Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine by William Carew Hazlitt
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William Carew Hazlitt >> Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine
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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 L1 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...."
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