PART IV.

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:--

1. A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of

the Royal Household (Edward III. to William and Mary). 4to, 1790.

2. The book of Nurture. By Hugh Rhodes, of the King's Chapel. Printed

in the time of Henry VIII. by John Redman. 4to.

3. A Breviate touching the Order and Government of the House of a

Nobleman. 1605. _Archaeologia_, xiii.

4. Orders made by Henry, Prince of Wales, respecting his Household.

1610. _Archaeologia_, xiv.

5. The School of Good Manners. By William Phiston or Fiston. 8vo,

1609.

6. The School of Virtue, the Second Part. By Richard West. 12mo, 1619.

7. The School of Grace; or, A Book of Nurture. By John Hart. 12mo.

(About 1680.)

8. England's Newest Way in all Sorts of Cookery. By Henry Howard, Free

Cook of London. 8vo, London, 1703.

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.

10. The Compleat City and Country Cook. By Charles Carter. 8vo,

London, 1732.

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.

12. The Complete Family Piece: A very Choice Collection of Receipts

in... Cookery. Seventh Edition. 8vo, London, 1737.

13. The Modern Cook. By Vincent La Chapelle, cook to the Prince of

Orange. Third edition. 8vo, London, 1744.

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.

15. The Housekeeper's Pocket-Book. By Sarah Harrison. Sixth edition, 2

vols. 12mo, London, 1755.

16. Professed Cookery. By Ann Cook. Third edition. 8vo, London (about

1760).

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 _with what contempt they are read_, 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.

18. The Young Ladies' Guide in the Art of Cookery. By Elizabeth

Marshall. 8vo, Newcastle, 1777.

19. English Housewifery Exhibited in above 450 Receipts. By Elizabeth

Moxon. Fourth edition. 8vo, Leeds (about 1780).

20. The Practice of Modern Cookery. By George Dalrymple. 8vo,

Edinburgh, 1781.

21. The Ladies' Assistant for Regulating and Supplying the Table. By

Charlotte Mason. 8vo, London, 1786.

22. The Compleat Family Companion. 8vo, London, 1787 (?).

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.

24. The French Family Cook: being a complete system of French Cookery.

From the French. 8vo, London, 1793.

25. The British Housewife; or, The Cook's, Housekeeper's, and

Gardener's Companion. By Martha Bradley. 8vo.

26. Cookery and Pastry. By Mrs. Macivey. New edition, 12mo, Edinburgh,

1800.

27. The London Art of Cookery. By John Farley. Fourth edition. 8vo,

London, 1807.

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.

29. _Culina Famulatur Medicina_. 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.

30. The Universal Cook. By Francis Collingwood and T. Woollams. Fourth

edition. 8vo, London, 1806.

31. A Complete System of Cookery. By John Simpson, Cook. 8vo, London,

1806. Again, 8vo, London, 1816.

32. Simpson's Cookery Improved and Modernised. By H.W. Brand. 8vo,

London, 1834.

33. The Imperial and Royal Cook. By Frederick Nutt, Esquire, Author of

the "Complete Confectioner." 8vo, London, 1809.

34. The Housekeeper's Domestic Library. By Charles Millington. 8vo,

London, 1810.

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.

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.

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."

38. Apician Morsels; or, Tales of the Table, Kitchen, and Larder. By

Dick Humelbergius Secundus. 8vo, London, 1834.

39. Cottage Economy and Cookery. 8vo, London, 1844.[Footnote:

Reprinted from the Journal of the Agricultural Society, 1843, vol.

iii, part I].

DIET OF THE YEOMAN AND THE POOR.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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, _mutato nomine_,

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.

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 _chefs_,

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 _piece de résistance_ 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 _prima stamina_ 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.

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:

"A mallard of the dunghill is good enough for me,

With pleasant pickle, or it is else poison. pardy."

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--

"And Martlemas beef to him was not dainty;

Onions and Garlic had he enough,

And good cream, and milk of the cow."

