick'd clean, and shred small, and one bushel of green sage +shred small, then boil five gallons of water, let the water stand +till 'tis luke-warm; then put it in a tub to your sage and raisins; +let it stand five or six days, stirring it twice or thrice a day; +then strain and press the liquor from the ingredients, put it in a +cask, and let it stand six months: then draw it clean off into +another vessel; bottle it in two days; in a month or six weeks it +will be fit to drink, but best when 'tis a year old.</p> + +<p><i>To make Ebulum</i>:—To a hogshead of strong ale, take a +heap'd bushel of elder-berries, and half a pound of juniper-berries +beaten; put in all the berries when you put in the hops, and let +them boil together till the berries brake in pieces, then work it +up as you do ale; when it has done working, add to it half a pound +of ginger, half an ounce of cloves, as much mace, an ounce of +nutmegs, and as much cinamon grosly beaten, half a pound of citron, +as much eringo-root, and likewise of candied orange-peel; let the +sweetmeats be cut in pieces very thin, and put with the spice into +a bag and hang it in the vessel when you stop it up. So let it +stand till 'tis fine, then bottle it up and drink it with lumps of +double-refined sugar in the glass.</p> + +<p><i>To make Cock Ale</i>:—Take ten gallons of ale, and a +large cock, the older the better, parboil the cock, flea him, and +stamp him in a stone mortar till his bones are broken, (you must +craw and gut him when you flea him) put the cock into two quarts of +sack, and put to it three pounds of raisins of the sun stoned, some +blades of mace, and a few cloves; put all these into a canvas bag, +and a little before you find the ale has done working, put the ale +and bag together into a vessel; in a week or nine days' time bottle +it up, fill the bottles but just above the necks, and leave the +same time to ripen as other ale.</p> + +<p><i>To make it Elder Ale</i>:—Take ten bushels of malt to a +hogshead, then put two bushels of elder-berries pickt from the +stalks into a pot or earthen pan, and set it in a pot of boiling +water till the berries swell, then strain it out and put the juice +into the guile-fat, and beat it often in, and so order it as the +common way of brewing.</p> + +<p><i>To clear Wine</i>:—Take half a pound of hartshorn, and +dissolve it in cyder, if it be for cyder, or Rhenish-wine for any +liquor: this is enough for a hogshead.</p> + +<p><i>To fine Wine the Lisbon way</i>:—To every twenty +gallons of wine take the whites of ten eggs, and a small handful of +salt, beat it together to a froth, and mix it well with a quart or +more of the wine, then pour it in the vessel, and in a few days it +will be fine.</p> + +<br /> + + +<center><img alt="" src="images/156.png" /></center> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<a name="6"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/157.png" /></center> + +<h2>COOKERY BOOKS.</h2> + +<h3>PART III.</h3> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>In 1747 appeared a thin folio volume, of which I will transcribe +the title: "The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, which far +Exceeds Every Thing of the Kind Ever yet Published ... By a Lady. +London: Printed for the Author; and sold at Mrs. Ashburn's, a China +Shop, the Corner of Fleet Ditch. MDCCXLVII." The lady was no other +than Mrs. Glasse, wife of an attorney residing in Carey Street; and +a very sensible lady she was, and a very sensible and interesting +book hers is, with a preface showing that her aim was to put +matters as plainly as she could, her intention being to instruct +the lower sort. "For example," says she, "when I bid them lard a +fowl, if I should bid them lard with large lardoons they would not +know what I meant; but when I say they must lard with little pieces +of Bacon, they know what I mean." I have been greatly charmed with +Hannah Glasse's "Art of Cookery," 1747, and with her "Complete +Confectioner" likewise in a modified degree. The latter was partly +derived, she tells you, from the manuscript of "a very old +experienced housekeeper to a family of the first distinction." But, +nevertheless, both are very admirable performances; and yet the +compiler survives scarcely more than in an anecdote for which I can +see no authority. For she does not say, "First catch your hare" +[Footnote: Mrs. Glasse's cookery book was reprinted at least as +late as 1824].</p> + +<p>Mrs. Glasse represents that, before she undertook the +preparation of the volume on confectionery, there was nothing of +the kind for reference and consultation. But we had already a +curious work by E. Kidder, who was, according to his title-page, a +teacher of the art which he expounded eventually in print. The +title is sufficiently descriptive: "E. Kidder's Receipts of Pastry +and Cookery, for the use of his Scholars, who teaches at his School +in Queen Street, near St. Thomas Apostle's, [Footnote: In another +edition his school is in St. Martin's Le Grand] on Mondays, +Tuesdays and Wednesdays, in the afternoon. Also on Thursdays, +Fridays and Saturdays, in the afternoon, at his School next to +Furnivalls Inn in Holborn. Ladies may be taught at their own +Houses." It is a large octavo, consisting of fifty pages of +engraved text, and is embellished with a likeness of Mr. Kidder. +For all that Mrs. Glasse ignores him.</p> + +<p>I have shown how Mrs. Glasse might have almost failed to keep a +place in the public recollection, had it not been for a remark +which that lady did not make. But there is a still more singular +circumstance connected with her and her book, and it is +this—that in Dr. Johnson's day, and possibly in her own +lifetime, a story was current that the book was really written by +Dr. Hill the physician. That gentleman's claim to the authorship +has not, of course, been established, but at a dinner at Dilly's +the publisher's in 1778, when Johnson, Miss Seward, and others were +present, a curious little discussion arose on the subject. Boswell +thus relates the incident and the conversation:—"The subject +of cookery having been very naturally introduced at a table, where +Johnson, who boasted of the niceness of his palate, avowed that 'he +always found a good dinner,' he said, 'I could write a better book +about cookery than has ever yet been written; it should be a book +upon philosophical principles. Pharmacy is now made much more +simple. Cookery may be so too. A prescription, which is now +compounded of five ingredients, had formerly fifty in it. So in +Cookery. If the nature of the ingredients is well known, much fewer +will do. Then, as you cannot make bad meat good, I would tell what +is the best butcher's meat, the best beef, the best pieces; how to +choose young fowls; the proper seasons of different vegetables; and +then how to roast, and boil, and compound."</p> + +<p>DILLY:—"Mrs. Glasse's 'Cookery,' which is the best, was +written by Dr. Hill. Half the trade know this."</p> + +<p>JOHNSON:—"Well, Sir, that shews how much better the +subject of cookery may be treated by a philosopher. I doubt if the +book be written by Dr Hill; for in Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, which I +have looked into, saltpetre and salt-prunella are spoken of as +different substances, whereas salt-prunella is only saltpetre burnt +on charcoal; and Hill could not be ignorant of this. However, as +the greatest part of such a book is made by transcription, this +mistake may have been carelessly adopted. But you shall see what a +book of cookery I could make. I shall agree with Mr. Dilly for the +copyright."</p> + +<p>Miss SEWARD:—"That would be Hercules with the distaff +indeed!"</p> + +<p>JOHNSON:—"No, Madam. Women can spin very well; but they +cannot make a good book of cookery."</p> + +<p>But the Doctor's philosophical cookery book belongs to the +voluminous calendar of works which never passed beyond the stage of +proposal; he did not, so far as we know, ever draw out a +title-page, as Coleridge was fond of doing; and perhaps the loss is +to be borne with. The Doctor would have pitched his discourse in +too high a key.</p> + +<p>Among the gastronomical enlargements of our literature in the +latter half of the last century, one of the best books in point of +classification and range is that by B. Clermont, of which the third +edition made its appearance in 1776, the first having been +anonymous. Clermont states that he had been clerk of the kitchen in +some of the first families of the kingdom, and lately to the Earl +of Abingdon. But elsewhere we find that he had lived very recently +in the establishment of the Earl of Ashburnham, for he observes in +the preface: "I beg the candour of the Public will excuse the +incorrectness of the Language and Diction. My situation in life as +an actual servant to the Earl of Ashburnham at the time of the +first publication of this Book will I trust plead my Apology." He +informs his readers on the title-page, and repeats in the preface, +that a material part of the work consists of a translation of "Les +Soupers de la Cour," and he proceeds to say, that he does not +pretend to make any further apology for the title of <i>supper</i>, +than that the French were, in general, more elegant in their +suppers than their dinners. In other words, the late dinner was +still called supper.</p> + +<p>The writer had procured the French treatise from Paris for his +own use, and had found it of much service to him in his capacity as +clerk of the kitchen, and he had consequently translated it, under +the persuasion that it would prove an assistance to gentlemen, +ladies, and others interested in such matters. He specifies three +antecedent publications in France, of which his pages might be +considered the essence, viz., "La Cuisine Royale," "Le Maître +d'Hôtel Cuisinier," and "Les Dons de Comus"; and he expresses +to some of his contemporaries, who had helped him in his +researches, his obligations in the following terms:—"As every +country produces many Articles peculiar to itself, and considering +the Difference of Climates, which either forward or retard them, I +would not rely on my own Knowledge, in regard to such Articles; I +applied therefore to three Tradesmen, all eminent in their +Profession, one for Fish, one for Poultry, and one for the +productions of the Garden, viz., Mr. Humphrey Turner, the Manager +in St. James's Market; Mr. Andrews, Poulterer in ditto; and Mr. +Adam Lawson, many years chief gardener to the Earl of Ashburnham; +in this article I was also assisted by Mr. Rice, Green-Grocer, in +St. Albans Street." Clermont dates his remarks from Princes Street, +Cavendish Square.</p> + +<p>While Mrs. Glasse was still in the middle firmament of public +favour, a little book without the writer's name was published as by +"A Lady." I have not seen the first or second editions; but the +third appeared in 1808. It is called "A New System of Domestic +Cookery, Formed upon Principles of Economy, and Adapted to the use +of Private Families." The author was Helene Rundell, of whom I am +unable to supply any further particulars at present. Mrs. Rundell's +cookery book, according to the preface, was originally intended for +the private instruction of the daughters of the authoress in their +married homes, and specially prepared with an eye to housekeepers +of moderate incomes. Mrs. Rundell did not write for professed +cooks, or with any idea of emolument; and she declared that had +such a work existed when she first set out in life it would have +been a great treasure to her. The public shared the writer's +estimate of her labours, and called for a succession of impressions +of the "New System," till its run was checked by Miss Acton's still +more practical collection. Mrs. Rundell is little consulted +nowadays; but time was when Mrs. Glasse and herself were the twin +stars of the culinary empyrean.</p> + +<p>Coming down to our own times, the names most familiar to our +ears are Ude, Francatelli, and Soyer, and they are the names of +foreigners [Footnote: A fourth work before me has no clue to the +author, but it is like the others, of an alien complexion. It is +called "French Domestic Cookery, Combining Elegance and Economy. In +twelve Hundred Receipts, 12mo, 1846." Soyer's book appeared in the +same year. In 1820, an anonymous writer printed a Latin poem of his +own composition, called "Tabella Cibaria, a Bill of Fare, etc., +etc., with Copious Notes," which seem more important than the +text]. No English school of cookery can be said ever to have +existed in England. We have, and have always had, ample material +for making excellent dishes; but if we desire to turn it to proper +account, we have to summon men from a distance to our aid, or to +accept the probable alternative—failure. The adage, "God +sends meat, and the devil sends cooks," must surely be of native +parentage, for of no country is it so true as of our own. Perhaps, +had it not been for the influx among us of French and Italian +experts, commencing with our Anglo-Gallic relations under the +Plantagenets, and the palmy days of the monastic orders, culinary +science would not have arrived at the height of development which +it has attained in the face of great obstacles. Perchance we should +not have progressed much beyond the pancake and oatmeal period. But +foreign <i>chefs</i> limit their efforts to those who can afford to +pay them for their services. The middle classes do not fall within +the pale of their beneficence. The poor know them not. So it +happens that even as I write, the greater part of the community not +only cannot afford professional assistance in the preparation of +their meals, which goes without saying, but from ignorance expend +on their larder twice as much as a Parisian or an Italian in the +same rank of life, with a very indifferent result. There are +handbooks of instruction, it is true, both for the middle and for +the lower classes. These books are at everybody's command. But they +are either left unread, or if read, they are not understood. I have +before me the eleventh edition of Esther Copley's "Cottage +Comforts," 1834; it embraces all the points which demand attention +from such as desire to render a humble home comfortable and happy. +The leaves have never been opened. I will not say, <i>ex hoc disce +omnes</i>; but it really appears to be the case, that these works +are not studied by those for whom they are written—not +studied, at all events, to advantage.</p> + +<p>Dr. Kitchener augmented this department of our literary stores +in 1821 with his "Cook's Oracle," which was very successful, and +passed through a series of editions.</p> + +<p>In the preface to that of 1831, the editor describes the book as +greatly enlarged and improved, and claims the "rapid and steady +sale which has invariably attended each following edition" as a +proof of the excellence of the work. I merely mention this, because +in Kitchener's own preface to the seventh issue, l2mo, 1823, he +says: "This last time I have found little to add, and little to +alter." Such is human fallibility!</p> + +<p>The "Cook's Oracle" was heralded by an introduction which very +few men could have written, and which represents the Doctor's +method of letting us know that, if we fancy him an impostor, we are +much mistaken. "The following Recipes," says he, "are not a mere +marrowless collection of shreds and patches, of cuttings and +pastings—but a bonâ-fide register of practical +facts—accumulated by a perseverance, not to be subdued or +evaporated by the igniferous Terrors of a Roasting Fire in the +Dog-days:—in defiance of the odoriferous and calefaceous +repellents of Roasting, Boiling,—Frying, and +Broiling;—moreover, the author has submitted to a labour no +preceding Cookery-Book-maker, perhaps, ever attempted to +encounter,—having eaten each Receipt before he set it down in +his Book."</p> + +<p>What could critics say, after this? One or two large editions +must have been exhausted before they recovered their breath, and +could discover how the learned Kitchener set down the receipts +which he had previously devoured. But the language of the Preface +helps to console us for the loss of Johnson's threatened +undertaking in this direction.