Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine Part 2

It instructs them what they will require, if they desire to see their establishment well-ordered; but we soon perceive that the author has in view the arrangements indispensable for a family of high rank and pretensions; and it may be once for all observed that this kind of literature seldom proves of much service to us in an investigation of the state of the poor, until we come to the fifteenth or even sixteenth century, when the artists of Germany and the Low Countries began to delineate those scenes in industrial and servile life, which time and change have rendered so valuable.

Where their superiors in rank regarded them as little more than mechanical instruments for carrying on the business of life, the poor have left behind them few records of their mode of sustenance and of the food which enabled them to follow their daily toil. The anecdotes, whatever they may be worth, of Alfred and the burnt cakes, and of Tom Thumb's mamma and her Christmas pudding, made in a bowl, of which the princ.i.p.al material was pork, stand almost alone; for we get, wherever we look, nothing but descriptions by learned and educated men of their equals or betters, how they fed and what they ate--their houses, their furniture, their weapons, and their dress. Even in the pa.s.sage of the old fabliau of the "King and the Hermit" the latter, instead of admitting us to a cottage interior, has a servant to wait on him, brings out a tablecloth, lights two candles, and lays before his disguised guest venison and wine. In most of our own romances, and in the epics of antiquity, we have to be satisfied with vague and splendid generalisations. We do not learn much of the dishes which were on the tables, how they were cooked, and how [Greek: oi polloi]

cooked theirs.

The _Liber_, or rather _Codex, Princeps_ in the very long and extensive catalogue of works on English Cookery, is a vellum roll called the Form of Cury, and is supposed to have been written about the beginning of the fifteenth century by the master-cook of Richard II who reigned from 1377 to 1399, and spent the public money in eating and drinking, instead of wasting it, as his grandfather had done, in foreign wars. This singular relic was once in the Harleian collection, but did not pa.s.s with the rest of the MSS. to the British Museum; it is now however, Additional MS. 5016, having been presented to the Library by Mr. Gustavus Brander. It was edited by Dr. Pegge in 1780, and included by Warner in his "Antiquitates Culinariae," 1791. The Roll comprises 196 receipts, and commences with a sort of preamble and a Table of Contents. In the former it is worth noting that the enterprise was undertaken "by the a.s.sent and avis.e.m.e.nt of masters of physic and of philosophy, that dwelled in his (Richard II.'s) court,"

which ill.u.s.trates the ancient alliance between medicine and cookery, which has not till lately been dissolved. The directions were to enable a man "to make common pottages and common meats for the household, as they should be made, craftily and wholesomely;" so that this body of cookery was not prepared exclusively for the use of the royal kitchen, but for those who had not the taste or wish for what are termed, in contra-distinction, in the next sentence, "curious pottages, and meats, and subtleties." It is to be conjectured that copies of such a MS. were multiplied, and from time to time reproduced with suitable changes; but with the exception of two different, though nearly coeval, collections, embracing 31 and 162 receipts or nyms, and also successively printed by Pegge and Warner, there is no apparent trace of any systematic compilation of this nature at so remote a date.

The "Form of Cury" was in the 28 Eliz., in the possession of the Stafford family, and was in that year presented to the Queen by Edward, Lord Stafford, as is to be gathered from a Latin memorandum at the end, in his lords.h.i.+p's hand, preserved by Pegge and Warner in their editions. The fellows.h.i.+p between the arts of healing and cooking is brought to our recollection by a leonine verse at the end of one of the shorter separate collections above described:--

"Explicit de Coquina Quae est optima Medicina."

The "Form of Cury" will amply remunerate a study. It presents the earliest mention, so far as I can discern, of olive oil, cloves, mace, and gourds. In the receipts for making Aigredouce and Bardolf, sugar, that indispensable feature in the _cuisine_, makes its appearance; but it does so, I should add, in such a way as to lead to the belief that the use of sugar was at this time becoming more general. The difficulty, at first, seems to have been in refining it. We encounter here, too, onions under the name borrowed from the French instead of the Anglo-Saxon form "ynne leac"; and the prescriptions for making messes of almonds, pork, peas, and beans are numerous. There is "Saracen sauce," moreover, possibly as old as the Crusades, and pig with sage stuffing (from which it was but one step to duck). More than one species of "galantine" was already known; and I observe the distinction, in one of the smaller collections printed by Warner, between the tartlet formed of meat and the tartlet _de fritures_, of which the latter approaches more nearly our notion. The imperfect comprehension of harmonies, which is ill.u.s.trated by the prehistoric bag-pudding of King Arthur, still continued in the unnatural union of flesh with sweets. It is now confined to the cottage, whence Arthur may have himself introduced it at Court and to the Knights of the Round Table.

