Under the designation of _Panis_, Mr. Hudson Turner thinks that grain and
flour, as well as bread, were included. It would appear that bread of
different degrees of fineness was used. Thus, in the Household Expenses
of Eleanor, Countess of Leicester, third daughter of King John, and wife
of the celebrated Simon de Montfort, 1265, "the earliest known memorial
of the domestic expenditure of an English subject," we find that there
was "bread purchased for the Countess," and "bread for the kitchen."
Loaves or cakes were made of bolted flour, are twice mentioned, as well
as cakes, or wastells, perhaps biscuits; on one occasion half a quarter
of flour is set down for pastry. It is inferred that the bread generally
used in the family was made of a mixture of wheat and rye. As the dogs
were fed with corn, it may be concluded that the servants fared no
worse: at any rate there is no distinct notice of bread made of barley,
oats, or the more inferior grain which were commonly used in France and
other countries.
It is not clear that their bread was leavened with yeast, as that
article occurs but once, and then in connexion with malt. The price of
the quarter of wheat or rye varied from 5_s_. to 5_s_. 8_d_.; of oats,
from 2_s_. to 2_s_. 4_d_.; twenty-five quarters, however, were bought at
Sandwich, at 1_s_. 10_d_. When grain was brought from the Countess'
manors, some of the prices were rather below the average. The bailiff of
Chalton was allowed 5_s_. the quarter for wheat, 4_s_. for barley, and
2_s_. 4_d_. for oats; the bailiff of Braborne had 4_s_. 4_d_. for wheat,
and 1_s_. 3_d_. for oats.
The Manchet is a fine white roll, named, according to Skinner, from
_michette_, French; or from _main_, because small enough to be held in
the hand:
"No manchet can so well the courtly palate please
As that made of the meal fetch'd from my fertil leaze."
Drayton's _Polyolbion_.
Here are two olden recipes for manchets:
"_Lady of Arundel's Manchet._--Take a bushel of fine wheat-flour, twenty
eggs, three pound of fresh butter; then take as much salt and barm as to
the ordinary manchet; temper it together with new milk pretty hot, then
let it lie the space of half an hour to rise, so you may work it up into
bread, and bake it: let not your oven be too hot."--_True Gentlewoman's
Delight_, 1676.
"Take a quart of cream, put thereto a pound of beef-suet minced small,
put it into cream, and season it with nutmeg, cinnamon, and rose-water;
put to it eight eggs and but four whites, and two grated manchets;
mingle them well together and put them in a buttered dish; bake it, and
being baked, scrape on sugar, and serve it."--_The Queene's Royal
Cookery_, 1713.
Manchets are used in the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge to this day.
The manchets and cheese, and fine ale, of Magdalen College are well
known.
The Manciple, a purveyor of victuals, a clerk of the kitchen, or
caterer, still subsists in the universities, where the name is therefore
preserved; but Archdeacon Nares believed nowhere else. One of Chaucer's
pilgrims is a manciple of the Temple, of whom he gives a good character
for his skill in purveying.
It is curious to find that one of the domestic arts which is somewhat
neglected in the households of the present generation, should, in the
last century, have been considered an accomplishment of such importance
as to be taught in schools: this was Pastry-making. There was then
resident in London one of the ancient family of the Kidders, of
Maresfield, in Sussex, and a descendant of Richard Kidder, Bishop of
Bath and Wells. This was Edward Kidder, a pastrycook, or, as he calls
himself, "pastry-master," who carried on his business in Queen Street,
Cheapside, and was induced to open two schools in the metropolis to
teach the art of making pastry, one at his own place of business, and
the other in Holborn. He also gave instructions to ladies at their
private houses. So popular did his system of teaching become, that he is
said to have instructed nearly 6,000 ladies in this art. He also
published a book of _Receipts of Pastry and Cookery_, for the use of his
scholars, printed entirely in copper-plate, with a portrait of himself,
in the full wig and costume of the day, as a frontispiece. He died in
1739, at the age of seventy-three. By will, he gave to his wife, Mary
Kidder, a gold watch, a diamond ring, and all the other rings and
trinkets used by her, and also all the furniture of the best room in
which she lay in the house in Queen Street; and to his daughters,
Elizabeth and Susan, he bequeathed all his money, bank-stock, plate,
jewellery, &c. Susan, among other bequests, gave to her cousin, George
Kidder, of Canterbury, pastrycook, 150_l_. and the copper-plates for the
receipt-book.