</p> + +<p>Dr. Kitchener proceeded on different lines from an artist who +closely followed him in the order of publication; and the two did +not probably clash in the slightest degree. The cooking world was +large enough to hold Kitchener and the <i>ci-devant chef</i> to the +most Christian King Louis XVI. and the Right Honourable the Earl of +Sefton, Louis Eustache Ude. Ude was steward to the United Service +Club, when he printed his "French Cook" in 1822. A very +satisfactory and amusing account of this volume occurs in the +"London Magazine" for January 1825. But whatever may be thought of +Ude nowadays, he not only exerted considerable influence on the +higher cookery of his day, but may almost be said to have been the +founder of the modern French school in England.</p> + +<p>Ude became <i>chef</i> at Crockford's Club, which was built in +1827, the year in which his former employer, the Duke of York, +died. There is a story that, on hearing of the Duke's illness, Ude +exclaimed, "Ah, mon pauvre Duc, how much you shall miss me where +you are gone!"</p> + +<p>About 1827, Mrs. Johnstone brought out her well-known +contribution to this section of literature under the title of "The +Cook and Housewife's Manual," veiling her authorship under the +pseudonym of Mistress Margaret Dods, the landlady in Scott's tale +of "St. Ronan's Well," which appeared three years before (8vo, +1824).</p> + +<p>Mrs. Johnstone imparted a novel feature to her book by investing +it with a fictitious history and origin, which, like most +inventions of the kind, is scarcely consistent with the +circumstances, however it may tend to enliven the monotony of a +professional publication.</p> + +<p>After three prefaces in the fourth edition before me (8vo, 1829) +we arrive at a heading, "Institution of the Cleikum Club," which +narrates how Peregrine Touchwood, Esquire, sought to cure his +<i>ennui</i> and hypochondria by studying Apician mysteries; and it +concludes with the syllabus of a series of thirteen lectures on +cookery, which were to be delivered by the said Esquire. One then +enters on the undertaking itself, which can be readily +distinguished from an ordinary manual by a certain literary tone, +which certainly betrays a little the hand or influence of +Scott.</p> + +<p>But though the present is a Scottish production, there is no +narrow specialism in its scheme. The title-page gives a London +publisher as well as an Anglo-Athenian one, and Mrs. Johnstone +benevolently adapted her labours to her countrywomen and the +unworthier Southrons alike.</p> + +<p>I imagine, however, that of all the latter-day master-cooks, +Alexis Soyer is most remembered. His "Gastronomic Regenerator," a +large and handsome octavo volume of between 700 and 800 pages, +published in 1846, lies before me. It has portraits of the compiler +and his wife, and many other illustrations, and is dedicated to a +Royal Duke. It was produced under the most influential patronage +and pressure, for Soyer was overwhelmed with engagements, and had +scruples against appearance in print. He tells us that in some +library, to which he gained access, he once found among the works +of Shakespeare and other <i>chefs</i> in a different department, a +volume with the words "Nineteenth Edition" upon it, and when he +opened it, he saw to his great horror "A receipt for Ox-tail Soup!" +Why this revelation exercised such a terrifying effect he proceeds +to explain. It was the incongruity of a cookery book in the temple +of the Muses. But nevertheless, such is the frailty of our nature, +that he gradually, on regaining his composure, and at such leisure +intervals as he could command, prepared the "Gastronomic +Regenerator," in which he eschewed all superfluous ornaments of +diction, and studied a simplicity of style germane to the subject; +perchance he had looked into Kitchener's Preface. He lets us know +that he had made collections of the same kind at an earlier period +of his career, but had destroyed them, partly owing to his arduous +duties at the Reform Club, and partly to the depressing influence +of the nineteenth edition of somebody else's cookery +book—probably, by the way, Ude's. The present work occupied +some ten months, and was prepared amid the most stupendous +interruptions from fair visitors to the Club (15,000), dinners for +the members and their friends (25,000), dinner parties of +importance (38), and the meals for the staff (60). He gives a total +of 70,000 dishes; but it is not entirely clear whether these refer +to the 38 dinner parties of importance, or to the 25,000 of +inferior note, or to both. The feeling of dismay at the nineteenth +edition of somebody must have been sincere, for he winds up his +preface with an adjuration to his readers (whom, in the "Directions +for Carving," he does not style Gentle, or Learned, or Worshipful, +but HONOURABLE) not to place his labours on the same shelf with +"Paradise Lost."</p> + +<p>Soyer had also perhaps certain misgivings touching too close an +approximation to other <i>chefs</i> besides Milton and Shakespeare, +for he refers to the "profound ideas" of Locke, to which he was +introduced, to his vast discomfort, "in a most superb library in +the midst of a splendid baronial hall." But the library of the +Reform Club probably contained all this heterogeneous learning. +Does the "Gastronomic Regenerator," out of respect to the +fastidious sentiments of its author, occupy a separate apartment in +that institution with a separate curator?</p> + +<p>It seems only the other day to me, that Soyer took Gore Lodge, +and seemed in a fair way to make his removal from the Reform Club a +prosperous venture. But he lost his wife, and was unfortunate in +other ways, and the end was very sad indeed. "Soyez tranquille," +was the epitaph proposed at the time by some unsentimental +wagforpoor Madame Soyer; it soon served for them both.</p> + +<p>But nearly concurrent with Soyer's book appeared one of humble +pretensions, yet remarkable for its lucidity and precision, Eliza +Acton's "Modern Cookery in all its Branches reduced to an easy +practice," 16mo, 1845. I have heard this little volume highly +commended by competent judges as exactly what it professes to be; +and the quantities in the receipts are particularly reliable.</p> + +<p>The first essay to bring into favourable notice the produce of +Colonial cattle was, so far as I can collect, a volume published in +1872, and called "Receipts for Cooking Australian Meat, with +Directions for preparing Sauces suitable for the same." This still +remains a vexed question; but the consumption of the meat is +undoubtedly on the increase, and will continue to be, till the +population of Australasia equalises supply and demand.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<a name="7"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/176.png" /></center> + +<h2>COOKERY BOOKS.</h2> + +<h3>PART IV.</h3> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>Besides the authorities for this branch of the inquiry already +cited, there are a few others, which it may assist the student to +set down herewith:—</p> + +<p>1. A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government +of the Royal Household (Edward III. to William and Mary). 4to, +1790.</p> + +<p>2. The book of Nurture. By Hugh Rhodes, of the King's Chapel. +Printed in the time of Henry VIII. by John Redman. 4to.</p> + +<p>3. A Breviate touching the Order and Government of the House of +a Nobleman. 1605. <i>Archaeologia</i>, xiii.</p> + +<p>4. Orders made by Henry, Prince of Wales, respecting his +Household. 1610. <i>Archaeologia</i>, xiv.</p> + +<p>5. The School of Good Manners. By William Phiston or Fiston. +8vo, 1609.</p> + +<p>6. The School of Virtue, the Second Part. By Richard West. 12mo, +1619.</p> + +<p>7. The School of Grace; or, A Book of Nurture. By John Hart. +12mo. (About 1680.)</p> + +<p>8. England's Newest Way in all Sorts of Cookery. By Henry +Howard, Free Cook of London. 8vo, London, 1703.</p> + +<p>9. A Collection of above three hundred Receipts in Cookery, +Physick and Surgery, for the use of all Good Wives, Tender Mothers, +and Careful Nurses. By several Hands. The second edition, to which +is added a second part. 8vo, London, 1729. Fifth edition, 8vo, +London, 1734.</p> + +<p>10. The Compleat City and Country Cook. By Charles Carter. 8vo, +London, 1732.</p> + +<p>11. The Compleat Housewife: or, Accomplish'd Gentlewomans +Companion: Being a collection of upwards of Five Hundred of the +most approved Receipts in Cookery, Pastry, Confectionery, +Preserving, Pickles, Cakes, Creams, Jellies, Made Wines, Cordials. +With Copper Plates.... And also Bills of Fare for every month in +the year.... By E. Smith. Seventh edition, with very large +additions, near fifty Receipts being communicated just before the +author's death. 8vo, London, 1736. Eleventh edition. 8vo, London, +1742.</p> + +<p>12. The Complete Family Piece: A very Choice Collection of +Receipts in... Cookery. Seventh Edition. 8vo, London, 1737.</p> + +<p>13. The Modern Cook. By Vincent La Chapelle, cook to the Prince +of Orange. Third edition. 8vo, London, 1744.</p> + +<p>14. A Treatise of all Sorts of Foods, both Animal and Vegetable, +and also of Drinkables, written originally in French by the Learned +M.L. Lemery. Translated by D. Hay, M.D. 8vo, London, 1745.</p> + +<p>15. The Housekeeper's Pocket-Book. By Sarah Harrison. Sixth +edition, 2 vols. 12mo, London, 1755.</p> + +<p>16. Professed Cookery. By Ann Cook. Third edition. 8vo, London +(about 1760).</p> + +<p>17. The Experienced English Housekeeper. By Elizabeth Raffald. +Second edition. 8vo, London, 1771. There were an eighth, tenth, and +eleventh editions, and two others, described as "New Editions," +between this date and 1806. The compiler dedicates her book to "The +honourable Lady Elizabeth Warburton," in whose service she had +been. She mentions that the volume was published by subscription, +and that she had obtained eight hundred names. In the preface Mrs. +Raffald begins by observing: "When I reflect upon the number of +books already in print upon this subject, and <i>with what contempt +they are read</i>, I cannot but be apprehensive that this may meet +the same fate with some who will censure before they either see it +or try its value." She concludes by saying that she had not meddled +with physical receipts, "leaving them to the physician's superior +judgment, whose proper province they are." The author of the +"Experienced Housekeeper" tells us that she had not only filled +that post in noble families during fifteen years, but had travelled +with her employers, and so widened her sphere of observation.</p> + +<p>18. The Young Ladies' Guide in the Art of Cookery. By Elizabeth +Marshall. 8vo, Newcastle, 1777.</p> + +<p>19. English Housewifery Exhibited in above 450 Receipts. By +Elizabeth Moxon. Fourth edition. 8vo, Leeds (about 1780).</p> + +<p>20. The Practice of Modern Cookery. By George Dalrymple. 8vo, +Edinburgh, 1781.</p> + +<p>21. The Ladies' Assistant for Regulating and Supplying the +Table. By Charlotte Mason. 8vo, London, 1786.</p> + +<p>22. The Compleat Family Companion. 8vo, London, 1787 (?).</p> + +<p>23. The Honours of the Table; or, Rules for Behaviour during +Meals, with the whole Art of Carving.... By the Author of +"Principles of Politeness," etc. (Trusler). Second edition. +Woodcuts by Bewick. 12mo, London, 1791.</p> + +<p>24. The French Family Cook: being a complete system of French +Cookery. From the French. 8vo, London, 1793.</p> + +<p>25. The British Housewife; or, The Cook's, Housekeeper's, and +Gardener's Companion. By Martha Bradley. 8vo.</p> + +<p>26. Cookery and Pastry. By Mrs. Macivey. New edition, 12mo, +Edinburgh, 1800.</p> + +<p>27. The London Art of Cookery. By John Farley. Fourth edition. +8vo, London, 1807.</p> + +<p>28. The School of Good Living; or, A Literary and Historical +Essay on the European Kitchen, beginning with Cadmus, the Cook and +King, and concluding with the Union of Cookery and Chymistry. 12 +mo, London, 1804.</p> + +<p>29. <i>Culina Famulatur Medicina</i>. Receipts in Modern +Cookery, with a Medical Commentary by Ignotus, and revised by A. +Hunter, M.D., F.A.S.L. and E. Fourth edition, 12mo, York, 1806.</p> + +<p>30. The Universal Cook. By Francis Collingwood and T. Woollams. +Fourth edition. 8vo, London, 1806.</p> + +<p>31. A Complete System of Cookery. By John Simpson, Cook. 8vo, +London, 1806. Again, 8vo, London, 1816.</p> + +<p>32. Simpson's Cookery Improved and Modernised. By H.W. Brand. +8vo, London, 1834.</p> + +<p>33. The Imperial and Royal Cook. By Frederick Nutt, Esquire, +Author of the "Complete Confectioner." 8vo, London, 1809.</p> + +<p>34. The Housekeeper's Domestic Library. By Charles Millington. +8vo, London, 1810.</p> + +<p>35. The Housekeeper's Instructor; or, Universal Family Book. By +W.A. Henderson. Seventeenth edition. By S.C. Schrubbelie, Cook to +the Albany, London. 8vo, London, 1811.</p> + +<p>36. The Art of Preserving all kinds of animal and vegetable +Substances for several years. By M. Appert. Translated from the +French. Second edition. 8vo, London, 1812. With a folding +Plate.</p> + +<p>37. Domestic Economy and Cookery, for Rich and Poor. By a Lady. +8vo, London, 1827. In the preface the author apprises us that a +long residence abroad had enabled her to become a mistress of the +details of foreign European cookery; but she adds: "The +mulakatanies and curries of India; the sweet pillaus, yahourt, and +cold soups of Persia; the cubbubs, sweet yaughs and sherbets of +Egypt; the cold soups and mixed meats of Russia, the cuscussous and +honeyed paste of Africa, have been inserted with the view of +introducing a less expensive and more wholesome and a more delicate +mode of cookery."</p> + +<p>38. Apician Morsels; or, Tales of the Table, Kitchen, and +Larder. By Dick Humelbergius Secundus. 8vo, London, 1834.</p> + +<p>39. Cottage Economy and Cookery. 8vo, London, 1844.[Footnote: +Reprinted from the Journal of the Agricultural Society, 1843, vol. +iii, part I].</p> + +<br /> + + +<center><img alt="" src="images/183.png" /></center> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<a name="8"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/184.png" /></center> + +<h2>DIET OF THE YEOMAN AND THE POOR.</h2> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>The staple food among the lower orders in Anglo-Saxon and the +immediately succeeding times was doubtless bread, butter, and +cheese, the aliment which goes so far even yet to support our rural +population, with vegetables and fruit, and occasional allowances of +salted bacon and pancakes, beef, or fish. The meat was usually +boiled in a kettle suspended on a tripod [Footnote: The tripod is +still employed in many parts of the country for a similar purpose] +over a wood-fire, such as is used only now, in an improved shape, +for fish and soup.</p> + +<p>The kettle which is mentioned, as we observe, in the tale of +"Tom Thumb," was the universal vessel for boiling purposes +[Footnote: An inverted kettle was the earliest type of the +diving-bell], and the bacon-house (or larder), so called from the +preponderance of that sort of store over the rest, was the +warehouse for the winter stock of provisions [Footnote: What is +called in some places the keeping-room also accommodated flitches +on the walls, and hams ranged along the beams overhead; and it +served at the same time for a best parlour]. The fondness for +condiments, especially garlic and pepper, among the higher orders, +possibly served to render the coarser nourishment of the poor more +savoury and flavorous. "It is interesting to remark," says Mr. +Wright [Footnote: "Domestic Manners and Sentiments," 1862, p. 91], +"that the articles just mentioned (bread, butter, and cheese) have +preserved their Anglo-Saxon names to the present time, while all +kinds of meat—beef, veal, mutton, pork, even bacon—have +retained only the names given to them by the Normans; which seems +to imply that flesh-meat was not in general use for food among the +lower classes of society."