CAKES AND ALE
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
THE FLOWING BOWL
A TREATISE ON DRINKS OF ALL KINDS
AND OF ALL PERIODS, INTERSPERSED
WITH SUNDRY ANECDOTES AND
REMINISCENCES
BY
EDWARD SPENCER
('NATHANIEL GUBBINS')
Author of "Cakes and Ale," etc.
_Crown 8vo., cloth gilt, 2/6 net._
SECOND EDITION.
With cover design by the late PHIL MAY.
"The Flowing Bowl" overflows with good
cheer. In the happy style that enlivens its
companion volume, "Cakes and Ale," the
author gives a history of drinks and their
use, interspersed with innumerable recipes
for drinks new and old, dug out of records
of ancient days, or set down anew.
LONDON: STANLEY PAUL & CO.
31, Essex Street, Strand, W.C.
CAKES & ALE
A DISSERTATION ON BANQUETS
INTERSPERSED WITH VARIOUS RECIPES,
MORE OR LESS ORIGINAL, AND
ANECDOTES, MAINLY VERACIOUS
BY
EDWARD SPENCER
('NATHANIEL GUBBINS')
AUTHOR OF "THE FLOWING BOWL," ETC.
_FOURTH EDITION_
STANLEY PAUL & CO.
31, ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C.
_First printed April 1897
Reprinted May 1897
Cheap Edition February 1900
Reprinted 1913_
TO THE MODERN LUCULLUS
JOHN CORLETT
GRANDEST OF HOSTS, BEST OF TRENCHER-MEN
I DEDICATE
(WITHOUT ANY SORT OF PERMISSION)
THIS BOOK
PREFACE
A long time ago, an estimable lady fell at the feet of an habitual
publisher, and prayed unto him:--
"Give, oh! give me the subject of a book for which the world has a
need, and I will write it for you."
"Are you an author, madam?" asked the publisher, motioning his visitor
to a seat.
"No, sir," was the proud reply, "I am a poet."
"Ah!" said the great man. "I am afraid there is no immediate worldly
need of a poet. If you could only write a good cookery book, now!"
The story goes on to relate how the poetess, not rebuffed in the
least, started on the requisite culinary work, directly she got
home; pawned her jewels to purchase postage stamps, and wrote far
and wide for recipes, which in course of time she obtained, by the
hundredweight. Other recipes she "conveyed" from ancient works of
gastronomy, and in a year or two the _magnum opus_ was given to the
world; the lady's share in the profits giving her "adequate provision
for the remainder of her life." We are not told, but it is presumable,
that the publisher received a little adequate provision too.
History occasionally repeats itself; and the history of the present
work begins in very much the same way. Whether it will finish in an
equally satisfactory manner is problematical. I do not possess much of
the divine _afflatus_ myself; but there has ever lurked within me some
sort of ambition to write a book--something held together by "tree
calf," "half morocco," or "boards"; something that might find its way
into the hearts and homes of an enlightened public; something which
will give some of my young friends ample opportunity for criticism. In
the exercise of my profession I have written leagues of descriptive
"copy"--mostly lies and racing selections,--but up to now there has
been no urgent demand for a book of any sort from this pen. For years
my ambition has remained ungratified. Publishers--as a rule, the most
faint-hearted and least speculative of mankind--have held aloof. And
whatever suggestions I might make were rejected, with determination,
if not with contumely.
At length came the hour, and the man; the introduction to a publisher
with an eye for budding and hitherto misdirected talent.
"Do you care, sir," I inquired at the outset, "to undertake the
dissemination of a bulky work on Political Economy?"
"Frankly, sir, I do not," was the reply. Then I tried him with
various subjects--social reform, the drama, bimetallism, the ethics
of starting prices, the advantages of motor cars in African warfare,
natural history, the martyrdom of Ananias, practical horticulture,
military law, and dogs; until he took down an old duck-gun from a peg
over the mantelpiece, and assumed a threatening attitude.
Peace having been restored, the self-repetition of history recommenced.