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.

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 20s., a sheep for 3s., a calf

for 2s., a goose for 6d., a capon for 4d., a hen for 2d., 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.

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."

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.

"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:

"Ale and Spice, and Curdes and Creame,

Would make a Scholler make a Theame."

Breton, in his "Fantasticks," 1626, observes: "Milk, Butter and Cheese

are the labourers dyet; and a pot of good Beer quickens his spirits."

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.

MEATS AND DRINKS.

Slender: You are afraid, if you see the bear loose, are you not?

Anne: Aye, indeed, Sir

Slender: That's meat and drink to me, now.

MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, i, 1.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

In a _Nominale_ 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, _a loaf of bread_, for the first time,

a pictorial vocabulary of the period even furnishing us with a

representation of its usual form.

Nor were the good folks of those days without their simnels,

cracknels, and other sorts of cakes for the table, among which in the

_wastel_ we recognise the equivalent of the modern French _gâteau_.

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 _maslin_ (mystelon).

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.

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 _confrère_. 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 _boulanger_ at work precisely in the same informal

costume. So tenacious is usage, and so unchanging many of the

conditions of life.

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.

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 _pome de oringe_, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Under May he furnishes us with a second and not less appetising

_menu_:--

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:--

"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."

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."

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.

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.

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.

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."

THE KITCHEN.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It was at Stanton-Harcourt that Pope wrote a portion of his

translation of Homer, about 1718.

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].

In the North of England, the _bake-stone_, 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 _Branderi_, 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.

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.

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.

The writer is doubtless correct in supposing that this utensil was

originally employed for cooking kail or cabbage and other green stuff.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

_yn-leac_), 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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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 _Caius Aratus_. "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."

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 _in capite_ 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.

The fifteenth century vocabulary notices the salt-cellar, the spoon,

the trencher, and the table-cloth. The catalogue comprises _morsus,

a bit_, which shows that _bit_ and _bite_ 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 _towel_ was indifferently applied, perhaps, for a

cloth for use at the table or in the lavatory. Yet there was also the

_manuturgium_, or hand-cloth, a speciality rendered imperative by the

mediaeval fashion of eating.

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.

Another mark of refinement is the resort to the _napron_, corruptly

_apron_, 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.

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.

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.

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 _gee haigh!_ for, _Butler, some more fair trenchers to the

table!_ bringeth these ensuing ulcers amongst the members of the

common body."

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.

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 _iron_ 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

_ginger_. Both the fork and spoon were frequently made with handles of

glass or crystal, like those of mother-of-pearl at present in vogue.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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 6s. 8d. of money of that day. Nothing is said of forks.

But in the same account, under February 1st, 1500-1, one Mistress

Brent receives 12s. (and a book, which cost the king 5s. 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:--

"I have basins, ewers, of tin, pewter and glass.

Great vessels of copper, fine latten and brass:

Both pots, pans and kettles, such as never was.

I have platters, dishes, saucers and candle-sticks,

Chafers, lavers, towels and fine tricks:

Posnets, frying-pans, and fine puddingpricks ...

Fine pans for milk, and trim tubs for sowse.

I have ladles, scummers, andirons and spits,

Dripping-pans, pot-hooks....

I have fire-pans, fire-forks, tongs, trivets, and trammels,

Roast-irons, trays, flaskets, mortars and pestles...."

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:--

The furnace pan for beef.

The beef kettle.

Great and small kettles.

Brass kettles, holding from sixteen to twenty gallons each.

Little kettles with bowed or carved handles.

Copper pans with ears.

Great brass pots.

Dripping-pans.

An iron peel or baking shovel.

A brazen mortar and a pestle.

Gridirons.

Iron ladles.

A laten scummer.

A grater.

A pepper mill.

A mustard-quern.

Boards.

A salt-box.

An iron range.

Iron racks.

A tin pot.

Pot hooks.

A galley bawk to suspend the kettle or pot over the fire.

