Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine by William Carew Hazlitt

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The expenditure on festive occasions seems, from some of the entries
in the "Northumberland Household Book," to present a strong contrast
to the ordinary dietary allowed to the members of a noble and wealthy
household, especially on fish days, in the earlier Tudor era (1512).
The noontide breakfast provided for the Percy establishment was of a
very modest character: my lord and my lady had, for example, a loaf of
bread, two manchets (loaves of finer bread), a quart of beer and one
of wine, two pieces of salt fish, and six baked herrings or a dish
of sprats. My lord Percy and Master Thomas Percy had half a loaf of
household bread, a manchet, a pottle of beer, a dish of butter, a
piece of salt fish, and a dish of sprats or three white herrings; and
the nursery breakfast for my lady Margaret and Master Ingram Percy was
much the same. But on flesh days my lord and lady fared better, for
they had a loaf of bread, two manchets, a quart of beer and the same
of wine, and half a chine of mutton or boiled beef; while the nursery
repast consisted of a manchet, a quart of beer, and three boiled
mutton breasts; and so on: whence it is deducible that in the Percy
family, perhaps in all other great houses, the members and the ladies
and gentlemen in waiting partook of their earliest meal apart in their
respective chambers, and met only at six to dine or sup.

The beer, which was an invariable part of the _menu_, was perhaps
brewed from hops which, according to Harrison elsewhere quoted, were,
after a long discontinuance, again coming into use about this time.
But it would be a light-bodied drink which was allotted to the
consumption at all events of Masters Thomas and Ingram Percy, and
even of my Lady Margaret. It is clearly not irrelevant to my object
to correct the general impression that the great families continued
throughout the year to support the strain which the system of keeping
open house must have involved. For, as Warner has stated, there were
intervals during which the aristocracy permitted themselves to unbend,
and shook off the trammels imposed on them by their social rank and
responsibility. This was known as "keeping secret house," or, in other
words, my lord became for a season incognito, and retired to one of
his remoter properties for relaxation and repose. Our kings in some
measure did the same; for they held their revels only, as a rule, at
stated times and places. William I. is said to have kept his Easter
at Winchester, his Whitsuntide at Westminster, and his Christmas at
Gloucester. Even these antique grandees had to work on some plan. It
could not be all mirth and jollity.

A recital of some of the articles on sale in a baker's or
confectioner's shop in 1563, occurs in Newbery's "Dives Pragmaticus":
simnels, buns, cakes, biscuits, comfits, caraways, and cracknels: and
this is the first occurrence of the bun that I have hitherto been able
to detect. The same tract supplies us with a few other items germane
to my subject: figs, almonds, long pepper, dates, prunes, and nutmegs.
It is curious to watch how by degrees the kitchen department was
furnished with articles which nowadays are viewed as the commonest
necessaries of life.

In the 17th century the increased communication with the Continent
made us by degrees larger partakers of the discoveries of foreign
cooks. Noblemen and gentlemen travelling abroad brought back with them
receipts for making the dishes which they had tasted in the course
of their tours. In the "Compleat Cook," 1655 and 1662, the beneficial
operation of actual experience of this kind, and of the introduction
of such books as the "Receipts for Dutch Victual" and "Epulario, or
the Italian Banquet," to English readers and students, is manifest
enough; for in the latter volume we get such entries as these: "To
make a Portugal dish;" "To make a Virginia dish;" "A Persian dish;" "A
Spanish olio;" and then there are receipts "To make a Posset the
Earl of Arundel's way;" "To make the Lady Abergavenny's Cheese;"
"The Jacobin's Pottage;" "To make Mrs. Leeds' Cheesecakes;" "The Lord
Conway His Lordship's receipt for the making of Amber Puddings;" "The
Countess of Rutland's receipt of making the Rare Banbury Cake, which
was so much praised as her daughter's (the Right Honourable Lady
Chaworth) Pudding," and "To make Poor Knights"--the last a medley in
which bread, cream, and eggs were the leading materials.