"I can do with a good, bold, brilliant, lightly treated, exhaustive
work on Gastronomy," said the publisher, "you are well acquainted with
the subject, I believe?"
"I'm a bit of a parlour cook, if that's what you mean," was my humble
reply. "At a salad, a grill, an anchovy toast, or a cooling and
cunningly compounded cup, I can be underwritten at ordinary rates. But
I could no more cook a haunch of venison, or even boil a rabbit, or
make an economical Christmas pudding, than I could sail a boat in a
nor'-easter; and Madam Cook would certainly eject me from her kitchen,
with a clout attached to the hem of my dinner jacket, inside five
minutes."
Eventually it was decided that I should commence this book.
"What I want," said the publisher, "is a series of essays on food,
a few anecdotes of stirring adventure--you have a fine flow of
imagination, I understand--and a few useful, but uncommon recipes. But
plenty of plums in the book, my dear sir, plenty of plums."
"But, suppose my own supply of plums should not hold out, what am I to
do?"
"What do you do--what does the cook do, when the plums for her
pudding run short? Get some more; the Museum, my dear sir, the great
storehouse of national literature, is free to all whose character is
above the normal standard. When your memory and imagination fail, try
the British Museum. You know what is a mightier factor than both sword
and pen? Precisely so. And remember that in replenishing your store
from the works of those who have gone before, you are only following
in their footsteps. I only bar Sydney Smith and Charles Lamb. Let me
have the script by Christmas--d'you smoke?--mind the step--_good_
morning."
In this way, gentle reader, were the trenches dug, the saps laid
for the attack of the great work. The bulk of it is original, and
the adventures in which the writer has taken part are absolutely
true. About some of the others I would not be so positive. Some of
the recipes have previously figured in the pages of the _Sporting
Times_, the _Lady's Pictorial_, and the _Man of the World_, to the
proprietors of which journals I hereby express my kindly thanks for
permission to revive them. Many of the recipes are original; some
are my own; others have been sent in by relatives, and friends of my
youth; others have been adapted for modern requirements from works of
great antiquity; whilst others again--I am nothing if not candid--have
been "conveyed" from the works of more modern writers, who in their
turn had borrowed them from the works of their ancestors. There is
nothing new under the sun; and there are but few absolute novelties
which are subjected to the heat of the kitchen fire.
If the style of the work be faulty, the reason--not the excuse--is
that the style is innate, and not modelled upon anybody else's
style. The language I have endeavoured to make as plain, homely,
and vigorous as is the food advocated. If the criticisms on foreign
cookery should offend the talented _chef_, I have the satisfaction
of knowing that, as I have forsworn his works, he will be unable to
retaliate with poison. And if the criticisms on the modern English
methods of preparing food should attract the attention of the home
caterer, he may possibly be induced to give his steam-chest and his
gas-range a rest, and put the roast beef of Old England on his table,
occasionally; though I have only the very faintest hopes that he will
do so. For the monster eating-houses and mammoth hotels of to-day are
for the most part "run" by companies and syndicates; and the company
within the dining-room suffer occasionally, in order that dividends
may be possible after payment has been made for the elaborate, and
wholly unnecessary, furniture, and decorations. Wholesome food is
usually sufficient for the ordinary British appetite, without such
surroundings as marble pillars, Etruscan vases, nude figures, gilding,
and looking-glasses, which only serve to distract attention from the
banquet. It is with many a sigh that I recall the good old-fashioned
inn, where the guest really received a warm welcome. Nowadays, the
warmest part of that welcome is usually the bill.
It is related of the wittiest man of the nineteenth century, my late
friend Mr. Henry J. Byron, that, upon one occasion, whilst walking
home with a brother dramatist, after the first performance of his
comedy, which had failed to please the audience, Byron shed tears.
"How is this?" inquired his friend. "The failure of my play appears to
affect you strangely."
"I was only weeping," was the reply, "because I was afraid you'd set
to work, and write another."
But there need be no tears shed on any page of this food book. For I
am not going to "write another."