Spits, square and round, and various sizes.

Bearers.

Crooks.

In the larders (wet and dry) and pastry were:--

Moulding boards for pastry.

A boulting tub for meal.

A little table.

A spice cupboard.

A chest for oatmeal.

A trough.

Hanging and other shelves.

Here follows the return of pewter, brass, and other vessels belonging

to the kitchen:--

Pewter dishes of nine sizes (from Newcastle).

Long dishes for rabbits. }

Saucers. }

Chargers. } Silver fashioned.

Pie plates. }

Voider. }

A beef-prick.

Fire shoves and tongs.

A brig (a sort of brandreth).

A cullender.

A pewter baking-pan.

Kettles of brass.

A skillet.

A brandeth.

A shredding knife.

A chopping knife.

An apple cradle.

A pair of irons to make wafers with.

A brass pot-lid.

Beef-axes and knives. }

Slaughter ropes. } For Slaughtering.

Beef stangs. }

In the beef-house was an assortment of tubs, casks, and hogsheads.

Table knives, forks, spoons, and drinking-vessels presumably belonged

to another department.

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!

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 _maser_, 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.

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.

The kitchen had its _chef_ or master-cook (archimacherus),

under-cooks, a waferer or maker of sweets, a scullion or swiller

(who is otherwise described as a _quistron_), and knaves, or boys

for preparing the meat; and all these had their special functions and

implements.

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 _assitabulum_, 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 _magnus coquus_ or _magister

coquorum_ 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.

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!

Mr. Fairholt, in the "Archaeological Album," 1845, has depicted for

our benefit the _chef_ 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 3s. 4d. _ad opus hujus libri_, 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!

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.

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.

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.

Warner cites an entry in some accounts of the Hospital of St.

Bartholomew at Sandwich, under 1569:--"For tournynge the spytte,

iiijd." 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:--

"Many a gossip's cup in my time have I tasted,

And many a broach and spit have I both turned and basted."

The spit, again, was supplanted by the jack.

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.

MEALS.

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 _dinner_, and

others call dinner _luncheon._ 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!"

In a glossary of the tenth-eleventh century only two meals are quoted:

undermeat = _prandium_, and even-meat = _coena_. 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.

In the "Book of Cookery," 1500, we have the _menu_ 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.

The old low-Latin term for the noonday meal was _merenda_, 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, _and earn it_.

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.

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.

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 _not to sup late_.

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.

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.

The modern luncheon or nuncheon was the archaic _prandium_, 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 _grand déjeuner_ 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.

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 _wafery_, a special department of

the royal kitchen, where the confectionery and pastry were prepared,

was discontinued.

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.

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.

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:--

"For many a pasty hast thou let blood,

And many a Jack of Dover[1] hast thou sold,

That hath been twice hot and twice cold.

Of many a pilgrim hast thou Christ's curse--

For thy parsley fare they yet the worse:

That they have eaten with the stubble goose,

For in thy shop is many a fly loose."

[Footnote 1: A sole]

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:--

"When I hied me into East Cheap:

One cries ribs of beef, and many a pie:

Pewter pots they clattered on a heap;

There was harp, fife, and sautry."

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.

There is a still more interesting allusion in the interlude of the

"World and the Child," 1522, where Folly is made to say:--

"Yea, and we shall be right welcome, I dare well say,

In East Cheap for to dine;

And then we will with Lombards at passage play,

And at the Pope's Head sweet wine assay."

The places of resort in this rollicking locality could furnish, long

before The Boar made the acquaintance of Falstaff, every species of

delicacy and _bonne bouche_ 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:

"He that will in East Cheap eat a goose so fat,

With harp, pipe, and song,

Must lie in Newgate on a mat,

Be the night never so long."

And these establishments infallibly contributed their quota or more to

the prisons in the vicinity.

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.

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:--

"Befe and motton is so dere, that a peny worth of meet wyll scant

suffyse a boy at a meale."