Some dishes of the olden dinner-table are not very inviting. Our
ancestors had no objection to stale fish; and blubber, if they could get
it from a stray whale, or grampus or porpoise, was considered a
delicacy. Yet some of the old dishes have stood the test of ages, as we
see in the case of a Christmas Pie, the receipt to make which is
preserved in the books of the Salters' Company, in the City of London.
"For to make a moost choyce Paaste of Gamys to be eten at ye Feste
of Chrystemasse" (17th Richard II. A.D. 1394). A pie so made by
the Company's cook in 1836 was found excellent. It consisted of a
pheasant, hare, and capon; two partridges, two pigeons, and two
rabbits; all boned and put into paste in the shape of a bird, with
the livers and hearts, two mutton kidneys, forced-meats, and
egg-balls, seasoning, spice, catsup, and pickled mushrooms, filled
up with gravy made from the various bones.
We must, however, remember that Cookery flourished in the reign of
Richard II., who rebuilt Westminster Hall, and gave therein a
_house-warming_, at which old Stow says, "he feasted ten thousand
persons." Richard is also said to have kept 2,000 cooks, who left to the
world their famous cookery-book, the "Form of Cury, or, a Roll of
English Cookery," compiled about the year 1390, by the master-cooks of
the Royal Kitchen.
Sugar was at first regarded as a spice, and was introduced as a
substitute for honey after the Crusades. It was sold by the pound in the
thirteenth century, and was procurable even in such remote towns as Ross
and Hereford. Before the discovery of America, however, Sugar was a
costly luxury, and only used on rare occasions. About 1459, Margaret
Barton, writing to her husband, who was a gentleman and landowner of
Norfolk, begs that he will vouchsafe "to buy her a pound of sugar."
Again: "I pray that ye will vouchsafe to send me another sugar-loaf, for
my old one is done." The art of refining sugar, and what is called
loaf-sugar, was discovered by a Venetian about the end of the fifteenth,
or the beginning of the sixteenth century. Sugar-candy is of much
earlier date; for in Marin's _Storia di Commercio de Veneziani_, there
is an account of a shipment made at Venice for England, in 1319, of
100,000 pounds of sugar, and 10,000 pounds of sugar-candy. Refined or
loaf-sugar is thus mentioned in a roll of provisions in the reign of
Henry VIII.: "two loaves of sugar, weighing sixteen pound two ounces, at
---- per pound." A letter from Sir Edward Wotton to Lord Cobham, dated
Calais, March 6, 1546, informs him that he had taken up for his lordship
twenty-five sugar-loaves, at six shillings a loaf, "which is eightepence
a pounde." Up to the close of the fifteenth century its price varied
from one-and-sixpence to three shillings a pound, "or, on an average, to
a sum equivalent to about thirty shillings at present." Sugar has become
to us almost a necessary of life. "We consume it in millions of tons; we
employ thousands of ships in transporting it. Millions of men spend
their lives in cultivating the plants from which it is extracted, and
the fiscal duties imposed upon it add largely to the revenue of nearly
every established government. It may be said, therefore, to exercise a
more direct and extended influence, not only over the social comfort,
but over the social condition, of mankind, than any other production of
the vegetable kingdom, with the exception, perhaps, of cotton
alone."--_J. F. W. Johnston, M.A._[51]
Coffee is mentioned in Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, date 1621,
several years before coffee-houses were introduced into England. The
first coffee-house was opened in 1650, at Oxford, by Jacobs, a Jew, "at
the Angel; and there it (coffee) was, by some who delighted in novelty,
drunk." About this time, Mr. Edwards, a Turkey merchant, brought from
Smyrna to London, one Pasqua Rosee, a Ragusan youth, who prepared this
drink for him every morning. But the novelty thereof, drawing too much
company to him, he allowed his said servant, with another of his
son-in-law, to sell coffee publicly, and they set up the first
coffee-house in London, in St. Michael's Alley, in Cornhill. The sign
was Pasqua Rosee's own head.
Tea was first sold in London by Thomas Garway, in Change Alley, in 1651,
at from 16_s_. to 50_s_. per pound; it had been previously sold at from
six pounds to ten pounds per pound. Pepys, in his _Diary_, tells, Sept.
