Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

r, 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,

s 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, mas

taff. The fondness for confections had spread from Italy - which itself in turn borrowed the taste from the East - to France and

hrow a direct light on our own kitchens at this period. But of course collaterally it presents many features o

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 sup

e, 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 ew

e 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, t

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 lem

with service and wages, and is noticed here because it affords a recital of the orders made for his household by John Ha

decorum and duty at table, and is at least as valuable and curious as those metrical canons an

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

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 wh

enry VII" where, under date of August 8, 1505, a woman receives 3s. d. for clarifying deer suet for the King.

e 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 pleasur

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,

tuous 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 thei

s has already done something for the people; and in the future that lies

sed. 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

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

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,

s 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 t

e bold baron, whose serf he would have been in the good old days; and the bold baron, on his part, no longer keeps secret house unless he chooses, and observes, if a more monotonous, a more secure and comfortable tenor of life. This change is of cours