Warner, however, in the "Additional Notes and Observations" to his
"Antiquitates Culinariae," 1791, expresses himself adversely to
the foreign systems of cookery from an English point of view.
"Notwithstanding," he remarks, "the partiality of our countrymen
to French cookery, yet that mode of disguising meat in this kingdom
(except perhaps in the hottest part of the hottest season of the year)
is an absurdity. It is _here_ the art of _spoiling good meat_. The
same art, indeed, in the South of France; where the climate is much
warmer, and the flesh of the animal lean and insipid, is highly
valuable; it is the art of making _bad meat eatable_." At the same
time, he acknowledges the superior thrift and intelligence of the
French cooks, and instances the frog and the horse. "The frog is
considered in this country as a disgusting animal, altogether unfit
for the purposes of the kitchen; whereas, by the efforts of French
cookery, the thighs of this little creature are converted into a
delicate and estimable dish." So sings, too (save the mark!), _our_
Charles Lamb, so far back as 1822, after his visit to Paris. It
seems that in Elizabeth's reign a _powdered_, or pickled horse was
considered a suitable dish by a French general entertaining at dinner
some English officers.

It is difficult to avoid an impression that Warner has some reason,
when he suggests that the immoderate use of condiments was brought
to us by the dwellers under a higher temperature, and was not really
demanded in such a climate as that of England, where meat can be
kept sweet in ordinary seasons, much longer even than in France or in
Italy. But let us bear in mind, too, how different from our own the
old English _cuisine_ was, and how many strange beasts calling for
lubricants it comprehended within its range.

An edifying insight into the old Scottish _cuisine_ among people of
the better sort is afforded by Fynes Morisoh, in his description of a
stay at a knight's house in North Britain in 1598.

"Myself," he says, "was at a knight's house, who had many servants
to attend him, that brought in his meat with their heads covered
with blue caps, the table being more than half furnished with great
platters of porridge, each having a little piece of sodden meat; and
when the tables were served, the servants did sit down with us; but
the upper mess, instead of porridge, had a pullet with some prunes in
the broth. And I observed no art of cookery, or furniture of
household stuff, but rather rude neglect of both, though myself and
my companion, sent by the Governor of Berwick upon bordering affairs,
were entertained in the best manner. The Scots ... vulgarly eat
hearth-cakes of oats, but in cities have also wheaten bread, which,
for the most part, was bought by courtiers, gentlemen, and the best
sort of citizens. When I lived at Berwick, the Scots weekly upon the
market day _obtained leave in writing of the governor_ to buy peas and
beans, whereof, as also of wheat, their merchants to this day (1617)
send great quantities from London into Scotland. They drink pure wine,
not with sugar, as the English, yet at feasts they put comfits in the
wine, after the French manner: but they had not our vintners' fraud to
mix their wines."

He proceeds to say that he noticed no regular inns, with signs hanging
out, but that private householders would entertain passengers on
entreaty, or where acquaintance was claimed. The last statement is
interestingly corroborated by the account which Taylor the Water-Poet
printed in 1618 of his journey to Scotland, and which he termed his
"Penniless Pilgrimage or Moneyless Perambulation," in the course of
which he purports to have depended entirely on private hospitality.

A friend says: "The Scotch were long very poor. Only their fish,
oatmeal, and whiskey kept them alive. Fish was very cheap." This
remark sounds the key-note of a great English want--cheaper fish.
Of meat we already eat enough, or too much; but of fish we might eat
more, if it could be brought at a low price to our doors. It is a
noteworthy collateral fact that in the Lord Mayor of London's Pageant
of 1590 there is a representation of the double advantage which would
accrue if the unemployed poor were engaged to facilitate and cheapen
the supply of fish to the City; and here we are, three centuries
forward, with the want still very imperfectly answered.

Besides the bread and oatmeal above named, the bannock played its
part. "The Land o' Cakes" was more than a trim and pretty phrase:
there was in it a deep eloquence; it marked a wide national demand and
supply.

The "Penny Magazine" for 1842 has a good and suggestive paper on
"Feasts and Entertainments," with extracts from some of the early
dramatists and a woodcut of "a new French cook, to devise fine
kickshaws and toys." One curious point is brought out here in the
phrase "boiled _jiggets_ of mutton," which shews that the French
_gigot_ for a leg of mutton was formerly in use here. Like many other
Gallicisms, it lingered in Scotland down to our own time.

The cut of the French cook above mentioned is a modern composition;
and indeed some of the excerpts from Ben Jonson and other writers are
of an extravagant and hyperbolical cast,--better calculated to amuse
an audience than to instruct the student.