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
BREAKFAST
Formal or informal?--An eccentric old gentleman--The ancient
Britons--Breakfast in the days of Good Queen Bess--A
few tea statistics--Garraway's--Something about coffee--Brandy
for breakfast--The evolution of the staff of life--Free
Trade--The cheap loaf, and no cash to buy it Pages 1-9
CHAPTER II
BREAKFAST (_continued_)
Country-house life--An Englishwoman at her best--Guests'
comforts--What to eat at the first meal--A few choice
recipes--A noble grill-sauce--The poor outcast--Appetising
dishes--Hotel "worries"--The old regime and the new--"No
cheques"; no soles, and "whitings is hoff"--A
halibut steak--Skilly and oakum--Breakfast out of the
rates 10-21
CHAPTER III
BREAKFAST (_continued_)
Bonnie Scotland--Parritch an' cream--Fin'an haddies--A knife
on the ocean wave--_À la Français_--In the gorgeous East--_Chota
hazri_--English as she is spoke--Dâk bungalow fare--Some
quaint dishes--Breakfast with "my tutor"--A Don's
absence of mind 22-33
CHAPTER IV
LUNCHEON
Why lunch?--Sir Henry Thompson on overdoing it--The children's
dinner--City lunches--"Ye Olde Cheshyre Cheese"--Doctor
Johnson--Ye pudding--A great fall in food--A
snipe pudding--Skirt, not rump steak--Lancashire hot-pot--A
Cape "brady" 34-43
CHAPTER V
LUNCHEON (_continued_)
Shooting luncheons--Cold tea and a crust--Clear turtle--Such
larks!--Jugged duck and oysters--Woodcock pie--Hunting
luncheons--Pie crusts--The true Yorkshire pie--Race-course
luncheons--Suggestions to caterers--The "Jolly
Sandboys" stew--Various recipes--A race-course sandwich--Angels'
pie--"Suffolk pride"--Devilled larks--A light lunch
in the Himalayas 44-58
CHAPTER VI
DINNER
Origin--Early dinners--The noble Romans--"Vitellius the
Glutton"--Origin of haggis--The Saxons--Highland hospitality--The
French invasion--Waterloo avenged--The bad
fairy "_Ala_"--Comparisons--The English cook or the foreign
food torturer?--Plain or flowery--Fresh fish and the flavour
wrapped up--George Augustus Sala--Doctor Johnson
again 59-72
CHAPTER VII
DINNER (_continued_)
Imitation--Dear Lady Thistlebrain--Try it on the dog--Criminality
of the English caterer--The stove, the stink,
the steamer--Roasting v. baking--False economy--Dirty
ovens--Frills and fingers--Time over dinner--A long-winded
Bishop--Corned beef 73-81
CHAPTER VIII
DINNER (_continued_)
A merry Christmas--Bin F--A _Noel_ banquet--Water-cress--How
Royalty fares--The Tsar--_Bouillabaisse_--_Tournedos_--_Bisque_--
_Vol-au-vent_--_Pré salé_--Chinese banquets--A fixed
bayonet--_Bernardin Salmi_--The duck-squeezer--American
cookery--"Borston" beans--He couldn't eat beef 82-96
CHAPTER IX
DINNER (_continued_)
French soup--A regimental dinner--A city banquet--_Baksheesh_--Aboard
ship--An ideal dinner--Cod's liver--Sleeping in the
kitchen--A _fricandeau_--Regimental messes--Peter the
Great--Napoleon the Great--Victoria--The Iron Duke--Mushrooms--A
medical opinion--A North Pole banquet--Dogs
as food--Plain unvarnished fare--The Kent Road
cookery--More beans than bacon 97-110
CHAPTER X
VEGETABLES
Use and abuse of the potato--Its eccentricities--Its origin--Hawkins,
not Raleigh, introduced it into England--With or
without the "jacket"?--Don't let it be _à-la_-ed--Benevolence
and large-heartedness of the cabbage family--Pease on
earth--Pythagoras on the bean--"Giving him beans"--"Haricot"
a misnomer--"Borston" beans--Frijoles--The
carrot--Crécy soup--The Prince of Wales--The Black
Prince and the King of Bohemia 111-122
CHAPTER XI
VEGETABLES (_continued_)
The brief lives of the best--A vegetable with a pedigree--