</p> + +<p>In Malory's compilation on the adventures of King Arthur and his +knights, contemporary with the "Book of St. Alban's," we are +expressly informed in the sixth chapter, how the King made a great +feast at Caerleon in Wales; but we are left in ignorance of its +character. The chief importance of details in this case would have +been the excessive probability that Malory would have described an +entertainment consonant with the usage of his own day, although at +no period of early history was there ever so large an assemblage of +guests at one time as met, according to the fable, to do honour to +Arthur.</p> + +<p>In the tenth century Colloquy of Archbishop Alfric, the boy is +made to say that he is too young to eat meat, but subsists on +cabbages, eggs, fish, cheese, butter, beans, and other things, +according to circumstances; so that a vegetable diet was perhaps +commoner in those days even among the middle classes than at +present. This youth, when he is asked what he drinks, replies, +water, or ale if he can get it. The dish so deftly constructed by +King Arthur, according to one of his numerous biographers, +exhibited that wedlock of fruit with animal matter—fat and +plums—which we post-Arthurians eye with a certain fastidious +repugnance, but which, notwithstanding, lingered on to the +Elizabethan or Jacobaean era—nay, did not make the gorge of +our grandsires turn rebellious. It survives among ourselves only in +the modified shape of such accessories as currant jelly and apple +sauce.</p> + +<p>But the nursery rhyme about Arthur and the bag-pudding of barley +meal with raisins and meat has a documentary worth for us beyond +the shadowy recital of the banquet at Caerleon, for, <i>mutato +nomine</i>, it is the description of a favourite article of popular +diet in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The narrative of +Mrs. Thumb and her pudding is more circumstantial than that of King +Alfred and the housewife; and if the tradition is worthless, it +serves us so far, that it faithfully portrays a favourite item of +rustic consumption in old times. We are told that the pudding was +made in a bowl, and that it was chiefly composed of the flesh and +blood of a newly-killed hog, laid in batter; and then, when all was +ready, the bag with all its savoury burden was put into a +kettle.</p> + +<p>As we are already on the threshold of legend and myth, we may +linger there a moment to recall to memory the resemblance between +the description of this piece of handiwork and that ascribed to +good King Arthur, who lived in days when monarchs were their own +<i>chefs</i>, for the Arthurian dish was also prepared in a bag, +and consisted, according to the ditty, of barley-meal and fat. +Soberly speaking, the two accounts belong, maybe, to something like +the same epoch in the annals of gastronomy; and a large pudding +was, for a vast length of time, no doubt, a prevailing <i>piece de +résistance</i> in all frugal British households. It was the +culinary forefather of toad-in-the-hole, hot-pot, Irish stew, and +of that devil-dreaded Cornish pasty. The Elizabethan transmitters +of these two Apician nuggets possibly antedated the popular +institution of the bag-pudding; but the ancientest gastronomical +records testify to the happy introduction of the frying-pan about +the era when we were under Alfred's fatherly sway. It may have even +preceded the grill, just as the fork lagged behind the spoon, from +which it is a seeming evolution. That no reader may doubt the fact, +that Tom's mother made the pudding, and that Tom held the candle, +we refer to the old edition of this choice piece of chapman's ware, +where an accurate drawing of Mrs. Thumb, and the board, and the +bowl, and Tom with the candle, may be inspected. The <i>prima +stamina</i> of the modern fruit-pudding really appear to be found +in the ancient bag-pudding, of which Tom Thumb had such excellent +reason to be acquainted with the contents. The mode of construction +was similar, and both were boiled in a cloth. The material and +subsidiary treatment of course differed; but it is curious that no +other country possesses either the tart or the pudding, as we +understand them, and as the latter has perhaps been developed from +the dish, of the making of which Tom Thumb was an eye-witness to +his sorrow, so the covered fruit tart may not improbably be an +outgrowth from the old coffin pasty of venison or game, with the +superaddition of a dish for the safe custody of the juice.</p> + +<p>Another rather prominent factor in the diet of the poor classes, +not only in Scotland but in the North of England, was oatmeal +variously prepared. One very favourable and palatable way was by +grinding the meal a second time as fine as flour, boiling it, and +then serving it with hot milk or treacle. There is something in the +nature of this food so peculiarly satisfying and supporting, that +it seems to have been destined to become the staple nourishment of +a poor population in a cold and bracing climate. The fourteenth and +fifteenth centuries unquestionably saw a great advance in the +mystery of cookery and in the diversity of dishes, and the author +of "Piers of Fulham" complains, that men were no longer satisfied +with brawn and powdered beef, which he terms "store of house," but +would have venison, wild fowl, and heronshaw; and men of simple +estate, says he, will have partridges and plovers, when lords lack. +He adds quaintly:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"A mallard of the dunghill is good enough for me,</p> + +<p class="i2">With pleasant pickle, or it is else poison. +pardy."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>We have for our purpose a very serviceable relic of the old +time, called "A Merry Jest, how the Ploughman learned his +Paternoster." The scene purports to be laid in France, and the +general outline may have been taken from the French; but it is +substantially English, with allusions to Kent, Robin Hood, and so +forth, and it certainly illustrates the theme upon which we are. +This ploughman was in fact a farmer or husbandman, and the account +of his dwelling and garden-stuff is very interesting. We are told +that his hall-roof was full of bacon-flitches, and his store-room +of eggs, butter, and cheese. He had plenty of malt to make good +ale—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"And Martlemas beef to him was not dainty;</p> + +<p class="i2">Onions and Garlic had he enough,</p> + +<p class="i2">And good cream, and milk of the cow."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But in "Vox Populi Vox Dei," written about 1547, and therefore +apparently not from the pen of Skelton, who died in 1529, it is +said that the price of an ox had risen to four pounds, and a sheep +without the wool to twelve shillings and upwards, so that the poor +man could seldom afford to have meat at his table. This evil the +writer ascribes to the exactions of the landlord and the lawyer. +The former charged too highly for his pastures, and the latter +probably advanced money on terms. The old poem depicts in sad +colours the condition of the yeoman at the same period, that had +had once plenty of cows and cream, butter, eggs, cheese, and honey; +all which had gone to enrich upstarts who throve by +casting-counters and their pens. The story of the "King and a poor +Northern Man," 1640, also turns upon the tyranny of the lawyers +over ignorant clients.</p> + +<p>The "Serving-man's Comfort," 1598, draws a somewhat gloomy +picture of the times. The prices of all provisions, among other +points, had trebled since the good old days, when his father and +grandfather kept house. Then people could buy an ox for +20<i>s.</i>, a sheep for 3<i>s.</i>, a calf for 2<i>s.</i>, a goose +for 6<i>d.</i>, a capon for 4<i>d.</i>, a hen for 2<i>d.</i>, a pig +for the same, and all other household provisions at a like rate. +The reason given by the farmer was that the landlords had raised +their rent. Let them have the land on the old terms, and the former +prices would pay. This plea and demand have come back home to us in +1886.</p> + +<p>The tradition is, that when Queen Elizabeth received the +intelligence of the defeat of the Armada, she was dining off a +goose—doubtless about eleven o'clock in the morning. It was +an anxious moment, and perhaps her majesty for the moment had +thrown ceremony somewhat aside, and was "keeping secret house."</p> + +<p>The author of the "Serving-man's Comfort," 1598, also laments +the decay of hospitality. "Where," he inquires "are the great +chines of stalled beef, the great, black jacks of double beer, the +long hall-tables fully furnished with good victuals?" But he seems +to have been a stickler for the solid fare most in vogue, according +to his complaint, formerly; and he represents to us that in lieu of +it one had to put up with goose-giblets, pigs' pettitoes, and so +many other boiled meats, forced meats, and made dishes. Things were +hardly so very bad, however, if, as he states previously, the +curtailment of the expenditure on the table still left, as a medium +repast, two or three dishes, with fruit and cheese after. The black +jack here mentioned was not discarded till comparatively modern +days. Nares, who published his Glossary in 1822, states that he +recollects them in use.</p> + +<p>"A meal's meat twice a week, worth a groat," is mentioned as the +farm servant's portion in "Civil and Uncivil Life," 1579. In "A +Piece of Friar Bacon's Brasen-heads Prophesie," a unique poem, +1604, we read that at that time a cheesecake and a pie were held +"good country meat." The author adds:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"Ale and Spice, and Curdes and Creame,</p> + +<p class="i2">Would make a Scholler make a Theame."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Breton, in his "Fantasticks," 1626, observes: "Milk, Butter and +Cheese are the labourers dyet; and a pot of good Beer quickens his +spirits."</p> + +<p>Norfolk dumplings were celebrated in John Day the playwright's +time. He has put into the mouth of his east-country yeoman's son, +Tom Strowd, in "The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green," written long +before it was printed in 1659, the following:—"As God mend +me, and ere thou com'st into Norfolk, I'll give thee as good a dish +of Norfolk dumplings as ere thou laydst thy lips to;" and in +another passage of the same drama, where Swash's shirt has been +stolen, while he is in bed, he describes himself "as naked as your +Norfolk dumplin." In the play just quoted, Old Strowd, a Norfolk +yeoman, speaks of his contentment with good beef, Norfolk bread, +and country home-brewed drink; and in the "City Madam," 1658, +Holdfast tells us that before his master got an estate, "his family +fed on roots and livers, and necks of beef on Sundays." I cite +these as traits of the kind of table kept by the lower grades of +English society in the seventeenth century.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<a name="9"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/196.png" /></center> + +<h2>MEATS AND DRINKS.</h2> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Slender: You are afraid, if you see the bear loose, +are you not?</p> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Anne: Aye, indeed, Sir</p> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Slender: That's meat and drink to me, now.</p> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, i, 1.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The manufacture of wine and of fruit preserves, and many of the +processes of cookery, could have scarcely been accomplished without +a large and constant supply of sugar.</p> + +<p>The exact date of the first introduction of the latter into +England continues to be a matter of uncertainty. It was clearly +very scarce, and doubtless equally dear, when, in 1226, Henry III. +asked the Mayor of Winchester to procure him three pounds of +Alexandria sugar, if so much could be got, and also some rose and +violet-coloured sugar; nor had it apparently grown much more +plentiful when the same prince ordered the sheriffs of London to +send him four loaves of sugar to Woodstock. But it soon made its +way into the English homes, and before the end of the thirteenth +century it could be procured even in remote provincial towns. It +was sold either by the loaf or the pound. It was still exorbitantly +high in price, varying from eighteen pence to three shillings a +pound of coeval currency; and it was retailed by the +spice-dealers.</p> + +<p>In Russell's "Book of Nurture," composed about 1450, it occurs +as an ingredient in hippocras; and one collects from a letter sent +by Sir Edward Wotton to Lord Cobham from Calais in 1546, that at +that time the quantities imported were larger, and the price +reduced; for Wotton advises his correspondent of a consignment of +five-and-twenty loaves at six shillings the loaf. One loaf was +equal to ten pounds; this brought the commodity down to eight pence +a pound of fifteenth century money.</p> + +<p>The sugar of Cyprus was also highly esteemed; that of Bezi, in +the Straits of Sunda, was the most plentiful; but the West Indian +produce, as well as that of Mauritius, Madeira, and other +cane-growing countries, was unknown.</p> + +<p>Of bread, the fifteenth century had several descriptions in use: +pain-main or bread of very fine flour, wheat-bread, barley-meal +bread, bran-bread, bean-bread, pease-bread, oat-bread or oat-cakes, +hard-bread, and unleavened bread. The poor often used a mixture of +rye, lentils, and oatmeal, varied according to the season and +district.</p> + +<p>The author of "The Serving-man's Comfort," 1598, however, seems +to say that it was counted by the poorer sort at that time a +hardship only to be tolerated in a dear year to mix beans and peas +with their corn, and he adds: "So must I yield you a loaf of coarse +cockle, having no acquaintance with coin to buy corn."</p> + +<p>In a <i>Nominale</i> of this period mention is made of "oblys," +or small round loaves, perhaps like the old-fashioned "turnover"; +and we come across the explicit phrase, <i>a loaf of bread</i>, for +the first time, a pictorial vocabulary of the period even +furnishing us with a representation of its usual form.</p> + +<p>Nor were the good folks of those days without their simnels, +cracknels, and other sorts of cakes for the table, among which in +the <i>wastel</i> we recognise the equivalent of the modern French +<i>gâteau</i>.</p> + +<p>Besides march-pain or pain-main, and pain-puff, two sorts baked +on special occasions, and rather entering into the class of +confectionery, our better-to-do ancestors usually employed three +descriptions of bread: manchete for the master's table, made of +fine boulted flour; chete, of unboulted flour, but not mixed with +any coarser ingredient; and brown-bread, composed of flour and rye +meal, and known as <i>maslin</i> (mystelon).</p> + +<p>A bushel of wheat, in a romance of the thirteenth century, is +estimated to produce twenty loaves; but the statement is obviously +to be taken with allowance. The manchet was sometimes thought to be +sufficient without butter, as we now eat a scone. In the "Conceits +of Old Hobson," 1607, the worthy haberdasher of the Poultry gives +some friends what is facetiously described as a "light" +banquet—a cup of wine and a manchet of bread on a trencher +for each guest, in an apartment illuminated with five hundred +candles.</p> + +<p>There is no pictorial record of the mode in which the early +baker worked here, analogous to that which Lacroix supplies of his +sixteenth century <i>confrère</i>. The latter is brought +vividly enough before us in a copy of one of Jost Amman's +engravings, and we perceive the bakery and its tenants: one +(apparently a female) kneading the dough in a trough at the farther +end, a second by a roasting fire, with a long ladle or peel in his +hand, putting the loaf on the oven, and a third, who is a woman, +leaving the place with two baskets of bread, one on her head and +one on her arm; the baker himself is almost naked, like the +operatives in a modern iron furnace. The artist has skilfully +realised the oppressive and enervating atmosphere; and it was till +lately quite usual to see in the side streets of Paris in the early +morning the <i>boulanger</i> at work precisely in the same informal +costume. So tenacious is usage, and so unchanging many of the +conditions of life.