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.

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."

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:--

"Item, that no tavern-keeper or inn-keeper shall keep any cook shop

upon pain to forfeit and pay for every time offending therein 4d."

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.

In the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," the Cook of London and his

qualifications are thus emblazoned:--

"A Cook thei hadde with hem for the nones,

To boylle chyknes, with the mary bones,

And poudre marchaunt tart, and galyngale;

Wel cowde he knowe a draugte of London ale.

He cowde roste, and sethe, and broille, and frie

Maken mortreux, and wel bake a pie.

But gret harm was it, as it thoughte me,

That on his schyne a mormal had he:

For blankmanger that made he with the beste."

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.

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.

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.

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 _porte-chape._ 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 _garçon de cuisine_ a rap on the head.

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.

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.

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.

ETIQUETTE OF THE TABLE.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 _cuisine_ 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.

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.

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.

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.

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--

"Pare clean thy nails; thy hands wash also

Before meat; and when thou dost arise."

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.

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 _trencher_, a large slice of bread on which meat was laid

for the occupants of the high table, and which was cast aside after

use.

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.

INDEX.

Acton, Eliza, 171

Addington, Surrey, 232

Aigredouce, 57

Albans, St., Abbey of, 208, 233-4

Ale, 183, 205

--Cock, 152

--Elder, 152

--Kentish, 205

Alfred and the cakes, 54

Al-fresco meals, 253-4

Alfric, Colloquy of, 57

Amber puddings, 29, 83

Angelica, 135

Anglo-Danish barbarism, 3

Anglo-Celtic influence, 52

Anglo-Saxon names of meats, 181

Animal food, 8-9, 34

Anthropophagy, 5-7

Apicius, C., 12

Apuleius, 65

Arms and crests on dishes, 42

Arnold's Chronicle, 61

Arthur, 56, 182, 184-5

Ashen-keys, pickled, 143

Asparagus, 84

Assize of ale, 205

Australian meat, 172

Babies' Book, 257

Bacon, Lord Keeper, 251

Bag pudding, 184-5-6

Baker, 28, 197-8

--Parisian, 197-8

Bakestone, 35, 211

Banbury cake, 29, 83

Bannock, 33

Banquet, order of a fourteenth century, 43

Barba, M., 15

Bardolf, a dish, 57

Bardolph, 245

Bartholomew de Cheney, 232

--St., Hospital of, at Sandwich, 236

Battalia pie, 109

Beef, powdered, 187

--Martlemas, 183

Beer, 26-7, 204-5

--composition of the ancient, 205

Bees, wild, 8

Bellows 213, 215

Birch wine, 204

Bit and bite, 218

Blackcaps, 85-6