Argenteuil--The Elysian Fields--The tomato the emblem of
love--"Neeps"--Spinach--"Stomach-brush"--The savoury
tear-provoker--Invaluable for wasp-stings--Celery merely
cultivated "smallage"--The "_Apium_"--The parsnip--O
Jerusalem!--The golden sunflower--How to get pheasants--A
vegetarian banquet--"Swelling wisibly" 123-133
CHAPTER XII
CURRIES
Different modes of manufacture--The "native" fraud--"That
man's family"--The French _kari_--A Parsee curry--"The
oyster in the sauce"--Ingredients--Malay curry--Locusts--When
to serve--What to curry--Prawn curry--Dry curry,
champion recipe--Rice--The Bombay duck 134-146
CHAPTER XIII
SALADS
Nebuchadnezzar _v._ Sydney Smith--Salt?--No salad-bowl--French
origin--Apocryphal story of Francatelli--Salads _and_
salads--Water-cress and dirty water--Salad-maker born
not made--Lobster salad--Lettuce, Wipe or wash?--Mayonnaise--Potato
salad--Tomato ditto--Celery ditto--A
memorable ditto 147-157
CHAPTER XIV
SALADS AND CONDIMENTS
Roman salad--Italian ditto--Various other salads--Sauce for
cold mutton--Chutnine--Raw chutnee--Horse-radish sauce--Christopher
North's sauce--How to serve a mackerel--_Sauce
Tartare_--Ditto for sucking pig--Delights of making
_Sambal_--A new language 158-169
CHAPTER XV
SUPPER
Cleopatra's supper--Oysters--Danger in the Aden bivalve--Oyster
stew--Ball suppers--Pretty dishes--The _Taj Mahal_--Aspic--Bloater
paste and whipped cream--Ladies' recipes--Cookery
colleges--Tripe--Smothered in onions--North
Riding fashion--An hotel supper--Lord Tomnoddy at the
"Magpie and Stump" 170-180
CHAPTER XVI
SUPPER (_continued_)
Old supper-houses--The Early Closing Act--Evans's--Cremorne
Gardens--"The Albion"--Parlour cookery--Kidneys fried
in the fire-shovel--The true way to grill a bone--"Cannie
Carle"--My lady's bower--Kidney dumplings--A Middleham
supper--Steaks cut from a colt by brother to "Strafford"
out of sister to "Bird on the Wing" 181-191
CHAPTER XVII
"CAMPING OUT"
The ups and downs of life--Stirring adventures--Marching on to
glory--Shooting in the tropics--Pepper-pot--With the
_Rajah Sahib_--Goat-sacrifices at breakfast time--Simla to
Cashmere--Manners and customs of Thibet--Burmah--No
place to get fat in--Insects--Voracity of the natives--Snakes--Sport
in the Jungle--Loaded for snipe, sure to
meet tiger--With the gippos--No baked hedgehog--Cheap
milk 192-205
CHAPTER XVIII
COMPOUND DRINKS
Derivation of punch--"Five"--The "milk" brand--The best
materials--Various other punches--Bischoff or Bishop--"Halo"
punch--Toddy--The toddy tree of India--Flip--A
"peg"--John Collins--Out of the guard-room 206-218
CHAPTER XIX
CUPS AND CORDIALS
Five recipes for claret cup--Balaclava cup--Orgeat--Ascot cup--Stout
and champagne--Shandy-gaff for millionaires--Ale
cup--Cobblers which will stick to the last--Home Ruler--Cherry
brandy--Sloe gin--Home-made, if possible--A new
industry--Apricot brandy--Highland cordial--Bitters--Jumping-powder--
Orange brandy--"Mandragora"--"Sleep rock thy brain!" 219-231
CHAPTER XX
THE DAYLIGHT DRINK
Evil effects of dram-drinking--The "Gin-crawl"--Abstinence in
H.M. service--City manners and customs--Useless to argue
with the soaker--Cocktails--Pet names for drams--The
free lunch system--Fancy mixtures--Why no cassis?--Good
advice like water on a duck's back 232-245
CHAPTER XXI
GASTRONOMY IN FICTION AND DRAMA
Thomas Carlyle--Thackeray--Harrison Ainsworth--Sir Walter
Scott--Miss Braddon--Marie Corelli--F. C. Philips--Blackmore--Charles
Dickens--_Pickwick_ reeking with alcohol--Brandy
and oysters--_Little Dorrit_--_Great Expectations_--Micawber
as a punch-maker--_David Copperfield_--"Practicable"