</p> + +<p>The Anglo-Norman used butter where his Italian contemporary used +oil. But it is doubtful whether before the Conquest our ancestors +were commonly acquainted with butter.</p> + +<p>The early cook understood the art of glazing with yolk of egg, +and termed it endoring, and not less well that of presenting dishes +under names calculated to mislead the intended partaker, as where +we find a receipt given for <i>pome de oringe</i>, which turns out +to be a preparation of liver of pork with herbs and condiments, +served up in the form of glazed force-meat balls.</p> + +<p>Venison was salted in troughs. In the tale of "The King and the +Hermit," the latter exhibits to his unknown visitor his stock of +preserved venison from the deer, which he had shot in the +forest.</p> + +<p>The mushroom, of which so many varieties are at present +recognised by botanists, seems, from the testimony of an Italian, +Giacomo Castelvetri, who was in London in 1614, and to whom I have +already referred, to have been scarcely known here at that time. I +cannot say, of course, how far Castelvetri may have prosecuted his +inquiries, though he certainly leaves the impression of having been +intelligently observant; or whether he includes in this observation +the edible toadstools; but even now much unreasonable prejudice +exists as to the latter, and very limited use is made of any but +two or three familiar sorts of the mushroom itself. It is a pity +that this misconception should not be dissipated.</p> + +<p>Caviary had been brought into England, probably from Russia, at +the commencement of the seventeenth century, perhaps sooner. In +1618, "The Court and Country," by Breton, seems to represent it as +an article of diet which was little known, and not much relished; +for a great lady had sent the writer's father a little barrel of +it, and it was no sooner opened than it was fastened down again, to +be returned to the donor with a respectful message that her servant +had black soap enough already.</p> + +<p>In the time of James I. the ancient bill of fare had been shorn +of many of its coarser features, so far as fish was concerned; and +the author of "The Court and Country" tells a story to shew that +porpoise-pie was a dish which not even a dog would eat.</p> + +<p>The times had indeed changed, since a King and a +Cardinal-archbishop judged this warm-blooded sea-dweller a fit dish +for the most select company.</p> + +<p>It is not a despicable or very ascetic regimen which Stevenson +lays before us under April in his reproduction of Breton's +"Fantasticks," 1626, under the title of the "Twelve Months," +1661:—"The wholesome dyet that breeds good sanguine juyce, +such as pullets, capons, sucking veal, beef not above three years +Old, a draught of morning milk fasting from the cow; grapes, +raysons, and figs be good before meat; Rice with Almond Milk, birds +of the Field, Peasants and Partridges, and fishes of stony rivers, +Hen eggs potcht, and such like."</p> + +<p>Under May he furnishes us with a second and not less appetising +<i>menu</i>:—</p> + +<p>"Butter and sage are now the wholesome Breakfast, but fresh +cheese and cream are meat for a dainty mouth; the early Peascods +and Strawberries want no price with great Bellies; but the Chicken +and the Duck are fatted for the Market; the sucking Rabbet is +frequently taken in the Nest, and many a Gosling never lives to be +a Goose."</p> + +<p>Even so late as the succeeding reign, Breton speaks of the good +cheer at Christmas, and of the cook, if he lacks not wit, sweetly +licking his fingers.</p> + +<p>The storage of liquids became a difficult problem where, as +among our ancestors, glazed pottery was long unknown; and more +especially with regard to the supply of water in dry seasons. But +so far as milk was concerned, the daily yield probably seldom +exceeded the consumption; and among the inhabitants further north +and east, who, as Caesar says, partook also of flesh, and did not +sow grain—in other words, were less vegetarian in their +habits from the more exhausting nature of the climate—the +consideration might be less urgent. It is open to doubt if, even in +those primitive times, the supply of a national want lagged far +behind the demand.</p> + +<p>The list of wines which the King of Hungary proposed to have at +the wedding of his daughter, in "The Squire of Low Degree," is +worth consulting. Harrison, in his "Description of England," 1586, +speaks of thirty different kinds of superior vintages and fifty-six +of commoner or weaker kinds. But the same wine was perhaps known +under more than one name.</p> + +<p>Romney or Rumney, a Hungarian growth, Malmsey from the +Peloponnesus, and Hippocras were favourites, and the last-named was +kept as late as the last century in the buttery of St. John's +College, Cambridge, for use during the Christmas festivities. But +France, Spain, Greece, almost all countries, contributed to furnish +the ancient wine-cellar, and gratify the variety of taste among +connoisseurs; and for such as had not the means to purchase foreign +productions, the juice of the English grape, either alone or +mingled with honey and spice, furnished a not unpalatable and not +very potent stimulant. As claret and hock with us, so anciently +Bastard and Piment were understood in a generic sense, the former +for any mixed wine, the latter for one seasoned with spice.</p> + +<p>In "Colin Blobol's Testament," a whimsical production of the +fifteenth century, Tent and Valencia wines are mentioned, with wine +of Languedoc and Orleans. But perhaps it will be best to cite the +passage:—</p> + +<p>"I trow there shall be an honest fellowship, save first shall +they of ale have new backbones. With strong ale brewed in vats and +in tuns; Ping, Drangollie, and the Draget fine, Mead, Mattebru, and +the Metheling. Red wine, the claret and the white, with Tent and +Alicant, in whom I delight. Wine of Languedoc and of Orleans +thereto: Single beer, and other that is double: Spruce beer, and +the beer of Hamburgh: Malmsey, Tires, and Romany."</p> + +<p>But some of the varieties are hidden under obscure names. We +recognise Muscadel, Rhine wine, Bastard, Hippocras, however. On the +10th of December, 1497, Piers Barber received six shillings and +eight pence, according to the "Privy Purse Expences of Henry VII.," +"for spice for ypocras."</p> + +<p>Metheglin and beer of some kind appear to be the most ancient +liquors of which there are any vestiges among the Britons. +Ferguson, in his Essay "On the Formation of the Palate," states +that they are described by a Greek traveller, who visited the south +of Britain in the fourth century B.C. This informant describes +metheglin as composed of wheat and honey (of course mixed with +water), and the beer as being of sufficient strength to injure the +nerves and cause head-ache.</p> + +<p>Worlidge, in his "Vinetum Britannicum," 1676, gives us receipts +for metheglin and birch wine. Breton, in his "Fantasticks," 1626, +under January, recommends a draught of ale and wormwood wine mixed +in a morning to comfort the heart, scour the maw, and fulfil other +beneficial offices.</p> + +<p>The English beer of by-gone times underwent many vicissitudes, +and it was long before our ancestors conquered their dislike to the +bitter hop, after having been accustomed to a thick, sweet liquor +of which the modern Kentish ale is in some measure a survival. Beer +was made from a variety of grain; oats were most commonly employed. +In France, they resorted even to vetches, lentils, rye, and darnel. +But as a rule it was a poor, thin drink which resulted from the +operation, and the monks of Glastonbury deemed themselves fortunate +in being allowed by their abbot to put a load of oats into the vat +to improve the quality of the beverage; which may account for Peter +of Blois characterising the ale in use at Court in his day (he died +about the end of the twelfth century) as potent—it was by +contrast so. The first assize of ale seems not to have been enacted +till the reign of Henry III.</p> + +<p>From a glossary of the fourteenth century, inserted in "Reliquse +Antique," 1841, it appears that whey was then used as a drink; it +occurs there as "cerum, i, quidam liquor, whey."</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<a name="10"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/209.png" /></center> + +<h2>THE KITCHEN.</h2> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>In direct connection with cookery as with horticulture, are the +utensils and appliances which were at the command of those who had +to do with these matters in days of yore; and in both cases an +inquirer finds that he has to turn from the vain search for actual +specimens belonging to remoter antiquity to casual representations +or descriptions in MSS. and printed books. Our own museums appear +to be very weakly furnished with examples of the vessels and +implements in common use for culinary purposes in ancient times, +and, judging from the comparatively limited information which we +get upon this subject from the pages of Lacroix, the paucity of +material is not confined to ourselves. The destruction and +disappearance of such humble monuments of the civilisation of the +past are easily explained; and the survival of a slender salvage is +to be treated as a circumstance not less remarkable than +fortunate.</p> + +<p>It seems that the practice was to cut up, if not to slaughter, +the animals used for food in the kitchen, and to prepare the whole +carcase, some parts in one way and some in another. We incidentally +collect from an ancient tale that the hearts of swine were much +prized as dainties.</p> + +<p>Besides a general notion of the appointments of the cooking +department, we are enabled to form some conception of the aspect of +the early kitchen itself from extant representations in the +"Archaeological Album," the "Penny Magazine" for 1836, and Lacroix +[Footnote: "Moeurs, Usages et Costumes au Moyen Age," 1872, pp 166, +170, 177]. The last-named authority furnishes us with two +interesting sixteenth century interiors from Jost Amman, and (from +the same source) a portraiture of the cook of that period.</p> + +<p>The costume of the subject is not only exhibited, doubtless with +the fidelity characteristic of the artist, but is quite equally +applicable to France, if not to our own country, and likewise to a +much earlier date. The evidences of the same class supplied by the +"Archaeological Album," 1845, are drawn from the MS. in the British +Museum, formerly belonging to the Abbey of St. Albans. They consist +of two illustrations—one of Master Robert, cook to the abbey, +as elsewhere noticed, accompanied by his wife—unique relic of +its kind; the other a view of a small apartment with dressers and +shelves, and with plates and accessories hung round, in which a +cook, perhaps the identical Master Robert aforesaid, is plucking a +bird. The fireplace is in the background, and the iron vessel which +is to receive the fowl, or whatever it may really be, is suspended +over the flame by a long chain. The perspective is rather faulty, +and the details are not very copious; but for so early a period as +the thirteenth or early part of the following century its value is +undeniable.</p> + +<center><img alt="Master Robert plucking a bird" width="50%" src="images/212.png" /></center> + +<p>The "Penny Magazine" presents us with a remarkable exterior, +that of the venerable kitchen of Stanton-Harcourt, near Oxford, +twenty-nine feet square and sixty feet in height. There are two +large fireplaces, facing each other, but no chimney, the smoke +issuing atthe holes, each about seven inches in diameter, which run +round the roof. As Lamb said of his Essays, that they were all +Preface, so this kitchen is all chimney. It is stated that the +kitchen at Glastonbury Abbey was constructed on the same model; and +both are probably older than the reign of Henry IV. The one to +which I am more immediately referring, though, at the time (1835) +the drawing was taken, in an excellent state of preservation, had +evidently undergone repairs and structural changes.</p> + +<p>It was at Stanton-Harcourt that Pope wrote a portion of his +translation of Homer, about 1718.</p> + +<p>A manufactory of brass cooking utensils was established at +Wandsworth in or before Aubrey's time by Dutchmen, who kept the art +secret. Lysons states that the place where the industry was carried +on bore the name of the "Frying Pan Houses" [Footnote: A "Environs +of London," 1st ed., Surrey, pp. 502-3].</p> + +<p>In the North of England, the <i>bake-stone</i>, originally of +the material to which it owed its name, but at a very early date +constructed of iron, with the old appellations retained as usual, +was the universal machinery for baking, and was placed on the +<i>Branderi</i>, an iron frame which was fixed on the top of the +fireplace, and consisted of iron bars, with a sliding or slott bar, +to shift according to the circumstances.</p> + +<p>The tripod which held the cooking-vessel over the wood flame, +among the former inhabitants of Britain, has not been entirely +effaced. It is yet to be seen here and there in out-of-the-way +corners and places; and in India they use one constructed of clay, +and differently contrived. The most primitive pots for setting over +the fire on the tripod were probably of bronze.</p> + +<p>The tripod seems to be substantially identical with what was +known in Nidderdale as the kail-pot. "This was formerly in common +use," says Mr. Lucas; "a round iron pan, about ten inches deep and +eighteen inches across, with a tight-fitting, convex lid. It was +provided with three legs. The kail-pot, as it was called, was used +for cooking pies, and was buried bodily in burning peat. As the +lower peats became red-hot, they drew them from underneath, and +placed them on the top. The kail-pot may still be seen on a few +farms." This was about 1870.</p> + +<p>The writer is doubtless correct in supposing that this utensil +was originally employed for cooking kail or cabbage and other green +stuff.</p> + +<p>Three rods of iron or hard wood lashed together, with a hook for +taking the handle of the kettle, formed, no doubt, the original +tripod. But among some of the tribes of the North of Europe, and in +certain Tartar, Indian, and other communities, we see no such +rudimentary substitute for a grate, but merely two uprights and a +horizontal rest, supporting a chain; and in the illustration to the +thirteenth or fourteenth century MS., once part of the abbatial +library at St. Albans, a nearer approach to the modern jack is +apparent in the suspension of the vessel over the flame by a chain +attached to the centre of a fireplace.</p> + +<p>Not the tripod, therefore, but the other type must be thought to +have been the germ of the later-day apparatus, which yielded in its +turn to the Range.</p> + +<p>The fireplace with a ring in the middle, from which is suspended +the pot, is represented in a French sculpture of the end of the +fourteenth century, where two women are seated on either side, +engaged in conversation. One holds a ladle, and the other an +implement which may be meant for a pair of bellows.</p> + +<p>In his treatise on Kitchen Utensils, Neckam commences with +naming a table, on which the cook may cut up green stuff of various +sorts, as onions, peas, beans, lentils, and pulse; and he proceeds +to enumerate the tools and implements which are required to carry +on the work: pots, tripods for the kettle, trenchers, pestles, +mortars, hatchets, hooks, saucepans, cauldrons, pails, gridirons, +knives, and so on. The head-cook was to have a little apartment, +where he could prepare condiments and dressings; and a sink was to +be provided for the viscera and other offal of poultry. Fish was +cooked in salt water or diluted wine.</p> + +<p>Pepper and salt were freely used, and the former must have been +ground as it was wanted, for a pepper-mill is named as a requisite. +Mustard we do not encounter till the time of Johannes de Garlandia +(early thirteenth century), who states that it grew in his own +garden at Paris. Garlic, or gar-leac (in the same way as the onion +is called <i>yn-leac</i>), had established itself as a flavouring +medium. The nasturtium was also taken into service in the tenth or +eleventh century for the same purpose, and is classed with +herbs.