25, 1669, of his sending "for a cup of Tea, a China drink he had not
before tasted." Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, about 1666, had
introduced Tea at Court. And, in Sir Charles Sedley's _Mulberry Garden_,
we are told that "he who wished to be considered a man of fashion always
drank wine-and-water at dinner, and a dish of tea afterwards."[52]
Spices and other condiments are mentioned in the Countess of Leicester's
accounts, viz., anise, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cloves, cummin, dried
fennel, saffron, sugar, liquorice, mustard, verjuice, and vinegar, the
prices of which were very low. It must not be supposed, from the low
prices of some of these articles, that they were generally used in the
country; the arrival of a ship laden with spices was an event of such
importance, and perhaps rarity, that the King usually hastened to
satisfy his wants before the cargo was landed. Thus in the 10th of Henry
the Third, the bailiffs of Sandwich were commanded to detain, upon their
coming to port, two great ships laden with spices and precious
merchandises, which were expected from Bayonne; and not to allow
anything to be sold until the King had had his choice of their contents.
Among the glories of olden confectionery was March-pane, a biscuit
composed of sugar and almonds, like those now called Macaroons. It is
also called _massepain_ in some old books. The word March-pane exists,
with little variation, in almost all the European languages; yet the
derivation of it is uncertain. In the Latin of the Middle Ages,
March-panes were called _Martii panes_, which gave occasion to Hermolaus
Barbaras to inquire into their origin, in a letter to Cardinal
Piccolomini, who had some sent to him as a present. Balthazar Bonifacius
says they were named from Marcus Apicius, the famous epicure. Minshew,
following Hermolaus, will have them originally sacred to Mars, and
stamped with a castle.
Whatever was the origin of their name, the English receipt-books show
that they were composed of almonds and sugar, pounded and baked
together. Here is a receipt:
"_To make a March-pane._--Take two pounds of almonds, being
blanched, and dryed in a sieve over the fire, beate them in a
stone mortar, and when they bee small, mixe them with two pounds
of sugar beeing finely beaten, adding two or three spoonefuls of
rose-water, and that will keep your almonds from oiling: when your
paste is beaten fine, drive it thin with a rowling pin, and so lay
it on a bottom of wafers; then raise up a little edge on the side,
and so bake it; then yce it with rose-water and sugar, then put it
into the oven againe, and when you see your yce is risen up and
drie, then take it out of the oven and garnish it with pretie
conceipts, as birdes and beasts being cast out of standing-moldes.
Sticke long comfits upright into it, cast bisket and carrowaies in
it, and so serve it: you may also print of this march-pane paste
in your moldes for banqueting dishes. And of this paste our comfit
makers at this day make their letters, knots, armes, escutcheons,
beasts, birds, and other fancies."--_Delightes for Ladies_ 1608.
March-pane was a constant article in the desserts of our ancestors, and
appeared sometimes on more solemn occasions. When Elizabeth visited
Cambridge, the University presented their chancellor, Sir William Cecil,
with two pairs of gloves, a march-pane, and two sugar-loves. In the old
play of _Wits_ we find a reference to
"----dull country madams that spend
Their time in studying recipes to make
March-pane and preserve plumbs."
Castles and other figures were often made of march-pane for splendid
desserts, and were demolished by shooting or throwing sugar-plums at
them.
_Almonds_ are an olden delicacy of our table, and have for ages
been very extensively used in a variety of preparations.
Almond-milk, composed of almonds ground and mixed with milk or
other liquid, was a favourite beverage, as was also almond-butter
and almond-custard. The antiquity of the practice of serving
almonds and raisins together at dessert seems to be shown from the
name Almonds-and-raisins being given as that of an old English
game in _Useful Transactions in Philosophy_, 1700.
_Biscuits_ (originally Biskets) of various kinds were in use in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; among which that most in
repute was called Naples Biscuit, from the place where it was
first made: it occurs in the Carpenters' Company's books in 1644.
_Orange-Flower Water_ has been a favourite perfume in England
since the reign of James I. It occurs in Copley's _Wits, Fits, and
Fancies_, 1614; and in the _Accomplished Female Instructor_, 1719,
is the following recipe:--Take two pounds of orange-flowers, as
fresh as you can get them, infuse them in two quarts of white
wine, and so distil them, and it will yield a curious perfuming
spirit.--_Orange Butter_ was made, according to the _Closet of
Rarities_, 1706, by beating up new cream, and then adding
orange-flower and red wine, to give it the colour and scent of an
orange.[53]