food on the stage--"Johnny" Toole's story of Tiny
Tim and the goose 246-259
CHAPTER XXII
RESTORATIVES
William of Normandy--A "head" wind at sea--Beware the
druggist--Pick-me-ups of all sorts and conditions--Anchovy
toast for the invalid--A small bottle--Straight talks to
fanatics--Total abstinence as bad as the other thing--Moderation
in all matters--Wisely and slow--_Carpe diem_--But
have a thought for the morrow 260-274
CHAPTER I
BREAKFAST
"The day breaks slow, but e'en must man break-fast."
Formal or informal?--An eccentric old gentleman--The
ancient Britons--Breakfast in the days of Good Queen
Bess--A few tea statistics--"Garraway's"--Something about
coffee--Brandy for breakfast--The evolution of the staff of
life--Free Trade--The cheap loaf, and no cash to buy it.
This is a very serious subject. The first meal of the day has
exercised more influence over history than many people may be aware
of. It is not easy to preserve an equal mind or keep a stiff upper lip
upon an empty stomach; and indigestible food-stuffs have probably lost
more battles than sore feet and bad ammunition. It is an incontestable
fact that the great Napoleon lost the battles of Borodino and Leipsic
through eating too fast.
When good digestion waits on appetite, great men are less liable to
commit mistakes--and a mistake in a great man is a crime--than when
dyspepsia has marked them for her own; and this rule applies to all
men.
There should be no hurry or formality about breakfast. Your punctual
host and hostess may be all very well from their own point of view;
but black looks and sarcastic welcomings are an abomination to the
guest who may have overslept himself or herself, and who fails to say,
"Good-morning" just on the stroke of nine o'clock. Far be it from
the author's wish to decry the system of family prayers, although
the spectacle of the full strength of the domestic company, from the
stern-featured housekeeper, or the chief lady's-maid (the housekeeper
is frequently too grand, or too much cumbered with other duties to
attend public worship), to the diminutive page-boy, standing all in a
row, facing the cups and saucers, is occasionally more provocative of
mirth than reverence. But too much law and order about fast-breaking
is to be deplored.
"I'm not very punctual, I'm afraid, Sir John," I once heard a very
charming lady observe to her host, as she took her seat at the table,
exactly ten minutes after the line of menials had filed out.
"On the contrary, Lady V----" returned the master of the house, with a
cast-iron smile, "you are punctual in your unpunctuality; for you have
missed prayers by the sixth part of one hour, every morning since you
came." Now what should be done to a host like that?
In the long ago I was favoured with the acquaintance of an elderly
gentleman of property, a most estimable, though eccentric, man. And he
invariably breakfasted with his hat on. It did not matter if ladies
were present or not. Down he would sit, opposite the ham and eggs--or
whatever dish it might chance to be--with a white hat, with mourning
band attached, surmounting his fine head. We used to think the
presence of the hat was owing to partial baldness; but, as he never
wore it at luncheon or dinner, that idea was abandoned. In fact, he
pleaded that the hat kept his thoughts in; and as after breakfast he
was closeted with his steward, or agent, or stud-groom, or keeper, for
several hours, he doubtless let loose some of those thoughts to one or
the other. At all events we never saw him again till luncheon, unless
there was any hunting or shooting to be done.