</p> + +<p>When the dish was ready, it was served up with green sauce, in +which the chief ingredients were sage, parsley, pepper, and oil, +with a little salt. Green geese were eaten with raisin or +crab-apple sauce. Poultry was to be well larded or basted while it +was before the fire.</p> + +<p>I may be allowed to refer the reader, for some interesting +jottings respecting the first introduction of coal into London, to +"Our English Home," 1861. "The middle classes," says the anonymous +writer, "were the first to appreciate its value; but the nobility, +whose mansions were in the pleasant suburbs of Holborn and the +Strand, regarded it as a nuisance." This was about the middle of +the thirteenth century. It may be a mite contributed to our +knowledge of early household economy to mention, by the way, that +in the supernatural tale of the "Smith and his Dame" (sixteenth +century) "a quarter of coal" occurs. The smith lays it on the fire +all at once; but then it was for his forge. He also poured water on +the flames, to make them, by means of his bellows, blaze more +fiercely. But the proportion of coal to wood was long probably very +small. One of the tenants of the Abbey of Peterborough, in 852, was +obliged to furnish forty loads of wood, but of coal two only.</p> + +<p>In the time of Charles I., however, coals seem to have been +usual in the kitchen, for Breton, in this "Fantasticks," 1626, +says, under January:—"The Maid is stirring betimes, and +slipping on her Shooes and her Petticoat, groaps for the tinder +box, where after a conflict between the steele and the stone, she +begets a spark, at last the Candle lights on his Match; then upon +an old rotten foundation of broaken boards she erects an +artificiall fabrick of the black Bowels of New-Castle soyle, to +which she sets fire with as much confidence as the Romans to their +Funerall Pyles."</p> + +<p>Under July, in the same work, we hear of "a chafing dish of +coals;" and under September, wood and coals are mentioned together. +But doubtless the employment of the latter was far less +general.</p> + +<p>In a paper read before the Royal Society, June 9, 1796, there is +an account of a saucepan discovered in the bed of the river +Withain, near Tattersall Ferry, in Lincolnshire, in 1788. It was of +base metal, and was grooved at the bottom, to allow the contents +more readily to come within reach of the fire. The writer of this +narrative, which is printed in the "Philosophical Transactions," +considered that the vessel might be of Roman workman-ship; as he +states that on the handle was stamped a name, C. ARAT., which he +interprets <i>Caius Aratus</i>. "It appears," he adds, "to have +been tinned; but almost all the coating had been worn off.... The +art of tinning copper was understood and practised by the Romans, +although it is commonly supposed to be a modern invention."</p> + +<p>Neckam mentions the roasting-spit, elsewhere called the +roasting-iron; but I fail to detect skewers, though they can hardly +have been wanting. Ladles for basting and stirring were familiar. +As to the spit itself, it became a showy article of plate, when the +fashion arose of serving up the meat upon it in the hall; and the +tenure by which Finchingfield in Essex was held <i>in capite</i> in +the reign of Edward III.—that of turning the spit at the +coronation—demonstrates that the instrument was of sufficient +standing to be taken into service as a memorial formality.</p> + +<p>The fifteenth century vocabulary notices the salt-cellar, the +spoon, the trencher, and the table-cloth. The catalogue comprises +<i>morsus, a bit</i>, which shows that <i>bit</i> and <i>bite</i> +are synonymous, or rather, that the latter is the true word as +still used in Scotland, Yorkshire, and Lincolnshire, from the last +of which the Pilgrims carried it across the Atlantic, where it is a +current Americanism, not for one bite, but as many as you please, +which is, in fact, the modern provincial interpretation of the +phrase, but not the antique English one. The word <i>towel</i> was +indifferently applied, perhaps, for a cloth for use at the table or +in the lavatory. Yet there was also the <i>manuturgium</i>, or +hand-cloth, a speciality rendered imperative by the mediaeval +fashion of eating.</p> + +<p>In the inventory of the linen at Gilling, in Yorkshire, one of +the seats of the Fairfax family, made in 1590, occur:—"Item, +napkins vj. dozen. Item, new napkins vj. dozen." This entry may or +may not warrant a conclusion that the family bought that quantity +at a time—not a very excessive store, considering the untidy +habits of eating and the difficulty of making new purchases at +short notice.</p> + +<p>Another mark of refinement is the resort to the <i>napron</i>, +corruptly <i>apron</i>, to protect the dress during the performance +of kitchen work. But the fifteenth century was evidently growing +wealthier in its articles of use and luxury; the garden and the +kitchen only kept pace with the bed-chamber and the dining-hall, +the dairy and the laundry, the stable and the out-buildings. An +extensive nomenclature was steadily growing up, and the Latin, old +French, and Saxon terms were giving way on all sides to the +English. It has been now for some time an allowed and understood +thing that in these domestic backgrounds the growth of our country +and the minuter traits of private life are to be studied with most +clear and usurious profit.</p> + +<p>The trencher, at first of bread, then of wood, after a while of +pewter, and eventually of pottery, porcelain or china-earth, as it +was called, and the precious metals, afforded abundant scope for +the fancy of the artist, even in the remote days when the material +for it came from the timber-dealer, and sets of twelve were +sometimes decorated on the face with subjects taken from real life, +and on the back with emblems of the purpose to which they were +destined.</p> + +<p>Puttenham, whose "Art of English Poetry" lay in MS. some years +before it was published in 1589, speaks of the posies on trenchers +and banqueting dishes. The author of "Our English Home" alludes to +a very curious set, painted in subjects and belonging to the reign +of James I., which was exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries' +rooms by Colonel Sykes.</p> + +<p>It is to be augured that, with the progress of refinement, the +meats were served upon the table on dishes instead of trenchers, +and that the latter were reserved for use by the guests of the +family. For in the "Serving-man's Comfort," 1598, one +reads:—"Even so the gentlemanly serving-man, whose life and +manners doth equal his birth and bringing up, scorneth the society +of these sots, or to place a dish where they give a trencher"; and +speaking of the passion of people for raising themselves above +their extraction, the writer, a little farther on, observes: "For +the yeoman's son, as I said before, leaving <i>gee haigh!</i> for, +<i>Butler, some more fair trenchers to the table!</i> bringeth +these ensuing ulcers amongst the members of the common body."</p> + +<p>The employment of trenchers, which originated in the manner +which I have shown, introduced the custom of the distribution at +table of the two sexes, and the fashion of placing a lady and +gentleman alternately. In former days it was frequently usual for a +couple thus seated together to eat from one trencher, more +particularly if the relations between them were of an intimate +nature, or, again, if it were the master and mistress of the +establishment. Walpole relates that so late as the middle of the +last century the old Duke and Duchess of Hamilton occupied the dais +at the head of the room, and preserved the traditional manner by +sharing the same plate. It was a token of attachment and a tender +recollection of unreturnable youth.</p> + +<p>The prejudice against the fork in England remained very +steadfast actual centuries after its first introduction; forks are +particularised among the treasures of kings, as if they had been +crown jewels, in the same manner as the <i>iron</i> spits, pots, +and frying-pans of his Majesty Edward III.; and even so late as the +seventeeth century, Coryat, who employed one after his visit to +Italy, was nicknamed "Furcifer." The two-pronged implement long +outlived Coryat; and it is to be seen in cutlers' signs even down +to our day. The old dessert set, curiously enough, instead of +consisting of knives and forks in equal proportions, contained +eleven knives and one fork for <i>ginger</i>. Both the fork and +spoon were frequently made with handles of glass or crystal, like +those of mother-of-pearl at present in vogue.</p> + +<p>In a tract coeval with Coryat the Fork-bearer, Breton's "Court +and Country," 1618, there is a passage very relevant to this part +of the theme:—"For us in the country," says he, "when we have +washed our hands after no foul work, nor handling any unwholesome +thing, we need no little forks to make hay with our mouths, to +throw our meat into them."</p> + +<p>Forks, though not employed by the community, became part of the +effects of royal and great personages, and in the inventory of +Charles V. of France appear the spoon, knife, and fork. In another +of the Duke of Burgundy, sixty years later (1420), knives and other +implements occur, but no fork. The cutlery is described here as of +German make. Brathwaite, in his "Rules for the Government of the +House of an Earl," probably written about 1617, mentions knives and +spoons, but not forks.</p> + +<p>As the fork grew out of the chopstick, the spoon was probably +suggested by the ladle, a form of implement employed alike by the +baker and the cook; for the early tool which we see in the hands of +the operative in the oven more nearly resembles in the bowl a spoon +than a shovel. In India nowadays they have ladles, but not spoons. +The universality of broths and semi-liquid substances, as well as +the commencement of a taste for learned gravies, prompted a +recourse to new expedients for communicating between the platter +and the mouth; and some person of genius saw how the difficulty +might be solved by adapting the ladle to individual service. But +every religion has its quota of dissent, and there were, nay, are +still, many who professed adherence to the sturdy simplicity of +their progenitors, and saw in this daring reform and the fallow +blade of the knife a certain effeminate prodigality.</p> + +<p>It is significant of the drift of recent years toward the +monograph, that, in 1846, Mr. Westman published "The Spoon: +Primitive, Egyptian, Roman, Mediaeval and Modern," with one hundred +illustrations, in an octavo volume.</p> + +<p>The luxury of carving-knives was, even in the closing years of +the fifteenth century, reserved for royalty and nobility; for in +the "Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VII.," under 1497, a pair is +said to have cost £1 6<i>s.</i> 8<i>d.</i> of money of that +day. Nothing is said of forks. But in the same account, under +February 1st, 1500-1, one Mistress Brent receives 12<i>s.</i> (and +a book, which cost the king 5<i>s.</i> more) for a silver fork +weighing three ounces. In Newbery's "Dives Pragmaticus," 1563, a +unique poetical volume in the library at Althorpe, there is a +catalogue of cooking utensils which, considering its completeness, +is worth quotation; the author speaks in the character of a +chapman—one forestalling Autolycus:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"I have basins, ewers, of tin, pewter and glass.</p> + +<p class="i2">Great vessels of copper, fine latten and brass:</p> + +<p class="i2">Both pots, pans and kettles, such as never was.</p> + +<p class="i2">I have platters, dishes, saucers and +candle-sticks,</p> + +<p class="i2">Chafers, lavers, towels and fine tricks:</p> + +<p class="i2">Posnets, frying-pans, and fine puddingpricks ...</p> + +<p class="i2">Fine pans for milk, and trim tubs for sowse.</p> + +<p class="i2">I have ladles, scummers, andirons and spits,</p> + +<p class="i2">Dripping-pans, pot-hooks....</p> + +<p class="i2">I have fire-pans, fire-forks, tongs, trivets, and +trammels,</p> + +<p class="i2">Roast-irons, trays, flaskets, mortars and +pestles...."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>And among other items he adds rollers for paste, moulds for +cooks, fine cutting knives, fine wine glasses, soap, fine salt, and +candles. The list is the next best thing to an auctioneer's +inventory of an Elizabethan kitchen, to the fittings of +Shakespeare's, or rather of his father's. A good idea of the +character and resources of a nobleman's or wealthy gentleman's +kitchen at the end of the sixteenth and commencement of the +seventeenth century may be formed from the Fairfax inventories +(1594-1624), lately edited by Mr. Peacock. I propose to annex a +catalogue of the utensils which there present +themselves:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">The furnace pan for beef.</p> + +<p class="i2">The beef kettle.</p> + +<p class="i2">Great and small kettles.</p> + +<p class="i2">Brass kettles, holding from sixteen to twenty gallons +each.</p> + +<p class="i2">Little kettles with bowed or carved handles.</p> + +<p class="i2">Copper pans with ears.</p> + +<p class="i2">Great brass pots.</p> + +<p class="i2">Dripping-pans.</p> + +<p class="i2">An iron peel or baking shovel.</p> + +<p class="i2">A brazen mortar and a pestle.</p> + +<p class="i2">Gridirons.</p> + +<p class="i2">Iron ladles.</p> + +<p class="i2">A laten scummer.</p> + +<p class="i2">A grater.</p> + +<p class="i2">A pepper mill.</p> + +<p class="i2">A mustard-quern.</p> + +<p class="i2">Boards.</p> + +<p class="i2">A salt-box.</p> + +<p class="i2">An iron range.</p> + +<p class="i2">Iron racks.</p> + +<p class="i2">A tin pot.</p> + +<p class="i2">Pot hooks.</p> + +<p class="i2">A galley bawk to suspend the kettle or pot over the +fire.</p> + +<p class="i2">Spits, square and round, and various sizes.</p> + +<p class="i2">Bearers.</p> + +<p class="i2">Crooks.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>In the larders (wet and dry) and pastry were:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Moulding boards for pastry.</p> + +<p class="i2">A boulting tub for meal.</p> + +<p class="i2">A little table.</p> + +<p class="i2">A spice cupboard.</p> + +<p class="i2">A chest for oatmeal.</p> + +<p class="i2">A trough.</p> + +<p class="i2">Hanging and other shelves.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Here follows the return of pewter, brass, and other vessels +belonging to the kitchen:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Pewter dishes of nine sizes (from Newcastle).</p> + +<p class="i2">Long dishes for rabbits.—Silver fashioned.</p> + +<p class="i2">Saucers.—Silver fashioned.</p> + +<p class="i2">Chargers.—Silver fashioned.</p> + +<p class="i2">Pie plates.—Silver fashioned.</p> + +<p class="i2">Voider.—Silver fashioned.</p> + +<p class="i2">A beef-prick.</p> + +<p class="i2">Fire shoves and tongs.</p> + +<p class="i2">A brig (a sort of brandreth).</p> + +<p class="i2">A cullender.</p> + +<p class="i2">A pewter baking-pan.</p> + +<p class="i2">Kettles of brass.</p> + +<p class="i2">A skillet.</p> + +<p class="i2">A brandeth.</p> + +<p class="i2">A shredding knife.</p> + +<p class="i2">A chopping knife.</p> + +<p class="i2">An apple cradle.</p> + +<p class="i2">A pair of irons to make wafers with.</p> + +<p class="i2">A brass pot-lid.</p> + +<p class="i2">Beef-axes and knives.—For Slaughtering.</p> + +<p class="i2">Slaughter ropes.—For Slaughtering.</p> + +<p class="i2">Beef stangs.—For Slaughtering.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>In the beef-house was an assortment of tubs, casks, and +hogsheads. Table knives, forks, spoons, and drinking-vessels +presumably belonged to another department.