Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

id, if you see the be

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of the processes of cookery, could have scarcely been a

h 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

ham 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 fi

of Sunda, was the most plentiful; but the West Indian produce, as well as

read, barley-meal bread, bran-bread, bean-bread, pease-bread, oat-bread or oat-cakes, hard-bread, and unleavene

sort at that time a hardship only to be tolerated in a dear year to mix beans and peas with their corn,

ld-fashioned “turnover”; and we come across the explicit phrase, a loaf of bread, for the first ti

cknels, and other sorts of cakes for the table, among which in t

r better-to-do ancestors usually employed three descriptions of bread: manchete for the master’s table, made of fine boulted flour; chete, of

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 w

eading 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 mo

ary used oil. But it is doubtful whether before the Conq

dishes under names calculated to mislead the intended partaker, as where we find a receipt given for pome de oringe, which

Hermit,” the latter exhibits to his unknown visitor his stock of

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 edibl

eton, 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

ser features, so far as fish was concerned; and the author of “The Court and Countr

Cardinal-archbishop judged this warm-blooded se

hs,” 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

us with a second and no

early Peascods and Strawberries want no price with great Bellies; but the Chicken and the Duck are fatted for

s of the good cheer at Christmas, and of the cook,

, 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

gree,” is worth consulting. Harrison, in his “Description of England,” 1586, speaks of thirty different kinds of supe

ce, 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 o

th century, Tent and Valencia wines are mentioned, with wine of Lang

angollie, and the Draget fine, Mead, Mattebru, and the Metheling. Red wine, the claret and the white, with Tent and Alicant, in whom I delight. Wi

stard, Hippocras, however. On the 10th of December, 1497, Piers Barber received six shillings a

tion 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 describe

Breton, in his “Fantasticks,” 1626, under January, recommends a draught of ale and wormwood wi

; 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 th

Antique,” 1841, it appears that whey was then used as a drink; it