Bolton, Charles, Duke of, 82

Book of St. Albans, 61

Books of demeanour, 256

Branderi, 211

Brass cooking vessels, 211

Brawn, 187

Bread, 8, 25-6, 195-7, 262

Britons, diet of the, 8

-- Northern and Southern, 16

Brittany, 3

Broach or spit turner, 236-7

Broom-buds, pickled, 144

Broth, 3, 23

Bun, 28

Butler, ancient duties of the, 234

Butter, 198

Caerleon, 183

Caesar, evidence of, 9-11, 16, 17

Cakes, 35, 127-32

Calais, 194

Calves, newly-born

--removal of, from the mother, while in milk, 8

Cannibalism, 5-6

Carps' tongues, 13

Carving, terms of, 12

Castelvetri, 199

Caudles and possets, 132-4

Caviary, 199-200

Charlet, 23

Chaucer, G. 246, 251

Chaworth's (Lady) pudding, 29

Cheesecakes, Mrs. Leed's, etc., 29, 127, 191

Cheeses, 125-7

Chimney, kitchen, 210

China broth, 84

China earth, 220

Christmas, 27

Clare Market, 14

Cleikirai Club, 168

Clermont, B., 159-61

Coals, 215-16

Cobham, Lord, 194

Cockle, 195

Colet, Dean, 249

College wine, 240

Colonial cattle, 172

Condiments, 29-31, 198, 214

Confectioner, 28

--master, 37

Confectionery, 28

Conserves, 134-42

Cook, 201, 229-30

--master, 231-3

Cookery-books, lists of, 67-9, 79-81

--with the names of old owners, 71

Cook's-shops. 245-9

Cooking utensils, great value of, 222

--lists of, 223-7

Cooper, Joseph, 72-3

Copley, Esther, 164

Copper, art of tinning, 217

Cornish pasty, 185

Coryat, Thomas, 222

Court, the ancient, 231

Cows, 8-9

Crab-apple sauce, 215

Creams, 123-4

Cromwell, Oliver, 73-5

--his favourite dishes, _ibid._

Cuisine bourgeoise of ancient Rome, 7

--English, affected by fusions of race, 10

--Old French, 18-19

Cuisinier Royal, Le, 14-15

Curds and cream, 191

Danish settlers, 9

Danish settlers, their influence on our diet, 9

Deer-suet, clarified, 44

DelaHay Street, 37

Deportment at table, gradual improvement in the, 261

Dishes, lists of, 23-4, 200-1

--substituted for trenchers, 219

--different sizes and materials of, 227

--mode of serving up, 261-2

Dods, Margaret, 167

Dripping-pans, 225, 228

Dumplings, Norfolk, 192

Earl, Rules and Orders for the House of an, 39-42

East-Cheap, 246-48

Eating-houses, public, 245-50

Ebulum, 151

Edward III., 222

Eggs, 23

--buttered, 13

Elizabeth, Queen, 190

Endoring, 198

English establishment, staff of an, 39

Ennius, Phagetica of, 6

Epulario, 66

Etiquette of the table, 255-63

Fairfax inventories, 7, 218

Falstaff, 248

Farm-servants' diet, 191

Feasts, marriage and coronation, 47-9

Finchmgfield, 217

Fireplace, 211, 213

Fish, cheaper, demanded, 33

--on fast-days, 48

--considered indigestible, 64

--lists of, 19-21, 23

--musical lament of the dying, 23

Fishing, Saxon mode of, 19

Florendine, 103

Flowers, conserve of, 136

Forced meat, 191

Forks, 222-4

Foreign cookery, 28-30

--Warner's strictures on 29-30

Form of Cury, 55

Forster, John, of Hanlop, 65

Fox, Sir Stephen, 34

Francatelli, 162

French establishment, staff of a, 36

French Gardener, the, 69-70

Fricasee, 23

Fruit-tart, 186

Fruits, dried or preserved, 134-42

Frying-pan, 222

Frying Pan Houses at Wandsworth, 211

Furmety, 64

Galantine, 58

Galingale, 251

Game, 17, 43-4

Garlic, 214

Gilling in Yorkshire, 218

Gingerbread, 131

Ginger-fork, 222

Glass and crystal handles to knives and forks, 222