</p> + +<p>The dripping-pan is noticed in Breton's "Fantasticks," 1626: +"Dishes and trenchers are necessary servants, and they that have no +meat may go scrape; a Spit and a Dripping-pan would do well, if +well furnished." Flecknoe, again, in his character of a "Miserable +old Gentlewoman," inserted among his "Enigmatical Characters," +1658, speaks of her letting her prayer-book fall into the +dripping-pan, and the dog and the cat quarrelling over it, and at +last agreeing to pray on it!</p> + +<p>But this is a branch of the subject I cannot afford further to +penetrate. Yet I must say a word about the polished maple-wood +bowl, or <i>maser</i>, with its mottoes and quaint devices, which +figured on the side-board of the yeoman and the franklin, and which +Chaucer must have often seen in their homes. Like everything else +which becomes popular, it was copied in the precious metals, with +costly and elaborate goldsmith's work; but its interest for us is +local, and does not lend itself to change of material and +neighbourhood. The habits of the poor and middle classes are apt to +awaken a keener curiosity in our minds from the comparatively +slender information which has come to us upon them; and as in the +case of the maser, the laver which was employed in humble circles +for washing the hands before and after a meal was, not of gold or +silver, as in the houses of the nobility, but of brass or laten, +nor was it in either instance a ceremonious form, but a necessary +process. The modern finger-glass and rose-water dish, which are an +incidence of every entertainment of pretension, and in higher +society as much a parcel of the dinner-table as knives and forks, +are, from a mediaeval standpoint, luxurious anachronisms.</p> + +<p>In Archbishop Alfric's "Colloquy," originally written in the +tenth century, and subsequently augmented and enriched with a Saxon +gloss by one of his pupils, the cook is one of the persons +introduced and interrogated. He is asked what his profession is +worth to the community; and he replies that without him people +would have to eat their greens and flesh raw; whereupon it is +rejoined that they might readily dress them themselves; to which +the cook can only answer, that in such case all men would be +reduced to the position of servants.</p> + +<p>The kitchen had its <i>chef</i> or master-cook (archimacherus), +under-cooks, a waferer or maker of sweets, a scullion or swiller +(who is otherwise described as a <i>quistron</i>), and knaves, or +boys for preparing the meat; and all these had their special +functions and implements.</p> + +<p>Even in the fifteenth century the appliances for cookery were +evidently far more numerous than they had been. An illustrated +vocabulary portrays, among other items, the dressing-board, the +dressing-knife, the roasting-iron, the frying-pan, the spit-turner +(in lieu of the old turn-broach), the andiron, the ladle, the +slice, the skummer; and the <i>assitabulum</i>, or saucer, first +presents itself. It seems as if the butler and the pantler had +their own separate quarters; and the different species of wine, and +the vessels for holding it, are not forgotten. The archaic pantry +was dedicated, not to its later objects, but to that which the name +strictly signifies; but at the same time the writer warrants us in +concluding, that the pantry accommodated certain miscellaneous +utensils, as he comprises in its contents a candlestick, a table or +board-cloth, a hand-cloth or napkin, a drinking bowl, a saucer, and +a spoon. The kitchen, in short, comprised within its boundaries a +far larger variety of domestic requisites of all kinds than its +modern representative, which deals with an external machinery so +totally changed. The ancient Court of England was so differently +constituted from the present, and so many offices which sprang out +of the feudal system have fallen into desuetude, that it requires a +considerable effort to imagine a condition of things, where the +master-cook of our lord the king was a personage of high rank and +extended possessions. How early the functions of cook and the +property attached to the position were separated, and the tenure of +the land made dependent on a nominal ceremony, is not quite clear. +Warner thinks that it was in the Conqueror's time; but at any rate, +in that of Henry II. the husband of the heiress of Bartholomew de +Cheney held his land in Addington, Surrey, by the serjeantry of +finding a cook to dress the victuals at the coronation; the custom +was kept up at least so late as the reign of George III., to whom +at his coronation the lord of the manor of Addington presented a +dish of pottage. The tenure was varied in its details from time to +time. But for my purpose it is sufficient that manorial rights were +acquired by the <i>magnus coquus</i> or <i>magister coquorum</i> in +the same way as by the grand butler and other officers of state; +and when so large a share of the splendour of royalty continued for +centuries to emanate from the kitchen, it was scarcely +inappropriate or unfair to confer on that department of state some +titular distinction, and endow the holder with substantial honours. +To the Grand Chamberlain and the Grand Butler the Grand Cook was a +meet appendage.</p> + +<p>The primary object of these feudal endowments was the +establishment of a cordon round the throne of powerful subjects +under conditions and titles which to ourselves may appear +incongruous and obscure, but which were in tolerable keeping with +the financial and commercial organisation of the period, with a +restricted currency, a revenue chiefly payable in kind, scanty +facilities for transit, and an absence of trading centres. These +steward-ships, butler-ships, and cook-ships, in the hands of the +most trusted vassals of the Crown, constituted a rudimentary +vehicle for in-gathering the dues of all kinds renderable by the +king's tenants; and as an administrative scheme gradually unfolded +itself, they became titular and honorary, like our own reduced +menagerie of nondescripts. But while they lasted in their substance +and reality, they answered the wants and notions of a primitive +people; nor is it for this practical age to lift up its hands or +its voice too high; for mediaeval England is still legible without +much excavation in our Court, our Church, nay, in our Laws. There +lurk our cunning spoilers!</p> + +<p>Mr. Fairholt, in the "Archaeological Album," 1845, has depicted +for our benefit the <i>chef</i> of the Abbey of St. Albans in the +fourteenth century, and his wife Helena. The representations of +these two notable personages occur in a MS. in the British Museum, +which formerly belonged to the Abbey, and contains a list of its +benefactors, with their gifts. It does not appear that Master +Robert, cook to Abbot Thomas, was the donor of any land or money; +but, in consideration of his long and faithful services, his soul +was to be prayed for with that of his widow, who bestowed +3<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> <i>ad opus hujus libri</i>, which Fairholt +supposes to refer to the insertion of her portrait and that of her +spouse among the graphic decorations of the volume. They are +perhaps in their way unique. Behold them opposite!</p> + +<p>Another point in reference to the early economy of the table, +which should not be overlooked, is the character of the ancient +buttery, and the quick transition which its functionary, the +butler, experienced from the performance of special to that of +general duties.</p> + +<center><img alt="Master Robert and wife" width="50%" src="images/238.png" /></center> + +<p>He at a very remote period acted not merely as the curator of +the wine-cellar, but as the domestic steward and storekeeper; and +it was his business to provide for the requirements of the kitchen +and the pantry, and to see that no opportunity was neglected of +supplying, from the nearest port, or market town, or fair, if his +employer resided in the country, all the necessaries for the +departments under his control. We are apt to regard the modern +bearer of the same title as more catholic in his employments than +the appellation suggests; but he in fact wields, on the contrary, a +very circumscribed authority compared to that of his feudal +prototype.</p> + +<p>One of the menial offices in the kitchen, when the spit came +into use, was the broach-turner, lately referred to. He was by no +means invariably maintained on the staff, but was hired for the +occasion, which may augur the general preference for boiled and +fried meats. Sometimes it appears that any lad passing by, or in +want of temporary employment, was admitted for this purpose, and +had a trifling gratuity, or perhaps only his dinner and the +privilege of dipping his fingers in the dripping, for his +pains.</p> + +<p>Warner cites an entry in some accounts of the Hospital of St. +Bartholomew at Sandwich, under 1569:—"For tournynge the +spytte, iiij<i>d.</i>" and this was when the mayor of the borough +dined with the prior. A royal personage gave, of course, more. The +play of "Gammer Gurton's Needle," written about 1560, opens with a +speech of Diccon the Bedlam, or poor Tom, where he says:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"Many a gossip's cup in my time have I tasted,</p> + +<p class="i2">And many a broach and spit have I both turned and +basted."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The spit, again, was supplanted by the jack.</p> + +<p>The "History of Friar Rush," 1620, opens with a scene in which +the hero introduces himself to a monastery, and is sent by the +unsuspecting prior to the master-cook, who finds him subordinate +employment.</p> + +<br /> + + +<center><img alt="" src="images/240.png" /></center> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<a name="11"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/241.png" /></center> + +<h2>MEALS.</h2> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>It has been noted that for a great length of time two meals were +made to suffice the requirements of all classes. Our own experience +shows how immaterial the names are which people from age to age +choose to bestow on their feeding intervals. Some call supper +<i>dinner</i>, and others call dinner <i>luncheon.</i> First comes +the prevailing mode instituted by fashionable society, and then a +foolish subscription to it by a section of the community who are +too poor to follow it, and too proud not to seem to do so. Formerly +it was usual for the Great to dine and sup earlier than the Little; +but now the rule is reversed, and the later a man dines the more +distinguished he argues himself. We have multiplied our daily +seasons of refreshment, and eat and drink far oftener than our +ancestors; but the truly genteel Briton never sups; the word is +scarcely in his vocabulary,—like Beau Brummel and the +farthing—"Fellow, I do not know the coin!"</p> + +<p>In a glossary of the tenth-eleventh century only two meals are +quoted: undermeat = <i>prandium</i>, and even-meat = <i>coena</i>. +That is to say, our Saxon precursors were satisfied as a rule with +two repasts daily, but to this in more luxurious times were added +the supper and even the rear-supper, the latter being, so far as we +know, a second course or dessert and the bipartite collation +corresponding to the modern late dinner. But it is one of those +strange survivals of ancient manners which people practise without +any consciousness of the fact, which is at the root of the fashion, +which still occasionally prevails, of dividing the chief meal of +the day by an interval of repose, and taking the wine and dessert +an hour or two after the other courses; and the usage in our +colleges and inns of court of retiring to another apartment to +"wine" may claim the same origin. It is obvious that the +rear-supper was susceptible of becoming the most important and +costly part of an entertainment; and that it frequently assumed +extravagant proportions, many passages from our early poets might +be adduced to prove.</p> + +<p>In the "Book of Cookery," 1500, we have the <i>menu</i> at the +installation of Archbishop Nevill in York in 1467; but the bill of +fare of a feast given by him in 1452 at Oxford, where he is +mentioned as Master Nevill, son of the Earl of Salisbury, is +inserted from the Cotton MS. Titus, in "Reliquiae Antiquae," 1841. +It consisted of three courses, which seem to have been the +customary limit. Of course, however, the usage varied, as in the +"Song of the Boar's Head," of which there are two or three +versions, two courses only are specified in what has the air of +having been a rather sumptuous entertainment.</p> + +<p>The old low-Latin term for the noonday meal was <i>merenda</i>, +which suggests the idea of food to be earned before it was enjoyed. +So in "Friar Bacon's Prophesie," 1604, a poem, it is declared that, +in the good old days, he that wrought not, till he sweated, was +held unworthy of his meat. This reminds one of Abernethy's maxim +for the preservation of health,—to live on sixpence a day, +<i>and earn it</i>.</p> + +<p>The "Song of the Boar's Head," just cited, and printed from the +Porkington MS. in "Reliquiae Antiquae" (ii, 30), refers to larks +for ladies to pick as part of the second course in a banquet. On +special occasions, in the middle ages, after the dessert, hippocras +was served, as they have liqueurs to this day on the Continent both +after dinner and after the mid-day breakfast.</p> + +<p>The writer of "Piers of Fulham" lived to see this fashion of +introducing a third meal, and that again split into two for +luxury's sake; for his metrical biographer tells us, that he +refused rear-suppers, from a fear of surfeiting.</p> + +<p>I collect that in the time of Henry VIII. the supper was a +well-established institution, and that the abuse of postponing it +to a too advanced hour had crept in; for the writer of a poem of +this period especially counsels his readers <i>not to sup +late</i>.</p> + +<p>Rear-suppers were not only held in private establishments, but +in taverns; and in the early interlude of the "Four Elements," +given in my edition of Dodsley, and originally published about +1519, a very graphic and edifying scene occurs of a party of +roisterers ordering and enjoying an entertainment of this kind. +About seventy years later, Robert Greene, the playwright, fell a +victim to a surfeit of pickled herrings and Rhenish wine, at some +merry gathering of his intimates falling under this denomination. +Who will venture to deny that the first person who kept +unreasonable hours was an author and a poet? Even Shakespeare is +not exempt from the suspicion of having hastened his end by +indulgence with one or two friends in a gay carouse of this +kind.</p> + +<p>The author of the "Description of England" enlightens us +somewhat on the sort of kitchen which the middle class and yeomanry +of his time deemed fit and sufficient. The merchant or private +gentleman had usually from one to three dishes on the table when +there were no visitors, and from four to six when there was +company. What the yeoman's every-day diet was Harrison does not +express; but at Christmas he had brawn, pudding and souse, with +mustard; beef, mutton, and pork; shred pies, goose, pig, capon, +turkey, veal, cheese, apples, etc., with good drink, and a blazing +fire in the hall. The farmer's bill of fare varied according to the +season: in Lent, red herrings and salt fish; at Easter, veal and +bacon; at Martinmas, salted beef; at Midsummer, fresh beef, peas, +and salad; at Michaelmas, fresh herrings and fat mutton; at All +Saints', pork and peas and fish; and at Christmas, the same +dainties as our yeoman, with good cheer and pastime.</p> + +<p>The modern luncheon or nuncheon was the archaic <i>prandium</i>, +or under-meat, displaced by the breakfast, and modified in its +character by the different distribution of the daily repasts, so +that, instead of being the earliest regular meal, like the <i>grand +déjeuner</i> of the French, or coming, like our luncheon, +between breakfast and dinner, it interposed itself between the +noontide dinner and the evening supper. Now, with an increasing +proportion of the community, the universal luncheon, postponed to a +later hour, is the actual dinner; and our under-meal is the +afternoon tea.