Mr. Lucas remarks: "It is probable that we are more dependent upon
animal food than we used to be. In their early days, the present
generation of dalesmen fed almost exclusively upon oatmeal; either as
'hasty-pudding,'--that is, Scotch oatmeal which had been _ground over
again_, so as to be nearly as fine as flour;... or 'lumpy,'--that is,
boiled quickly and not thoroughly stirred; or else in one of the
three kinds of cake which they call 'fermented,' viz., 'riddle cake,'
'held-on cake,' or 'turn-down cake,' which is made from oatcake batter
poured on the 'bak' ston'' from the ladle, and then spread with the
back of the ladle. It does not rise like an oatcake. Or of a fourth
kind called 'clap cake.' They also made 'tiffany cakes' of wheaten
flour, which was separated from the bran by being worked through a
hair-sieve _tiffany_, or _temse_:--south of England _Tammy_,--with a
brush called the _Brush shank_."

ROYAL FEASTS AND SAVAGE POMP.

In Rose's "School of Instructions for the Officers of the Mouth,"
1682, the staff of a great French establishment is described as a
Master of the Household, a Master Carver, a Master Butler, a Master
Confectioner, a Master Cook, and a Master Pastryman. The author, who
was himself one of the cooks in our royal kitchen, tells Sir Stephen
Fox, to whom he dedicates his book, that he had entered on it after
he had completed one of a very different nature: "The Theatre of the
World, or a Prospect of Human Misery."

At the time that the "School of Instructions" was written, the French
and ourselves had both progressed very greatly in the Art of Cookery
and in the development of the _menu_. DelaHay Street, Westminster,
near Bird-Cage Walk, suggests a time when a hedge ran along the
western side of it towards the Park, in lieu of brick or stone walls;
but the fact is that we have here a curious association with the
office, just quoted from Rose, of Master Confectioner. For of the plot
of ground on which the street, or at any rate a portion of it stands,
the old proprieter was Peter DelaHaye, master confectioner of Charles
II. at the very period of the publication of Rose's book. His name
occurs in the title-deeds of one of the houses on the Park side, which
since his day has had only five owners, and has been, since 1840, the
freehold of an old and valued friend of the present writer.

It may be worth pointing out, that the Confectionery and Pastry were
two distinct departments, each with its superintendent and staff. The
fondness for confections had spread from Italy--which itself in turn
borrowed the taste from the East--to France and England; and, as we
perceive from the descriptions furnished in books, these were often of
a very elaborate and costly character.

The volume is of the less interest for us, as it is a translation from
the French, and consequently does not throw a direct light on our own
kitchens at this period. But of course collaterally it presents
many features of likeness and analogy, and may be compared with
Braithwaite's earlier view to which I shall presently advert.

The following anecdote is given in the Epistle to Fox: "Many do
believe the French way of working is cheapest; but let these examine
this book, and then they may see (for their satisfaction) which is the
best husbandry, to extract gold out of herbs, or to make a pottage of
a stone, by the example of two soldiers, who in their quarters were
minded to have a pottage; the first of them coming into a house and
asking for all things necessary to the making of one, was as soon told
that he could have none of these things there, whereupon he went away,
and the other coming in with a stone in his knap-sack, asked only for
a Pot to boil his stone in, that he might make a dish of broth of it
for his supper, which was quickly granted him; and when the stone had
boiled a little while, then he asked for a small bit of beef, then for
a piece of mutton, and so for veal, bacon, etc., till by little and
little he got all things requisite, and he made an excellent pottage
of his stone, at as cheap a rate (it may be) as the cook extracted
Gold from Herbs."

The kitchen-staff of a noble establishment in the first quarter of the
seventeenth century we glean from Braithwaite's "Rules and Orders for
the Government of the House of an Earl," which, if the "M.L." for whom
the piece was composed was his future wife, Mistress Lawson, cannot
have seen the light later than 1617, in which year they were married.
He specifies--(1) a yeoman and groom for the cellar; (2) a yeoman and
groom for the pantry; (3) a yeoman and groom for the buttery; (3a)
a yeoman for the ewery; (4) a yeoman purveyor; (5) a master-cook,
under-cooks, and three pastry-men; (6) a yeoman and groom in the
scullery, one to be in the larder and slaughter-house; (7) an
achator or buyer; (8) three conducts [query, errand-boys] and three
kitchen-boys.