Glasse, Mrs., 154-6

Glastonbury Abbey, 205

Glazing, or endoring, 48, 198

Gomme, G.L., 16

Goose, 100

--giblets, 190

Grampus, 21

Grape, English, used for wine, 203

Greece, Ancient, 5

Greek anthropophagy, 6-7

Greene, Robert, 242

Hamilton, Duke and Duchess of, 221

Hare, 17

Harington family, 42

Hen, threshing the fat, 62-3

Henry II., 245

--III., 194, 205

--IV., 47

--IV. and V., 47

--VII., 21, 204

--VIII., 241

Hill, Dr., 156-8

Hippocras, 204, 241

Holborn and the Strand, suburbs of, 215

Home-brewed drink, 192

Hommes de Bouche, 15

Hops 27

Hospitality, decay of, 189-90

Inns, want of, in early Scotland, 32-3

--and taverns in Westminster, rules for, 250

Italian cookery, 28, 198

--pudding, 85

Italy, the fork brought from, 222

Jack, the, 237

Jacks, black, 190-1

Jigget of mutton, 34

Joe Miller quoted, 13

Johannes de Garlandia, 214

Johnson, Dr., 156-9

Johnstone, Mrs., 167-8

Jumbals, 128

Junket, 64

Jussel, a dish, 23

Kail-pot, 212

Kettle, 182

Kitchens, 206

--furniture of, 213-14

--staff of the, 230

Kitchener, Dr., 165-6

Knives, 224, 226

Ladies and gentlemen at table, 221

Landlord and lawyer, exactions of, 189-90

Land o' Cakes, 33

Laver, 229

Leveret, 17

Liber Cure Cocorum, 59-60

Liqueurs, 241

Liquids, storage of, 201

Loaf of bread, 196

--sugar, 194

Lombards, 248

London cooks famous, 250

Lord Mayor of London, 20

Lord Mayor's Pageant for 1590, 33

Lucas, Joseph, his Studies in Nidderdale, 11

Lumber pie, 110

Luncheon, 243

Luxury, growth of, 41-2, 187

Lydgate's Story of Thebes, 24

--"London Lickpenny," 247

Malory's King Arthur, 183

Manuturgium, 218

Maple-wood bowls, 228-9

Marinade, 102

Marketing, old, 40

Marlborough cake, 129

Marmalade, 139

Maser, 228-9

Massinger quoted, 13

Master-cook, 41, 214, 231-3

--ancient privileges of the, 231-3

Meals, 191, 238-54

--in the Percy establishment, 35

Meats and drinks, 193, 205

Menagier de Paris quoted, 18

Merenda, a meal, 241-2

Metheglin or hydromel, 64, 204

Middleton, John, chef, 82, 84-6

Milk, 8, 201

Modern terms for dishes first introduced, 24

More, Sir Thomas, 249

Morsus, 218

Morton, Cardinal, 23

Moryson, Fynes, quoted, 31-2

Mulberries, 137-8

Mushrooms, 199

Music to announce the banquet, 262

Mustard, 214

Nasturtium-buds, pickled, 142

Neckam, Alexander, 17, 18, 51, 53

Nevill, Archbishop, 48, 240

Newcastle coal, 216

New College pudding, 113

Nidderdale, 11, 212

Noble Book of Cookery, 60-1

Norfolk dumplings, 192

--yeoman, 192

Norman cuisine, 3, 44-6

--influence on cookery, 45

Normandy, 3

Nott, John, chef, 82

Oatmeal, 187

Oblys, 196

Odysseus, 6

Odyssey, 6

Olio, 85

--pie, 109

Omelettes, 24

Orders and Ordinances of Lord Burleigh as steward of Westminster, 250

Ordinaries, London, 252

--Parisian, 253

Oriental sources of cooking, 7

Oxford, 240

Oxford cake, 83

Parisian cook's-shops, 253

Partridges not recommended to the poor, 64

--187

Passage, a game, 248

Pastry, 23

Peacocks. 13, 48

Pelops, 6

Pepper, 214

Peter of Blois, 205

Peterborough Abbey, 216

Pewter, utensils of, 247-8

Phagetica of Ennius, 6

Pheasants, 13

Pickles, 143 _et seq._

Piers of Fulham, 22, 187, 241

Pies, 23, 109-10, 191

Pig's pettitoes, 191

Ploughman (husbandman), 188