</p> + +<p>In those not-wholly-to-be-discommended days, the residue of the +meal was consumed in the servants' hall, and the scraps bestowed on +the poor at the gate; and the last part of the business was carried +out, not as a matter of chance or caprice, but on as methodical a +principle as the payment of a poor-rate. At the servants' table, +besides the waiters and other attendants on the principal board, +mentioned by Harrison, sat the master-cook, the pantler, the +steward or major-domo, the butler, the cellarman, the waferer, and +others. It was not till comparatively recent times that the +<i>wafery</i>, a special department of the royal kitchen, where the +confectionery and pastry were prepared, was discontinued.</p> + +<p>There was necessarily a very large section of the community in +all the large towns, especially in London, which was destitute of +culinary appliances, and at the same time of any charitable or +eleemosynary privileges. A multitude of persons, of both sexes and +all ages, gradually developed itself, having no feudal ties, but +attached to an endless variety of more or less humble +employments.</p> + +<p>How did all these men, women, boys, girls, get their daily food? +The answer is, in the public eating-houses. Fitzstephen tells us +that in the reign of Henry II. (1154-89), besides the wine-vaults +and the shops which sold liquors, there was on the banks of the +river a public eating-house or cook's-shop, where, according to the +time of year, you could get every kind of victuals, roasted, +boiled, baked, or fried; and even, says he, if a friend should +arrive at a citizen's house, and not care to wait, they go to the +shop, where there were viands always kept ready to suit every purse +and palate, even including venison, sturgeon, and Guinea-fowls. For +all classes frequented the City; and before Bardolph's day noblemen +and gentlemen came to Smithfield to buy their horses, as they did +to the waterside near the Tower to embark for a voyage.</p> + +<p>One of the characters in the "Canterbury Tales"—the Cook +of London—was, in fact the keeper of a cook's-shop; and in +the Prologue to the Tale, with which his name is associated, the +charming story of "Gamelin," the poet makes the Reeve charge his +companion with not very creditable behaviour towards his customers. +So our host trusts that his relation will be entertaining and +good:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"For many a pasty hast thou let blood,</p> + +<p class="i2">And many a Jack of Dover<a id="footnotetag1" name= +"footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> hast thou +sold,</p> + +<p class="i2">That hath been twice hot and twice cold.</p> + +<p class="i2">Of many a pilgrim hast thou Christ's curse—</p> + +<p class="i2">For thy parsley fare they yet the worse:</p> + +<p class="i2">That they have eaten with the stubble goose,</p> + +<p class="i2">For in thy shop is many a fly loose."</p> +</div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1" name= +"footnote1"></a><b>Footnote 1:</b> <a href= +"#footnotetag1">(return)</a> + +<p>A sole</p> +</blockquote> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But these restaurants were not long confined to one locality. +From a very early date, owing perhaps to its proximity to the Tower +and the Thames, East Cheap was famed for its houses of +entertainment. The Dagger in Cheap is mentioned in "A Hundred Merry +Tales," 1526. The Boar is historical. It was naturally at the +East-end, in London proper, that the flood-tide, as it were, of +tavern life set in, among the seafarers, in the heart of industrial +activity; and the anecdotes and glimpses which we enjoy show, just +what might have been guessed, that these houses often became scenes +of riotous excess and debauch. Lydgate's ballad of "London +Lickpenny" helps one to imagine what such resorts must have been in +the first part of the fifteenth century. It is almost permissible +to infer that the street contained, in addition to the regular +inns, an assortment of open counters, where the commodities on sale +were cried aloud for the benefit of the passer-by; for he +says:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"When I hied me into East Cheap:</p> + +<p class="i2">One cries ribs of beef, and many a pie:</p> + +<p class="i2">Pewter pots they clattered on a heap;</p> + +<p class="i2">There was harp, fife, and sautry."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The mention of pewter is noteworthy, because the Earl of +Northumberland ate his dinner off wood in 1572. Pewter plates had +not long been given up when I joined the Inner Temple in 1861.</p> + +<p>There is a still more interesting allusion in the interlude of +the "World and the Child," 1522, where Folly is made to +say:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"Yea, and we shall be right welcome, I dare well +say,</p> + +<p class="i2">In East Cheap for to dine;</p> + +<p class="i2">And then we will with Lombards at passage play,</p> + +<p class="i2">And at the Pope's Head sweet wine assay."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The places of resort in this rollicking locality could furnish, +long before The Boar made the acquaintance of Falstaff, every +species of delicacy and <i>bonne bouche</i> to their constituents, +and the revelry was apt sometimes to extend to an unseasonable +hour. In an early naval song we meet with the lines:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"He that will in East Cheap eat a goose so fat,</p> + +<p class="i2">With harp, pipe, and song,</p> + +<p class="i2">Must lie in Newgate on a mat,</p> + +<p class="i2">Be the night never so long."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>And these establishments infallibly contributed their quota or +more to the prisons in the vicinity.</p> + +<p>Houses of refreshment seem, however, to have extended themselves +westward, and to have become tolerably numerous, in the earlier +society of the sixteenth century, for Sir Thomas More, in a letter +to his friend Dean Colet, speaking of a late walk in Westminster +and of the various temptations to expenditure and dissipation which +the neighbourhood then afforded, remarks: "Whithersoever we cast +our eyes, what do we see but victualling-houses, fishmongers, +butchers, cooks, pudding-makers, fishers, and fowlers, who minister +matter to our bellies?" This was prior to 1519, the date of Colet's +decease.</p> + +<p>There were of course periods of scarcity and high prices then as +now. It was only a few years later (1524), that Robert Whittinton, +in one of his grammatical tracts (the "Vulgaria"), includes among +his examples:—</p> + +<p>"Befe and motton is so dere, that a peny worth of meet wyll +scant suffyse a boy at a meale."</p> + +<p>The term "cook's-shop" occurs in the Orders and Ordinances +devised by the Steward, Dean, and Burgesses of Westminster in 1585, +for the better municipal government of that borough.</p> + +<p>The tenth article runs thus:—"Item, that no person or +persons that keepeth or that hereafter shall keep any cook's-shop, +shall also keep a common ale-house (except every such person shall +be lawfully licensed thereunto), upon pain to have and receive such +punishment, and pay such fine, as by the statute in that case is +made and provided."</p> + +<p>But while the keepers of restaurants were, as a rule, precluded +by law from selling ale, the publicans on their side were not +supposed to purvey refreshment other than their own special +commodities. For the fifteenth proviso of these orders +is:—</p> + +<p>"Item, that no tavern-keeper or inn-keeper shall keep any cook +shop upon pain to forfeit and pay for every time offending therein +4<i>d.</i>"</p> + +<p>The London cooks became famous, and were not only in demand in +the City and its immediate outskirts, but were put into requisition +when any grand entertainment was given in the country. In the list +of expenses incurred at the reception of Queen Elizabeth in 1577 by +Lord Keeper Bacon at Gorhambury, is an item of £12 as wages +to the cooks of London. An accredited anecdote makes Bacon's father +inimical to too lavish an outlay in the kitchen; but a far more +profuse housekeeper might have been puzzled to dispense with +special help, where the consumption of viands and the consequent +culinary labour and skill required, were so unusually great.</p> + +<p>In the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," the Cook of London +and his qualifications are thus emblazoned:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"A Cook thei hadde with hem for the nones,</p> + +<p class="i2">To boylle chyknes, with the mary bones,</p> + +<p class="i2">And poudre marchaunt tart, and galyngale;</p> + +<p class="i2">Wel cowde he knowe a draugte of London ale.</p> + +<p class="i2">He cowde roste, and sethe, and broille, and frie</p> + +<p class="i2">Maken mortreux, and wel bake a pie.</p> + +<p class="i2">But gret harm was it, as it thoughte me,</p> + +<p class="i2">That on his schyne a mormal had he:</p> + +<p class="i2">For blankmanger that made he with the beste."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>This description would be hardly worth quoting, if it were not +for the source whence it comes, and the names which it presents in +common with the "Form of Cury" and other ancient relics. Chaucer's +Cook was a personage of unusually wide experience, having, in his +capacity as the keeper of an eating-house, to cater for so many +customers of varying tastes and resources.</p> + +<p>In the time of Elizabeth, the price at an ordinary for a dinner +seems to have been sixpence. It subsequently rose to eightpence; +and in the time of George I. the "Vade Mecum for Malt Worms (1720)" +speaks of the landlord of The Bell, in Carter Lane, raising his +tariff to tenpence. In comparison with the cost of a similar meal +at present, all these quotations strike one as high, when the +different value of money is considered. But in 1720, at all events, +the customer ate at his own discretion.</p> + +<p>Their vicinity to East Cheap, the great centre of early taverns +and cook's-shops, obtained for Pudding Lane and Pie Corner those +savoury designations.</p> + +<p>Paris, like London, had its cook's-shops, where you might eat +your dinner on the premises, or have it brought to your lodging in +a covered dish by a <i>porte-chape.</i> In the old prints of French +kitchen interiors, the cook's inseparable companion is his ladle, +which he used for stirring and serving, and occasionally for +dealing a refractory <i>garçon de cuisine</i> a rap on the +head.</p> + +<p>The Dictionary of Johannes de Garlandia (early thirteenth +century) represents the cooks at Paris as imposing on the ignorant +and inexperienced badly cooked or even tainted meat, which injured +their health. These "coquinarii" stood, perhaps, in the same +relation to those times as our keepers of restaurants.</p> + +<p>He mentions in another place that the cooks washed their +utensils in hot water, as well as the plates and dishes on which +the victuals were served.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wright has cited an instance from the romance of "Doon de +Mayence," where the guards of a castle, on a warm summer evening, +partook of their meal in a field. Refreshment in the open air was +also usual in the hunting season, when a party were at a distance +from home; and the garden arbour was occasionally converted to this +kind of purpose, when it had assumed its more modern phase. But our +picnic was unknown.</p> + +<br /> + + +<center><img alt="" src="images/257.png" /></center> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<a name="12"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/258.png" /></center> + +<h2>ETIQUETTE OF THE TABLE.</h2> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>Paul Hentzner, who was in England at the end of the reign of +Elizabeth, remarks of the people whom he saw that "they are more +polite in eating than the French, devouring less bread, but more +meat, which they roast in perfection. They put a good deal of sugar +in their drink."</p> + +<p>In his "Court and Country," 1618, Nicholas Breton gives an +instructive account of the strict rules which were drawn up for +observance in great households at that time, and says that the +gentlemen who attended on great lords and ladies had enough to do +to carry these orders out. Not a trencher must be laid or a napkin +folded awry; not a dish misplaced; not a capon carved or a rabbit +unlaced contrary to the usual practice; not a glass filled or a cup +uncovered save at the appointed moment: everybody must stand, +speak, and look according to regulation.</p> + +<p>The books of demeanour which have been collected by Mr. +Furnivall for the Early English Text Society have their incidental +value as illustrating the immediate theme, and are curious, from +the growth in consecutive compilations of the code of instructions +for behaviour at table, as evidences of an increasing cultivation +both in manners and the variety of appliances for domestic use, +including relays of knives for the successive courses. Distinctions +were gradually drawn between genteel and vulgar or coarse ways of +eating, and facilities were provided for keeping the food from +direct contact with the fingers, and other primitive offences +against decorum. Many of the precepts in the late fifteenth century +"Babies' Book," while they demonstrate the necessity for +admonition, speak also to an advance in politeness and delicacy at +table. There must be a beginning somewhere; and the authors of +these guides to deportment had imbibed the feeling for something +higher and better, before they undertook to communicate their views +to the young generation.</p> + +<p>There is no doubt that the "Babies' Book" and its existing +congeners are the successors of anterior and still more imperfect +attempts to introduce at table some degree of cleanliness and +decency. When the "Babies' Book" made its appearance, the progress +in this direction must have been immense. But the observance of +such niceties was of course at first exceptional; and the ideas +which we see here embodied were very sparingly carried into +practice outside the verge of the Court itself and the homes of a +few of the aristocracy.</p> + +<p>There may be an inclination to revolt against the barbarous +doggerel in which the instruction is, as a rule, conveyed, and +against the tedious process of perusing a series of productions +which follow mainly the same lines. But it is to be recollected +that these manuals were necessarily renewed in the manuscript form +from age to age, with variations and additions, and that the +writers resorted to metre as a means of impressing the rules of +conduct more forcibly on their pupils.</p> + +<p>Of all the works devoted to the management of the table and +kitchen, the "Book of Nurture," by John Russell, usher of the +chamber and marshal of the ball to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, is +perhaps, on the whole, the most elaborate, most trustworthy, and +most important. It leaves little connected with the <i>cuisine</i> +of a noble establishment of the fifteenth century untouched and +unexplained; and although it assumes the metrical form, and in a +literary respect is a dreary performance, its value as a guide to +almost every branch of the subject is indubitable. It lays bare to +our eyes the entire machinery of the household, and we gain a +clearer insight from it than from the rest of the group of +treatises, not merely into what a great man of those days and his +family and retainers ate and drank, and how they used to behave +themselves at table, but into the process of making various drinks, +the mystery of carving, and the division of duties among the +members of the staff. It is, in fact, the earliest comprehensive +book in our literature.