In this authority, several of the dishes were to be cooked in _white grease_, which Warner interprets into _lard_; others demanded olive oil; but there is no allusion to b.u.t.ter. Among the receipts are some for dishes "in gravy"; rabbits and chickens were to be treated similarly; and the gravy appears to have consisted merely of the broth in which they were boiled, and which was flavoured with pounded almonds, powdered ginger, and sugar.

The "Liber Cure Cocorum," which is apparently extant only in a fifteenth century MS., is a metrical treatise, instructing its readers how to prepare certain dishes, condiments and accessories; and presents, for the most part, a repet.i.tion of what has already occurred in earlier and more comprehensive undertakings. It is a curious aid to our knowledge of the manner in which the table of the well-to-do Englishman was furnished in the time of Henry VI., and it is so far special, that it deals with the subject more from a middle-cla.s.s point of view than the "Regulations for the Royal Household," and other similar compilations, which I have to bring under notice. The names, as usual, are often misleading, as in _blanc manger_, which is very different from our _blanc-mange_; and the receipt for "goose in a hog pot" leaves one in doubt as to its adaptability to the modern palate. The poetical ambition of the author has proved a source of embarra.s.sment here and there; and in the receipt "for a service on a fish-day" the pract.i.tioner is prayed within four lines to cover his white herring for G.o.d's sake, and lay mustard over his red for G.o.d's love, because _sake_ and _love_ rhyme with _take_ and _above_.

The next collection of receipts, which exists in a complete and h.o.m.ogeneous shape, is the "n.o.ble Book of Cookery," of which an early MS. copy at Holkham was edited in 1882 by Mrs. Napier, but which had already been printed by Pynson in 1500, and subsequently by his successor, John Byddell. This interesting and important volume commences with a series of descriptions of certain royal and n.o.ble entertainments given on various occasions from the time of Henry IV. to that of Edward IV., and then proceeds to furnish a series of directions for the cook of a king's or prince's household; for, although both at the outset and the conclusion we are told that these dishes were calculated for all estates, it is abundantly obvious that they were such as never then, or very long subsequently, reached much lower than the court or the aristocracy. There is a less complete copy here of the feast at the enthronement of Archbishop Nevile. I regret that neither of the old printed copies is at present accessible. That of 1500 was formerly in the library at Bulstrode, and I was given by the late Mr. Bradshaw to understand that the same copy (no other being known) is probably at Longleat. By referring to Herbert's "Typographical Antiquities," anyone may see that, if his account (so far as it goes) is to be trusted, the printed copy varies from the Holkham MS. in many verbal particulars, and gives the date of Nevile's Feast as 1465.

The compilation usually known as the "Book of St. Albans," 1486, is, perhaps, next to the "n.o.ble Book of Cookery," the oldest receptacle for information on the subject in hand. The former, however, deals with cookery only in an incidental and special way. Like Arnold's Chronicle, the St. Albans volume is a miscellany comprehending nearly all the matters that were apt to interest the few educated persons who were qualified to peruse its pages; and amid a variety of allied topics we come here across a catalogue of terms used in speaking of certain dishes of that day. The reference is to the prevailing methods of dressing and carving. A deer was said to be broken, a cony unlaced, a pheasant, partridge, or quail winged, a pigeon or a woodc.o.c.k thighed, a plover minced, a mallard unbraced. They spoke of a salmon or a gurnard as chined, a sole as loined, a haddock as sided, an eel as trousoned, a pike as splatted, and a trout as gobbeted.

It must, I think, be predicated of Tusser's "Husbandry," of which the last edition published in the writer's lifetime is that of 1580, that it seems rather to reproduce precepts which occur elsewhere than to supply the reader with the fruits of his own direct observation. But there are certain points in it which are curious and original. He tells the ploughman that, after confession on Shrove Tuesday, he may go and thresh the fat hen, and if he is blindfold, kill her, and then dine on fritters and pancakes. At other times, seed-cakes, wafers, and other light confections.

It appears to have been usual for the farmer at that date to allow his hinds roast meat twice a week, on Sundays and on Thursday nights; but perhaps this was a generous extreme, as Tusser is unusually liberal in his ideas.

Tobias Venner, a Somersets.h.i.+re man, brought out in 1620 his "Via Recta ad Vitam Longam." He was evidently a very intelligent person, and affords us the result of his professional experience and personal observation. He considered two meals a day sufficient for all ordinary people,--breakfast at eleven and supper at six (as at the universities); but he thought that children and the aged or infirm could not be tied by any rule. He condemns "bull's beef" as rank, unpleasant, and indigestible, and holds it best for the labourer; which seems to indicate more than anything else the low state of knowledge in the grazier, when Venner wrote: but there is something beyond friendly counsel where our author dissuades the poor from eating partridges, because they are calculated to promote asthma.

"Wherefore," he ingenuously says, "when they shall chance to meet with a covey of young partridges, they were much better to bestow them upon such, for whom they are convenient!"