This same old gentleman once rehearsed his own funeral on the carriage
drive outside, and stage-managed the solemn ceremony from his study
window. An under-gardener pushed a wheelbarrow, containing a box
of choice cuttings, to represent the body; and the butler posed as
chief mourner. And when anybody went wrong, or the pall-bearers--six
grooms--failed to keep in step, the master would throw up the
window-sash, and roar--
"Begin again!"
But this is wandering from the subject. Let us try back.
Having made wide search amongst old and musty manuscripts, I can find
no record of a bill-of-fare of the first meal of the ancient Britons.
Our blue forefathers, in all probability, but seldom assisted at
any such smart function as a wedding-breakfast, or even a hunting
one; for the simple reason that it was a case with them of, "no
hunt, no breakfast." Unless one or other had killed the deer, or the
wild-boar, or some other living thing to furnish the refection the
feast was a Barmecide one, and much as we have heard of the strength
and hardiness of our blue forefathers, many of them must have died
of sheer starvation. For they had no weapons but clubs, and rough
cut flints, with which to kill the beasts of the country--who were,
however, occasionally lured into pitfalls; and as to fish, unless they
"tickled" them, the denizens of the streams must have had an easy time
of it. They had sheep, but these were valuable chiefly on account of
their wool; as used to be the case in Australia, ere the tinned meat
trade was established. Most of the fruits and vegetables which we
enjoy to-day were introduced into Britain by the Romans. Snipe and
woodcock and (in the north) grouse may have been bagged, as well as
hares. But these poor savages knew not rabbits by sight, nor indeed,
much of the feathered fowl which their more favoured descendants are
in the habit of shooting, or otherwise destroying, for food. The
ancient Britons knew not bacon and eggs, nor the toothsome kipper,
nor yet the marmalade of Dundee. As for bread, it was not invented
in any shape or form until much later; and its primitive state was a
tough paste of flour, water, and (occasionally) milk--something like
the "damper" of the Australian bush, or the unleavened _chupati_ which
the poorer classes in Hindustan put up with, after baking it, at the
present day.
The hardy, independent Saxon, had a much better time of it, in the
way of meat and drink. But with supper forming the chief meal of the
day, his breakfast was a simple, though plentiful one, and consisted
chiefly of venison pasty and the flesh of goats, washed down with ale,
or mead.
"A free breakfast-table of Elizabeth's time," says an old authority,
"or even during the more recent reign of Charles II., would contrast
oddly with our modern morning meal. There were meats, hot and cold;
beef and brawn, and boar's head, the venison pasty, and the
_Wardon Pie_
of west country pears. There was hot bread, too, and sundry 'cates'
which would now be strange to our eyes. But to wash down these
substantial viands there was little save ale. The most delicate
lady could procure no more suitable beverage than the blood of John
Barleycorn. The most fretful invalid had to be content with a mug of
small beer, stirred up with a sprig of rosemary. Wine, hippocras, and
metheglin were potations for supper-time, not for breakfast, and beer
reigned supreme. None but home productions figured on the board of
our ancestors. Not for them were seas traversed, or tropical shores
visited, as for us. Yemen and Ceylon, Assam and Cathay, Cuba and
Peru, did not send daily tribute to their tables, and the very names
of tea and coffee, of cocoa and chocolate, were to them unknown. The
dethronement of ale, subsequent on the introduction of these eastern
products, is one of the most marked events which have severed the
social life of the present day from that of the past."
With the exception of the Wardon pie and the "cates," the above
bill-of-fare would probably satisfy the cravings of the ordinary
"Johnny" of to-day, who has heard the chimes at midnight, and would
sooner face a charging tiger than drink tea or coffee with his first
meal, which, alas! but too often consists of a hot-pickle sandwich and
a "brandy and soda," with not quite all the soda in. But just imagine
the fine lady of to-day with a large tankard of Burton ale facing her
at the breakfast-table.