</p> + +<p>The functions of the squire at the table of a prince are, to a +certain extent, shown in the "Squire of Low Degree," where the +hero, having arrayed himself in scarlet, with a chaplet on his head +and a belt round his waist, cast a horn about his neck, and went to +perform his duty in the hall. He approaches the king, dish in hand, +and kneels. When he has served his sovereign, he hands the meats to +the others. We see a handsome assortment of victuals on this +occasion, chiefly venison and birds, and some of the latter were +baked in bread, probably a sort of paste. The majority of the names +on the list are familiar, but a few—the teal, the curlew, the +crane, the stork, and the snipe—appear to be new. It is, in +all these cases, almost impossible to be sure how much we owe to +the poet's imagination and how much to his rhythmical poverty. From +another passage it is to be inferred that baked venison was a +favourite mode of dressing the deer.</p> + +<p>The precaution of coming to table with clean hands was +inculcated perhaps first as a necessity, when neither forks nor +knives were used, and subsequently as a mark of breeding. The knife +preceded the spoon, and the fork, which had been introduced into +Italy in the eleventh century, and which strikes one as a +fortuitous development of the Oriental chopstick, came last. It was +not in general use even in the seventeenth century here. Coryat the +traveller saw it among the Italians, and deemed it a luxury and a +notable fact.</p> + +<p>The precepts delivered by Lydgate and others for demeanour at +table were in advance of the age, and were probably as much +honoured in the breach as otherwise. But the common folk did then +much as many of them do now, and granted themselves a dispensation +both from knife and fork, and soap and water. The country boor +still eats his bacon or his herring with his fingers, just as +Charles XII. of Sweden buttered his bread with his royal thumb.</p> + +<p>A certain cleanliness of person, which, at the outset, was not +considerably regarded, became customary, as manners softened and +female influence asserted itself; and even Lydgate, in his "Stans +Puer ad Mensam (an adaptation from Sulpitius)," enjoins on his page +or serving-boy a resort to the lavatory before he proceeds to +discharge his functions at the board—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">"Pare clean thy nails; thy hands wash also</p> + +<p class="i2">Before meat; and when thou dost arise."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Other precepts follow. He was not to speak with his mouth full. +He was to wipe his lips after eating, and his spoon when he had +finished, taking care not to leave it in his dish. He was to keep +his napkin as clean and neat as possible, and he was not to pick +his teeth with his knife. He was not to put too much on his +trencher at once. He was not to drop his sauce or soup over his +clothes, or to fill his spoon too full, or to bring dirty knives to +the table. All these points of conduct are graphic enough; and +their trite character is their virtue.</p> + +<p>Boiled, and perhaps fried meats were served on silver; but +roasts might be brought to table on the spit, which, after a while, +was often of silver, and handed round for each person to cut what +he pleased; and this was done not only with ordinary meat, but with +game, and even with a delicacy like a roast peacock. Of smaller +birds, several were broached on one spit. There is a mediaeval +story of a husband being asked by his wife to help her to the +several parts of a fowl in succession, till nothing was left but +the implement on which it had come in, whereupon the man determined +she should have that too, and belaboured her soundly with it. At +more ceremonious banquets the servants were preceded by music, or +their approach from the kitchen to the hall was proclaimed by sound +of trumpets. Costly plate was gradually introduced, as well as +linen and utensils, for the table; but the plate may be conjectured +to have been an outcome from the primitive <i>trencher</i>, a large +slice of bread on which meat was laid for the occupants of the high +table, and which was cast aside after use.</p> + +<p>Bread served at table was not to be bitten or broken off the +loaf, but to be cut; and the loaf was sometimes divided before the +meal, and skilfully pieced together again, so as to be ready for +use.</p> + +<br /> + + +<center><img alt="" src="images/266.png" /></center> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<a name="13"></a> +<center><img alt="" width="70%" src="images/268.png" /></center> + +<h2>INDEX.</h2> + +<p> +Acton, Eliza<br /> +Addington, Surrey<br /> +Aigredouce<br /> +Albans, St., Abbey of<br /> +Ale<br /> + —Cock<br /> + —Elder<br /> + —Kentish<br /> +Alfred and the cakes<br /> +Al-fresco meals<br /> +Alfric, Colloquy of<br /> +Amber puddings<br /> +Angelica<br /> +Anglo-Danish barbarism<br /> +Anglo-Celtic influence<br /> +Anglo-Saxon names of meats<br /> +Animal food<br /> +Anthropophagy<br /> +Apicius, C.<br /> +Apuleius<br /> +Arms and crests on dishes<br /> +Arnold's Chronicle<br /> +Arthur<br /> +Ashen-keys, pickled<br /> +Asparagus<br /> +Assize of ale<br /> +Australian meat<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Babies' Book<br /> +Bacon, Lord Keeper<br /> +Bag pudding<br /> +Baker<br /> + —Parisian<br /> +Bakestone<br /> +Banbury cake<br /> +Bannock<br /> +Banquet, order of a fourteenth century<br /> +Barba, M.<br /> +Bardolf, a dish<br /> +Bardolph<br /> +Bartholomew de Cheney<br /> + —St., Hospital of, at Sandwich<br /> +Battalia pie<br /> +Beef, powdered<br /> + —Martlemas<br /> +Beer<br /> + —composition of the ancient<br /> +Bees, wild<br /> +Bellows<br /> +Birch wine<br /> +Bit and bite<br /> +Blackcaps<br /> +Bolton, Charles, Duke of<br /> +Book of St. Albans<br /> +Books of demeanour<br /> +Branderi<br /> +Brass cooking vessels<br /> +Brawn<br /> +Bread<br /> +Britons, diet of the<br /> + —Northern and Southern<br /> +Brittany<br /> +Broach or spit turner<br /> +Broom-buds, pickled<br /> +Broth<br /> +Bun<br /> +Butler, ancient duties of the<br /> +Butter<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Caerleon<br /> +Caesar, evidence of<br /> +Cakes<br /> +Calais<br /> +Calves, newly-born<br /> + —removal of, from the mother, while in milk<br /> +Cannibalism<br /> +Carps' tongues<br /> +Carving, terms of<br /> +Castelvetri<br /> +Caudles and possets<br /> +Caviary<br /> +Charlet<br /> +Chaucer, G.<br /> +Chaworth's (Lady) pudding<br /> +Cheesecakes, Mrs. Leed's, etc.,<br /> +Cheeses<br /> +Chimney, kitchen<br /> +China broth<br /> +China earth<br /> +Christmas<br /> +Clare Market<br /> +Cleikirai Club<br /> +Clermont, B.<br /> +Coals<br /> +Cobham, Lord<br /> +Cockle<br /> +Colet, Dean<br /> +College wine<br /> +Colonial cattle<br /> +Condiments<br /> +Confectioner<br /> + —master<br /> +Confectionery<br /> +Conserves<br /> +Cook<br /> + —master<br /> +Cookery-books, lists of<br /> + —with the names of old owners<br /> +Cook's-shops<br /> +Cooking utensils, great value of<br /> + —lists of<br /> +Cooper, Joseph<br /> +Copley, Esther<br /> +Copper, art of tinning<br /> +Cornish pasty<br /> +Coryat, Thomas<br /> +Court, the ancient<br /> +Cows<br /> +Crab-apple sauce<br /> +Creams<br /> +Cromwell, Oliver<br /> + —his favourite dishes<br /> +Cuisine bourgeoise of ancient Rome<br /> + —English, affected by fusions of race<br /> + —Old French<br /> +Cuisinier Royal, Le<br /> +Curds and cream<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Danish settlers<br /> +Danish settlers, their influence on our diet<br /> +Deer-suet, clarified<br /> +DelaHay Street<br /> +Deportment at table, gradual improvement in the<br /> +Dishes, lists of<br /> + —substituted for trenchers<br /> + —different sizes and materials of<br /> + —mode of serving up<br /> +Dods, Margaret<br /> +Dripping-pans<br /> +Dumplings, Norfolk<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Earl, Rules and Orders for the House of an<br /> +East-Cheap<br /> +Eating-houses, public<br /> +Ebulum<br /> +Edward III.<br /> +Eggs<br /> + —buttered<br /> +Elizabeth, Queen<br /> +Endoring<br /> +English establishment, staff of an<br /> +Ennius, Phagetica of<br /> +Epulario<br /> +Etiquette of the table<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Fairfax inventories<br /> +Falstaff<br /> +Farm-servants' diet<br /> +Feasts, marriage and coronation<br /> +Finchmgfield<br /> +Fireplace<br /> +Fish, cheaper, demanded<br /> + —on fast-days<br /> + —considered indigestible<br /> + —lists of<br /> + —musical lament of the dying<br /> +Fishing, Saxon mode of<br /> +Florendine<br /> +Flowers, conserve of<br /> +Forced meat<br /> +Forks<br /> +Foreign cookery<br /> + —Warner's strictures on<br /> +Form of Cury<br /> +Forster, John, of Hanlop<br /> +Fox, Sir Stephen<br /> +Francatelli<br /> +French establishment, staff of a<br /> +French Gardener, the<br /> +Fricasee<br /> +Fruit-tart<br /> +Fruits, dried or preserved<br /> +Frying-pan<br /> +Frying Pan Houses at Wandsworth<br /> +Furmety<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Galantine<br /> +Galingale<br /> +Game<br /> +Garlic<br /> +Gilling in Yorkshire<br /> +Gingerbread<br /> +Ginger-fork<br /> +Glass and crystal handles to knives and forks<br /> +Glasse, Mrs.<br /> +Glastonbury Abbey<br /> +Glazing, or endoring<br /> +Gomme, G.L.<br /> +Goose<br /> + —giblets<br /> +Grampus<br /> +Grape, English, used for wine<br /> +Greece, Ancient<br /> +Greek anthropophagy<br /> +Greene, Robert<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Hamilton, Duke and Duchess of<br /> +Hare<br /> +Harington family<br /> +Hen, threshing the fat<br /> +Henry II.<br /> + —III.<br /> + —IV.<br /> + —IV. and V.<br /> + —VII.<br /> + —VIII.<br /> +Hill, Dr.<br /> +Hippocras<br /> +Holborn and the Strand, suburbs of<br /> +Home-brewed drink<br /> +Hommes de Bouche<br /> +Hops<br /> +Hospitality, decay of<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Inns, want of, in early Scotland<br /> + —and taverns in Westminster, rules for<br /> +Italian cookery<br /> + —pudding<br /> +Italy, the fork brought from<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Jack, the<br /> +Jacks, black<br /> +Jigget of mutton<br /> +Joe Miller quoted<br /> +Johannes de Garlandia<br /> +Johnson, Dr.<br /> +Johnstone, Mrs.<br /> +Jumbals<br /> +Junket<br /> +Jussel, a dish<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Kail-pot<br /> +Kettle<br /> +Kitchens<br /> + —furniture of<br /> + —staff of the<br /> +Kitchener, Dr.<br /> +Knives<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Ladies and gentlemen at table<br /> +Landlord and lawyer, exactions of<br /> +Land o' Cakes<br /> +Laver<br /> +Leveret<br /> +Liber Cure Cocorum<br /> +Liqueurs<br /> +Liquids, storage of<br /> +Loaf of bread<br /> + —sugar<br /> +Lombards<br /> +London cooks famous<br /> +Lord Mayor of London<br /> +Lord Mayor's Pageant for 1590<br /> +Lucas, Joseph, his Studies in Nidderdale<br /> +Lumber pie<br /> +Luncheon<br /> +Luxury, growth of<br /> +Lydgate's Story of Thebes<br /> + —"London Lickpenny"<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Malory's King Arthur<br /> +Manuturgium<br /> +Maple-wood bowls<br /> +Marinade<br /> +Marketing, old<br /> +Marlborough cake<br /> +Marmalade<br /> +Maser<br /> +Massinger quoted<br /> +Master-cook<br /> + —ancient privileges of the<br /> +Meals<br /> + —in the Percy establishment<br /> +Meats and drinks<br /> +Menagier de Paris quoted<br /> +Merenda, a meal<br /> +Metheglin or hydromel<br /> +Middleton, John, chef<br /> +Milk<br /> +Modern terms for dishes first introduced<br /> +More, Sir Thomas<br /> +Morsus<br /> +Morton, Cardinal<br /> +Moryson, Fynes, quoted<br /> +Mulberries<br /> +Mushrooms<br /> +Music to announce the banquet<br /> +Mustard<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Nasturtium-buds, pickled<br /> +Neckam, Alexander<br /> +Nevill, Archbishop<br /> +Newcastle coal<br /> +New College pudding<br /> +Nidderdale<br /> +Noble Book of Cookery<br /> +Norfolk dumplings<br /> + —yeoman<br /> +Norman cuisine<br /> + —influence on cookery<br /> +Normandy<br /> +Nott, John, chef<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Oatmeal<br /> +Oblys<br /> +Odysseus<br /> +Odyssey<br /> +Olio<br /> + —pie<br /> +Omelettes<br /> +Orders and Ordinances of Lord Burleigh as steward of Westminster<br /> +Ordinaries, London<br /> + —Parisian<br /> +Oriental sources of cooking<br /> +Oxford<br /> +Oxford cake<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Parisian cook's-shops<br /> +Partridges not recommended to the poor<br /> +Passage, a game<br /> +Pastry<br /> +Peacocks<br /> +Pelops<br /> +Pepper<br /> +Peter of Blois<br /> +Peterborough Abbey<br /> +Pewter, utensils of<br /> +Phagetica of Ennius<br /> +Pheasants<br /> +Pickles<br /> +Piers of Fulham<br /> +Pies<br /> +Pig's pettitoes<br /> +Ploughman (husbandman)<br /> +Plovers<br /> +Pockets<br /> +Poloe<br /> +Polyphemus<br /> +Pome de oringe<br /> +Poor, diet of the<br /> + —relief of the<br /> +"Poor Knights," a dish<br /> +Pope, Alex.<br /> +Porcelain<br /> +Pork<br /> +Porpoise<br /> +Porte-chape<br /> +Potato<br /> +Pot-au-feu<br /> +Pot-hook<br /> +Pot-luck<br /> +Poudre-marchaunt tart<br /> +Poultry<br /> +Powdered beef<br /> + —horse<br /> +Puddings<br /> +Pulpatoon<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Quinces<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Rabbit<br /> +Radish-pods, pickled<br /> +Raisin-sauce<br /> +Rasher<br /> +Rear-supper<br /> +Receipts of eminent persons<br /> + —Early<br /> +Religious scruples against certain food<br /> +Rents, excessive<br /> +Roasting-spit or iron<br /> +Robert, Master, and his wife Helena<br /> +Romans, culinary economy of<br /> + —obligation to Greece<br /> +Roses, conserve of<br /> +Rundell, Mrs.<br /> +Rush, Friar<br /> +Russell's Book of Nurture<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Salt<br /> + —, fine<br /> + —cellar<br /> +Sandwich, Kent<br /> +Saracen sauce<br /> +Saucepan<br /> +Sauces<br /> +Sausage<br /> +Saxon influence on diet<br /> +Scotland, want of Inns in<br /> +Scots, the<br /> + —their early food<br /> + —their poverty<br /> +Scott, Sir Walter<br /> +Scottish cookery, early<br /> +Secret house, keeping<br /> +Shakespeare, W.<br /> +Shrewsbury cakes<br /> +"Sing a song of sixpence"<br /> +Smith and his Dame, a tale<br /> +Smith, E., Preface to her Cookery Book<br /> + —select extracts from the work<br /> +Soap<br /> +Song of the Boar's Head<br /> +Soups<br /> +Soyer, Alexis<br /> +Spanish influence on cookery<br /> + —Armada<br /> +Spice with wine<br /> +Spinach<br /> +Spit-turner<br /> +Spit, turning the, a tenure<br /> +Spoons<br /> +Spread-eagle pudding<br /> +Spruce-beer<br /> +Squire, functions of the, at table<br /> +"Squire of Low Degree"<br /> +St. Albans Abbey<br /> +St. John's College, Cambridge<br /> +Stanton-Harcourt<br /> +"Store of house"<br /> +Subtleties<br /> +Sugar<br /> +Swan<br /> +Swinfield, Bishop<br /> +Sykes, Colonel<br /> +Syrups from flowers<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Table-cloth<br /> +Table-furniture<br /> +Tansies<br /> +Tart, fruit<br /> +Tea caudle<br /> +Temse<br /> +Tiffany cakes<br /> +Tillinghast, Mary<br /> +Tinder-box<br /> +Tom Thumb<br /> +Touchwood, Peregrine, Esquire<br /> +Towel<br /> +Trencher<br /> + —Posies on the<br /> +Tripe, double<br /> +Tripod<br /> +Trivet<br /> +Trumpet, dishes brought into the hall to the sound of<br /> +Tureiner<br /> +Tusser, Thomas<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Ude, Louis Eustache<br /> +Utensils<br /> + —treatise on, by Alex. Neckam<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Vegetable diet<br /> +Venison<br /> +Venner, Tobias<br /> +Viard et Fouret, MM.<br /> +Village life, early<br /> +Vocabularies, primary object of<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Wafery<br /> +Wandsworth<br /> +Warham, Archbishop<br /> +Westminister<br /> +Westphalia hams<br /> +Whale<br /> +Whetstone cakes<br /> +Whey<br /> +White grease<br /> +Whittinton, Robert<br /> +Wigs<br /> +William I.<br /> + —III., his posset<br /> +William of Malmesbury<br /> +Wines<br /> + —lists of<br /> +Wolsey, Cardinal<br /> +Wood-Street cake<br /> +Wormwood cakes<br /> + —wine<br /> +Wotton, Sir Edward<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Yeoman, diet of the<br /> + —bad state of the<br /> +Yorkshire<br /> +Young Cook's Monitor, the, by M.H.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="i4"><img alt="" src="images/274.png" /></p> +<br /> +<hr class="full" size="5" /> +<br /> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12293 ***</div> +</body> +</html> |