Salmon, turbot, and sturgeon he also reckoned hard of digestion, and injurious, if taken to excess; nor does he approve of herrings and sprats; and anchovies he characterises as the meat of drunkards. It is the first that we have heard of them.

He was not a bad judge of what was palatable, and prescribes as an agreeable and wholesome meal a couple of poached eggs with a little salt and vinegar, and a few corns of pepper, some bread and b.u.t.ter, and a draught of pure claret. He gives a receipt--the earliest I have seen in print--for making metheglin or hydromel. He does not object to furmety or junket, or indeed to custards, if they are eaten at the proper seasons, and in the middle or at the end of meals. But he dislikes mushrooms, and advises you to wash out your mouth, and rub your teeth and gums with a dry cloth, after drinking milk.

The potato, however, he praises as nutritious and pleasant to the taste, yet, as Gerarde the herbalist also says, flatulent. Venner refers to a mode of sopping them in wine as existing in his time. They were sometimes roasted in the embers, and there were other ways of dressing them. John Forster, of Hanlop, in Bucks, wrote a pamphlet in 1664 to shew that the more extended cultivation of this root would be a great national benefit.

Venner, who practised in the spring and autumn at Bath as a physician, had no relish for the poorer cla.s.ses, who did not fare well at the hands of their superiors in any sense in the excellent old days. But he liked the Quality, in which he embraced the Universities, and he tenders them, among other little hints, the information that green ginger was good for the memory, and conserve of roses (not the salad of roses immortalised by Apuleius) was a capital posset against bed-time. "A conserve of rosemary and sage," says he, "to be often used by students, especially mornings fasting, doth greatly delight the brain."

The military ascendency of Spain did not fail to influence the culinary civilisation of those countries to which it temporarily extended its rule; and in a Venetian work ent.i.tled "Epulario, or the Italian Banquet," printed in 1549, we recognise the Spanish tone which had in the sixteenth century communicated itself to the cookery of the Peninsula, shewing that Charles V. and his son carried at least one art with them as an indemnity for the havoc which they committed.

The nursery rhyme of "Sing a song of sixpence" receives a singular and diverting ill.u.s.tration from the pages of this "Epulario," where occurs a receipt "to make Pies that the Birds may be alive in them, and fly out when it is cut up." Some of the other more salient beads relate to the mode of dressing sundry dishes in the Roman and Catalonian fas.h.i.+on, and teach us how to seethe gourds, as they did in Spain, and to make mustard after the manner of Padua.

I propose here to register certain contributions to our acquaintance with early culinary ideas and practices, which I have not specifically described:--

1. The Book of Carving. W. de Worde. 4to, 1508, 1513. Reprinted down to 1613.

2. A Proper New Book of Cookery. 12mo, 1546. Often reprinted. It is a recension of the "Book of Cookery," 1500.

3. The Treasury of Commodious Conceits and Hidden Secrets. By John Partridge. 12mo, 1580, 1586; and under the t.i.tle of "Treasury of Hidden Secrets," 4to, 1596, 1600, 1637, 1653.

4. A Book of Cookery. Gathered by A.W. 12mo, 1584, 1591, etc.

5. The Good Housewife's Jewel. By Thomas Dawson. In two Parts, 12mo, 1585. A copy of Part 2 of this date is in the British Museum.

6. The Good Housewife's Treasury. 12 mo, 1588.

7. Cookery for all manner of Dutch Victual. Licensed in 1590, but not otherwise known.

8. The Good Housewife's Handmaid for the Kitchen. 8vo, 1594.

9. The Ladies' Practice; or, a plain and easy direction for ladies and gentlewomen. By John Murrell. Licensed in 1617. Printed in 1621, and with additions in 1638, 1641, and 1650.

10. A Book of Cookery. By George Crewe. Licensed in 1623, but not known.

11. A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen. 12mo, 1630.

12. The Ladies' Cabinet Opened. By Patrick, Lord Ruthven. 4to, 1639; 8vo, 1655.

13. A Curious Treasury of Twenty Rare Secrets. Published by La Fountaine, an expert Operator. 4to, 1649.

14. A New Dispensatory of Fourty Physical Receipts. Published by Salvatore Winter of Naples, an expert Operator. 4to, 1649. Second edition, enlarged: same date.

The three last are rather in the cla.s.s of miscellanies.

15. Health's Improvement; or, Rules comprising the discovering the Nature, Method, and Manner of preparing all sorts of Food used in this Nation. By Thomas m.u.f.fet (or Moffat), M.D. Corrected and enlarged by Christopher Bennett, M.D. 4to, 1655.