The writer also admits us to a rather fuller acquaintance with the
mode in which the marketing was done. He says that the officers, among
other matters, "must be able to judge, not only of the prices, but
also of the goodness of all kinds of corn, cattle, and household
provisions; and the better to enable themselves thereto, are
oftentimes to ride to fairs and great markets, and there to have
conference with graziers and purveyors." The higher officers were to
see that the master was not deceived by purveyors and buyers, and that
other men's cattle did not feed on my lord's pastures; they were to
take care that the clerk of the kitchen kept his day-book "in that
perfect and good order, that at the end of every week or month it be
pied out," and that a true docket of all kinds of provisions be set
down. They were to see that the powdered and salted meats in the
larder were properly kept; and vigilant supervision was to be
exercised over the cellar, buttery, and other departments, even to the
prevention of paring the tallow lights.

Braithwaite dedicates a section to each officer; but I have only space
to transcribe, by way of sample, the opening portion of his account
of "The Officer of the Kitchen:" "The Master-Cook should be a man of
years; well-experienced, whereby the younger cooks will be drawn the
better to obey his directions. In ancient times noblemen contented
themselves to be served with such as had been bred in their own
houses, but of late times none could please some but Italians and
Frenchmen, or at best brought up in the Court, or under London cooks:
nor would the old manner of baking, boiling, and roasting please them,
but the boiled meats must be after the French fashion, the dishes
garnished about with sugar and preserved plums, the meat covered over
with orangeade, preserved lemons, and with divers other preserved and
conserved stuff fetched from the confectioner's: more lemons and sugar
spent in boiling fish to serve at one meal than might well serve
the whole expense of the house in a day." He goes on to describe and
ridicule the new fashion of placing arms and crests on the dishes.
It seems that all the refuse was the perquisite of the cook and his
subordinates in a regulated proportion, and the same in the bakery and
other branches; but, as may be supposed, in these matters gross abuses
were committed.

In the "Leisure Hour" for 1884 was printed a series of papers on
"English Homes in the Olden Times." The eleventh deals with service
and wages, and is noticed here because it affords a recital of the
orders made for his household by John Harington the elder in 1566,
and renewed by John Harington the younger, his son and High Sheriff of
Somersetshire, in 1592.

This code of domestic discipline for an Elizabethan establishment
comprises the observance of decorum and duty at table, and is at least
as valuable and curious as those metrical canons and precepts which
form the volume (Babees' Book) edited for the Early English Text
Society, etc.

There is rather too general a dislike on the part of antiquaries
to take cognisance of matter inserted in popular periodicals upon
subjects of an archaeological character; but of course the loose and
flimsy treatment which this class of topics as a rule receives in the
light literature of the day makes it perilous to use information
so forthcoming in evidence or quotation. Articles must be rendered
palatable to the general reader, and thus become worthless for all
readers alike.

Most of the early descriptions and handbooks of instruction turn,
naturally enough, on the demands and enjoyments of the great. There
is in the treatise of Walter de Bibblesworth (14th century) a very
interesting and edifying account of the arrangement of courses for
some important banquet. The boar's head holds the place of honour in
the list, and venison follows, and various dishes of roast. Among the
birds to be served up we see cranes, peacocks, swans, and wild geese;
and of the smaller varieties, fieldfares, plovers, and larks. There
were wines; but the writer only particularises them as white and red.
The haunch of venison was then an ordinary dish, as well as kid. They
seem to have sometimes roasted and sometimes boiled them. Not only
the pheasant and partridge appear, but the quail,--which is at present
scarcer in this country, though so plentiful abroad,--the duck, and
the mallard.

In connection with venison, it is worth while to draw attention to a
passage in the "Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VII" where, under date
of August 8, 1505, a woman receives 3s. _d_. for clarifying deer suet
for the King. This was not for culinary but for medicinal purposes, as
it was then, and much later, employed as an ointment.

Both William I. and his son the Red King maintained, as Warner shews
us, a splendid table; and we have particulars of the princely scale on
which an Abbot of Canterbury celebrated his installation in 1309. The
archbishops of those times, if they exercised inordinate authority, at
any rate dispensed in a magnificent manner among the poor and infirm
a large portion of their revenues. They stood in the place of
corporations and Poor Law Guardians. Their very vices were not without
a certain fascinating grandeur; and the pleasures of the table in
which our Plantagenet rulers outstripped even their precursors, the
earlier sovereigns of that line, were enhanced and multiplied by the
Crusades, by the commencing spirit of discovery, and by the foreign
intermarriages, which became so frequent.