_Tea_,
which is said to have been introduced into China by Djarma, a native
of India, about A.D. 500, was not familiar in Europe until the end of
the sixteenth century. And it was not until 1657, when Garraway opened
a tea-house in Exchange Alley, that Londoners began tea-drinking as an
experiment. In 1662 Pepys writes--
"Home, and there find my wife making of tea"--two years before, he
called it "tee (a China drink)"--"a drink which Mr. Pelling the
Pothicary tells her is good for her cold and defluxions."
In 1740 the price of tea ranged from 7s. to 24s. per lb. In 1725,
370,323 lbs. were drunk in England, and in 1890, 194,008,000. In 1840
the duty was 2s. 2¼d. per lb.; in 1858 1s. 5d. per lb.; and in 1890
4d. per lb.
The seed of
_The Coffee-Tree_,
which, when roasted, ground, and mixed with water, and unmixed
with horse-beans, dandelion-root, or road-scrapings, forms a most
agreeable beverage to those who can digest it, was not known to
the Greeks or Romans, but has been used in Abyssinia and along the
north-east coast of Africa almost as long as those parts have been
populated. Here, in merry England, where coffee was not introduced
until the eighteenth century, it was at first used but sparingly,
until it almost entirely took the place of chocolate, which was the
favoured beverage of the duchesses and fine madams who minced and
flirted, and plotted, during the reign of the Merry Monarch, fifty
years or so before. The march of knowledge has taught the thrifty
housewife of to-day to roast her own coffee, instead of purchasing it
in that form from the retail shopkeeper, who, as a rule, under-roasts
the berry, in order to "keep the weight in." But do not blame him too
freely, for he is occasionally a Poor Law Guardian, and has to "keep
pace with the Stores."
During the Georgian era, the hard-drinking epoch, breakfast far too
often consisted chiefly of French brandy; and the first meal was, in
consequence, not altogether a happy or wholesome one, nor conducive to
the close study of serious subjects.
The history of
_The Staff of Life_[1]
would require a much larger volume than this, all to itself. That the
evolution of bread-making has been very gradual admits of no denial;
and as late as the Tudor and Stuart periods the art was still in
its infancy. The quality of the bread consumed was a test of social
standing. Thus, whilst the _haut monde_, the height of society, lords
and dukes, with countesses and dames of high degree, were in the habit
of consuming delicate manchets, made of the finest wheaten flour, of
snowy purity, the middle classes had to content themselves with white
loaves of inferior quality. To the journeyman and the 'prentice (who
had to endure, with patience, the buffets of master and mistress) was
meted out coarse but wholesome brown bread, made from an admixture
of wheat and barley flour; whilst the agricultural labourer staved
off starvation with loaves made from rye, occasionally mixed with red
wheat or barley. The introduction of
_Free Trade_
--by no means an unmixed blessing--has changed all this; and the
working-classes, with their wives and families, can, when out of the
workhouse, in the intervals between "strikes," enjoy the same quality
of bread, that "cheap loaf" which appears on the table of the wicked
squire and the all-devouring parson. In Yorkshire, at the present day,
almost the worst thing that can be urged against a woman is that she
"canna mak' a bit o' bread."
"Just look," wrote an enthusiastic Free Trader, a quarter of a century
ago, "at the immense change that has latterly taken place in the food
of the English peasantry. Rye bread and pease-pudding exchanged for
wheaten loaves. A startling change, but not greatly different from
what has occurred in France, where, with the abuses of the Bourbon
rule, an end was put to the semi-starvation of French tillers of the
soil. Black bread is now almost as much a rarity in France as on our
side of the Channel; while barley in Wales, oats in Scotland, and the
potato in Ireland, are no longer the food-staples that they were."
I have no wish for anything of a contentious nature to appear in this
volume; but may deliver, with regard to the above, the opinion that
pease-pudding is by no means despicable fare, when associated with
a boiled leg of pork; and I may add that too many of the English
peasantry, nowadays, have been reduced, by this same Free Trade, to a
diet of no bread at all, in place of wheaten, or any other loaves.
Wedding breakfasts, with the formal speeches, and cutting of the cake,
have gone out of fashion, and the subject of the British breakfast of
to-day demands a new chapter.