16. The Queen's Closet opened. Incomparable secrets in physick, chirurgery, Preserving, Candying, and Cookery.... Transcribed from the true copies of her Majesties own Receipt Books. By W.M., one of her late Servants.... London, 1655, 8vo. The same, corrected and revised, with many new and large Additions. 8vo, 1683.

17. The Perfect Cook: being the most exact directions for the making all kinds of pastes, with the perfect way teaching how to raise, season, and make all sorts of pies.... As also the Perfect English Cook.... To which is added the way of dressing all manner of Flesh. By M. Marmette. London, 1686, 12mo.

The writer of the "French Gardener," of which I have had occasion to say a good deal in my small volume on that subject, also produced, "Les Delices de la Campagne," which Evelyn excused himself from translating because, whatever experience he had in the garden, he had none, he says, in the shambles; and it was for those who affected such matters to get it done, but not by him who did the "French Cook"

[Footnote: I have not seen this book, nor is it under that t.i.tle in the catalogue of the British Museum]. He seems to imply that the latter, though an excellent work in its way, had not only been marred in the translation, but was not so practically advantageous to us as it might have been, "for want of skill in the kitchen"--in other words, an evil, which still prevails, was then appreciated by intelligent observers--the English cook did not understand her business, and the English mistress, as a rule, was equally ignorant.

One of the engravings in the "French Gardener" represents women rolling out paste, preparing vegetables, and boiling conserves.

There is a rather quaint and attractive cla.s.s of miscellaneous receipt-books, not made so on account of any particular merit in their contents, but by reason of their a.s.sociation with some person of quality. MS. Sloane 1367, is a narrow octavo volume, for instance, containing "My Lady Rennelagh's choice Receipts: as also some of Capt.

Gvilt's, who valued them above gold." The value for us, however, is solely in the link with a n.o.ble family and the little touch about the Captain. There are many more such in public and private libraries, and they are often mere transcripts from printed works--select a.s.semblages of directions for dressing food and curing diseases, formed for domestic reference before the advent of Dr. Buchan, and Mrs. Gla.s.se, and Mrs. Rundell.

Among a valuable and extensive a.s.semblage of English and foreign cookery books in the Patent Office Library, Mr. Ordish has obligingly pointed out to me a curious 4to MS., on the cover of which occurs, "Mrs. Mary Dacres her booke, 1666."

Even in the latter part of the seventeenth century the old-fas.h.i.+oned dishes, better suited to the country than to the Court taste, remained in fas.h.i.+on, and are included in receipt-books, even in that published by Joseph Cooper, who had been head-cook to Charles I, and who styles his 1654 volume "The Art of Cookery Refined and Augmented." He gives us two varieties of oatmeal pudding, French barley pudding, and hasty pudding in a bag. There is a direction for frying mushrooms, which were growing more into favour at the table than in the days when Castelvetri, whom I cite in my monograph on Gardening, was among us.

Another dainty is an ox-palate pie.

Cooper's Preface is quaint, and surely modest enough. "Though the cheats," says he, "of some preceding pieces that treated on this subject (whose t.i.tle-pages, like the contents of a weekly Pamphlet, promised much more than the Books performed) may have provided this but a cold intertainment at its first coming abroad; yet I know it will not stay long in the world, before every rational reader will clear it of all alliance to those false pretenders. Ladies, forgive my confidence, if I tell you, that I know this piece will prove your favourite."

Yet Cooper's performance, in spite of its droll, self-complacent vein in the address to the Reader, is a judicious and useful selection, and was, in fact, far more serviceable to the middle-cla.s.s gentry than some of those which had gone before. It adapted itself to sundry conditions of men; but it kept in view those whose purses were not richly lined enough to pay for dainties and "subtleties." It is pleasant to see that, after the countless centuries which had run out since Arthur, the bag-pudding and hot-pot maintained their ground--good, wholesome, country fare.

After the fall of the Monarchy in 1648, the _chef de cuisine_ probably found his occupation gone, like a greater man before him; and the world may owe to enforced repose this condescension to the pen by the deposed minister of a king.

Soon after the Restoration it was that some Royalist brought out a small volume called "The Court and Kitchen of Elizabeth, commonly called Joan Cromwell, the wife of the late Usurper, truly described and represented," 12mo, 1664. Its design was to throw ridicule on the parsimony of the Protectoral household. But he recites some excellent dishes which made their appearance at Oliver's table: Dutch puddings, Scotch collops of veal, marrow puddings, sack posset, boiled woodc.o.c.ks, and warden pies. He seems to have understood that eight stone of beef were cooked every morning for the establishment, and all sc.r.a.ps were diligently collected, and given alternately to the poor of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The writer acquaints us that, when the Protector entertained the French amba.s.sador and the Parliament, after the Sindercome affair, he only spent 1,000 over the banquet, of which the Lady Protectress managed to save 200. Cromwell and his wife, we are told, did not care for suppers, but contented themselves with eggs and slops.