Chapter V: Part IV (1)

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:--