A far more thorough conquest than that which the day of Hastings
signalised was accomplished by an army of a more pacific kind, which
crossed the Channel piecemeal, bringing in their hands, not bows and
swords, but new dishes and new wines. These invaders of our soil were
doubtless welcomed as benefactors by the proud nobles of the Courts
of Edward II. and Richard II., as well as by Royalty itself; and the
descriptions which have been preserved of the banquets held on special
occasions in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and even of
the ordinary style of living of some, make our City feasts of to-day
shrink into insignificance. But we must always remember that the
extravagant luxury and hospitality of the old time were germane and
proper to it, component parts of the social framework.

It is to be remarked that some of the most disturbed and disastrous
epochs in our annals are those to which we have to go for records of
the greatest exploits in gastronomy and lavish expenditure of public
money on comparatively unprofitable objects. During the period from
the accession of Rufus to the death of Henry III., and again under the
rule of Richard II., the taste for magnificent parade and sumptuous
entertainments almost reached its climax. The notion of improving the
condition of the poor had not yet dawned on the mind of the governing
class; to make the artizan and the operative self-supporting and
self-respectful was a movement not merely unformulated, but a
conception beyond the parturient faculty of a member of the Jacquerie.
The king, prince, bishop, noble, of unawakened England met their
constituents at dinner in a fashion once or twice in a lifetime, and
when the guests below the salt had seen the ways of greatness, they
departed to fulfil their several callings. These were political
demonstrations with a clear and (for the age) not irrational object;
but for the modern public dinner, over which I should be happy to
preach the funeral sermon, there is not often this or any other plea.

The redistribution of wealth and its diversion into more fruitful
channels has already done something for the people; and in the future
that lies before some of us they will do vastly more. All Augaea will
be flushed out.

In some of these superb feasts, such as that at the marriage of Henry
IV. in 1403, there were two series of courses, three of meat, and
three of fish and sweets; in which we see our present fashion to a
certain extent reversed. But at the coronation of Henry V. in 1421,
only three courses were served, and those mixed. The taste for what
were termed "subtleties," had come in, and among the dishes at this
latter entertainment occur, "A pelican sitting on her nest with her
young," and "an image of St. Catherine holding a book and disputing
with the doctors." These vagaries became so common, that few dinners
of importance were accounted complete without one or more.

One of the minor "subtleties" was a peacock in full panoply. The bird
was first skinned, and the feathers, tail, head and neck having been
laid on a table, and sprinkled with cummin, the body was roasted,
glazed with raw egg-yolk, and after being left to cool, was sewn back
again into the skin and so brought to table as the last course. In
1466, at the enthronement of Archbishop Nevile, no fewer than 104
peacocks were dressed.

The most extraordinary display of fish at table on a single occasion
took place at the enthronement feast of Archbishop Warham in 1504; it
occurred on a fast day; and consequently no meat, poultry or game was
included in the _menu_, but ample compensation was found in the lavish
assortment of confectionery, spices, beer and wine. Of wine of various
vintages there were upwards of 12 pipes, and of ale and beer, thirty
tuns, including four of London and six of Kentish ale.

The narratives which have descended to us of the prodigious banquets
given on special occasions by our early kings, prelates and nobles,
are apt to inspire the general reader with an admiration of the
splendid hospitality of bygone times. But, as I have already
suggested, these festivities were occasional and at long intervals,
and during the intervening space the great ones and the small ones of
mediaeval and early England did not indulge in this riotous sort of
living, but "kept secret house," as it was called, both after their
own fashion. The extremes of prodigality and squalor were more
strongly marked among the poorer classes while this country was in
a semi-barbarous condition, and even the aristocracy by no means
maintained the same domestic state throughout the year as their modern
representatives. There are not those ostentatious displays of wealth
and generosity, which used to signalise certain political events, such
as the coronation of a monarch or the enthronement of a primate; the
mode of living has grown more uniform and consistent, since between
the vilain and his lord has interposed himself the middle-class
Englishman, with a hand held out to either.

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