Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

he more northerly districts in his day, twelve hundred years after the visit of Caesar. He says that they were then (about A.D. 1150) as

eacocks, the cock of the wood (the woodcock, not the capercailzie), thrushes, pheasants, and several more; and pigeons were only too plentiful. The hare and the rabbit were well enough known, and with the leveret form part of an enumeration of wild animals (animalium ferarum) in a pictorial vocabulary of the fifteenth century. But in the very early accounts or lists, although they must have soon been brought into requis

hionable households, and he recommends a brisk fire, perhaps with an eye to the skilful development of the crackling. He died without the happiness of bringing his archi-episcopal nostrils in contact with the sage and

sine are represented as amplified by receipts for dressing hedgehogs, squirrels, magpies, and jackdaws — small deer, which the English experts did not affec

crab, oyster, herring, cockle, smelt, and eel. But in the supplement to Alfric’s vocabulary, and in another belonging to the same epoch, there are important additions to this list: the salmon, the trout, the lobster, the bleak, with the whelk and other shell-fish. But we do not notice the turbot, so

e sturgeon, the whiting, the roach, the miller’s thumb, the thomback, the codling, the perch, the gudgeon, the turbot, the pike, the tench, and the haddock. It is worth noticing also that a distinction was now drawn b

yal table, as well as on that of the Lord Mayor of London. The cook either roasted it, and served it

perhaps; he is reported to have been the person who made that pleasant combination fashionable. The grampus, or sea-wolf, was another article of food which bears testimony to the coarse palate of the early Englishman, and at the same time may afford a clue to the partiality for disguising condiments and spices. But it appears from an entry in his Privy Purse Expenses, under Septem

rposes received, if we may trust the vocabularies, a few accessions

he Low Countries, and to be had cheap by anyone who watched the tides; but the author reprehends the gr

ten at breakfast with wine, the crab, lobster, sturgeon, salmon, ling, flounder, plaice, whiting, sprat, herring, pike, bream, roach, dace, and eel. The writer states that the sprat and herring wer

it lies in the frying-pan, reducing its supposed lament to musical notation. Here is an ingeniou

seasoning of sage and saffron, and the three generic heads of sod or boiled, roast, and fried meats. In addition to the fish-soup, they had wine-soup, water-soup, ale-soup; and the flawn is reinforced by the froise. Instead of one Latin equivalent for a pudding, it is of moment to record that there

re there were these tasty omelettes: moile, made of marrow and grated bread, and haggis, which is supposed to be identical with the Scottish dish so called. Lydgate, who belonged to the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds, doubtless set on the table at Canterbury some of the dainties with which he was familiar at home; and this practice, which runs through all romantic and imaginative literature, constitutes, in our appreciation, its principal worth. We love and cherish it for its ver

read), 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 loa

l 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 fo

knels: 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 p

ction 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 Chee

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

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

of the better sort is afforded by Fynes Morisoh, in his descr

th. 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. Wh

uaintance was claimed. The last statement is interestingly corroborated by the account which Taylor the Water-Poet printed in 1618 of his journey to Scotland,

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 t

. “The Land o’ Cakes” was more than a trim and pretty phrase: there wa

oodcut 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,” whi

e of the excerpts from Ben Jonson and other writers are of an extravagant and hype

lour; . . . 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 b