Plovers, 187

Pockets, 102

Poloe, 107

Polyphemus, 6

Pome de oringe, 198

Poor, diet of the, 181_et seq._

--relief of the, 244

"Poor Knights," a dish, 29

Pope, Alex., 210

Porcelain, 219

Pork, 18, 54

Porpoise, 20-1, 200

Porte-chape, 253

Potato, 65

Pot-au-feu, 53

Pot-hook, 225

Pot-luck, 53

Poudre-marchaunt tart, 251

Poultry, 17, 44

Powdered beef, 187

--horse, 30

Puddings, 23, 113 _et seq._

Pulpatoon, 108

Quinces, 138-9, 141

Rabbit, 17

Radish-pods, pickled, 144

Raisin-sauce, 215

Rasher, 23

Rear-supper, 239, 242

Receipts of eminent persons, 85,

--Early, 98-153

Religious scruples against certain food, 9

Rents, excessive, 189-90

Roasting-spit or iron, 217

Robert, Master, and his wife Helena, 208, 234-5

Romans, culinary economy of, 7

--obligation to Greece, 7

Roses, conserve of, 65

Rundell, Mrs., 161

Rush, Friar, 237

Russell's Book of Nurture, 258

Salt, 214

--, fine, 228

--cellar, 218

Sandwich, Kent, 236

Saracen sauce, 58

Saucepan, 216

Sauces, 29-31, 214-15

Sausage, 23

Saxon influence on diet, 9

Scotland, want of Inns in, 32-3

Scots, the, 11, 33, 168

--their early food, 11

--their poverty, 33

Scott, Sir Walter, 167-8

Scottish cookery, early, 30-2

Secret house, keeping, 26, 49,190

Shakespeare, W., 242

Shrewsbury cakes, 85

"Sing a song of sixpence," 66

Smith and his Dame, a tale, 215

Smith, E., Preface to her Cookery Book, 1736, 89-97

--select extracts from the work, 98-153

Soap, 226

Song of the Boar's Head, 241

Soups, 23

Soyer, Alexis, 169-72

Spanish influence on cookery, 66

--Armada, 190

Spice with wine, 204

Spinach, 84

Spit-turner, 236

Spit, turning the, a tenure, 217

Spoons, 218, 222-4

Spread-eagle pudding, 114

Spruce-beer, 203

Squire, functions of the, at table 259

"Squire of Low Degree," 259

St. Albans Abbey, 208

St. John's College, Cambridge, 202

Stanton-Harcourt, 210

"Store of house," 187

Subtleties, 47-8

Sugar, 193-5

Swan, 106

Swinfield, Bishop, 4

Sykes, Colonel, 220

Syrups from flowers, 112

Table-cloth, 218

Table-furniture, 231

Tansies, 122

Tart, fruit, 186

Tea caudle, 134

Temse, 35

Tiffany cakes, 35

Tillinghast, Mary, 77

Tinder-box, 216

Tom Thumb, 54, 182, 186

Touchwood, Peregrine, Esquire 168

Towel, 218

Trencher, 197, 218, 219-21

--Posies on the, 220

Tripe, double, 106

Tripod, 181, 211-13

Trivet, 225

Trumpet, dishes brought into the hall to the sound of, 262

Tureiner, 103

Tusser, Thomas, 62-3

Ude, Louis Eustache, 167

Utensils, 12, 17, 206, 208 _et seq._, 225-8

--treatise on, by Alex. Neckam, 17, 51

Vegetable diet, 183

Venison, 43-4, 198

Venner, Tobias, 63-6

Viard et Fouret, MM., 14-15

Village life, early, 36

Vocabularies, primary object of, 51-2

Wafery, 244

Wandsworth, 211

Warham, Archbishop, 48

Westminister, 249-50

Westphalia hams, 104

Whale, 20

Whetstone cakes, 127

Whey, 205

White grease, 58

Whittinton, Robert, 249

Wigs, 121

William I., 3, 27

--III., his posset, 132

William of Malmesbury, 16

Wines, 145-53. 202-4

--lists of, 203-4

Wolsey, Cardinal, 21

Wood-Street cake, 85

Wormwood cakes, 130

--wine, 204

Wotton, Sir Edward, 194

Yeoman, diet of the, 182 _et seg._,_243

--bad state of the, 189-90

Yorkshire, 12

Young Cook's Monitor, the, by M.H., 75-7