Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine Part 12

"For many a pasty hast thou let blood, And many a Jack of Dover[1] hast thou sold, That hath been twice hot and twice cold.

Of many a pilgrim hast thou Christ's curse-- For thy parsley fare they yet the worse: That they have eaten with the stubble goose, For in thy shop is many a fly loose."

[Footnote 1: A sole]

But these restaurants were not long confined to one locality. From a very early date, owing perhaps to its proximity to the Tower and the Thames, East Cheap was famed for its houses of entertainment. The Dagger in Cheap is mentioned in "A Hundred Merry Tales," 1526. The Boar is historical. It was naturally at the East-end, in London proper, that the flood-tide, as it were, of tavern life set in, among the seafarers, in the heart of industrial activity; and the anecdotes and glimpses which we enjoy show, just what might have been guessed, that these houses often became scenes of riotous excess and debauch.

Lydgate's ballad of "London Lickpenny" helps one to imagine what such resorts must have been in the first part of the fifteenth century. It is almost permissible to infer that the street contained, in addition to the regular inns, an a.s.sortment of open counters, where the commodities on sale were cried aloud for the benefit of the pa.s.ser-by; for he says:--

"When I hied me into East Cheap: One cries ribs of beef, and many a pie: Pewter pots they clattered on a heap; There was harp, fife, and sautry."

The mention of pewter is noteworthy, because the Earl of Northumberland ate his dinner off wood in 1572. Pewter plates had not long been given up when I joined the Inner Temple in 1861.

There is a still more interesting allusion in the interlude of the "World and the Child," 1522, where Folly is made to say:--

"Yea, and we shall be right welcome, I dare well say, In East Cheap for to dine; And then we will with Lombards at pa.s.sage play, And at the Pope's Head sweet wine a.s.say."

The places of resort in this rollicking locality could furnish, long before The Boar made the acquaintance of Falstaff, every species of delicacy and _bonne bouche_ to their const.i.tuents, and the revelry was apt sometimes to extend to an unseasonable hour. In an early naval song we meet with the lines:

"He that will in East Cheap eat a goose so fat, With harp, pipe, and song, Must lie in Newgate on a mat, Be the night never so long."

And these establishments infallibly contributed their quota or more to the prisons in the vicinity.

Houses of refreshment seem, however, to have extended themselves westward, and to have become tolerably numerous, in the earlier society of the sixteenth century, for Sir Thomas More, in a letter to his friend Dean Colet, speaking of a late walk in Westminster and of the various temptations to expenditure and dissipation which the neighbourhood then afforded, remarks: "Whithersoever we cast our eyes, what do we see but victualling-houses, fishmongers, butchers, cooks, pudding-makers, fishers, and fowlers, who minister matter to our bellies?" This was prior to 1519, the date of Colet's decease.

There were of course periods of scarcity and high prices then as now.

It was only a few years later (1524), that Robert Whittinton, in one of his grammatical tracts (the "Vulgaria"), includes among his examples:--

"Befe and motton is so dere, that a peny worth of meet wyll scant suffyse a boy at a meale."

The term "cook's-shop" occurs in the Orders and Ordinances devised by the Steward, Dean, and Burgesses of Westminster in 1585, for the better munic.i.p.al government of that borough.

The tenth article runs thus:--"Item, that no person or persons that keepeth or that hereafter shall keep any cook's-shop, shall also keep a common ale-house (except every such person shall be lawfully licensed thereunto), upon pain to have and receive such punishment, and pay such fine, as by the statute in that case is made and provided."

But while the keepers of restaurants were, as a rule, precluded by law from selling ale, the publicans on their side were not supposed to purvey refreshment other than their own special commodities. For the fifteenth proviso of these orders is:--

"Item, that no tavern-keeper or inn-keeper shall keep any cook shop upon pain to forfeit and pay for every time offending therein 4d."

The London cooks became famous, and were not only in demand in the City and its immediate outskirts, but were put into requisition when any grand entertainment was given in the country. In the list of expenses incurred at the reception of Queen Elizabeth in 1577 by Lord Keeper Bacon at Gorhambury, is an item of 12 as wages to the cooks of London. An accredited anecdote makes Bacon's father inimical to too lavish an outlay in the kitchen; but a far more profuse housekeeper might have been puzzled to dispense with special help, where the consumption of viands and the consequent culinary labour and skill required, were so unusually great.

In the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," the Cook of London and his qualifications are thus emblazoned:--

"A Cook thei hadde with hem for the nones, To boylle chyknes, with the mary bones, And poudre marchaunt tart, and galyngale; Wel cowde he knowe a draugte of London ale.

He cowde roste, and sethe, and broille, and frie Maken mortreux, and wel bake a pie.

But gret harm was it, as it thoughte me, That on his schyne a mormal had he: For blankmanger that made he with the beste."

This description would be hardly worth quoting, if it were not for the source whence it comes, and the names which it presents in common with the "Form of Cury" and other ancient relics. Chaucer's Cook was a personage of unusually wide experience, having, in his capacity as the keeper of an eating-house, to cater for so many customers of varying tastes and resources.

In the time of Elizabeth, the price at an ordinary for a dinner seems to have been sixpence. It subsequently rose to eightpence; and in the time of George I. the "Vade Mec.u.m for Malt Worms (1720)" speaks of the landlord of The Bell, in Carter Lane, raising his tariff to tenpence.

In comparison with the cost of a similar meal at present, all these quotations strike one as high, when the different value of money is considered. But in 1720, at all events, the customer ate at his own discretion.

Their vicinity to East Cheap, the great centre of early taverns and cook's-shops, obtained for Pudding Lane and Pie Corner those savoury designations.

Paris, like London, had its cook's-shops, where you might eat your dinner on the premises, or have it brought to your lodging in a covered dish by a _porte-chape._ In the old prints of French kitchen interiors, the cook's inseparable companion is his ladle, which he used for stirring and serving, and occasionally for dealing a refractory _garcon de cuisine_ a rap on the head.

The Dictionary of Johannes de Garlandia (early thirteenth century) represents the cooks at Paris as imposing on the ignorant and inexperienced badly cooked or even tainted meat, which injured their health. These "coquinarii" stood, perhaps, in the same relation to those times as our keepers of restaurants.

He mentions in another place that the cooks washed their utensils in hot water, as well as the plates and dishes on which the victuals were served.

Mr. Wright has cited an instance from the romance of "Doon de Mayence," where the guards of a castle, on a warm summer evening, partook of their meal in a field. Refreshment in the open air was also usual in the hunting season, when a party were at a distance from home; and the garden arbour was occasionally converted to this kind of purpose, when it had a.s.sumed its more modern phase. But our picnic was unknown.

ETIQUETTE OF THE TABLE.

Paul Hentzner, who was in England at the end of the reign of Elizabeth, remarks of the people whom he saw that "they are more polite in eating than the French, devouring less bread, but more meat, which they roast in perfection. They put a good deal of sugar in their drink."

In his "Court and Country," 1618, Nicholas Breton gives an instructive account of the strict rules which were drawn up for observance in great households at that time, and says that the gentlemen who attended on great lords and ladies had enough to do to carry these orders out. Not a trencher must be laid or a napkin folded awry; not a dish misplaced; not a capon carved or a rabbit unlaced contrary to the usual practice; not a gla.s.s filled or a cup uncovered save at the appointed moment: everybody must stand, speak, and look according to regulation.

The books of demeanour which have been collected by Mr. Furnivall for the Early English Text Society have their incidental value as ill.u.s.trating the immediate theme, and are curious, from the growth in consecutive compilations of the code of instructions for behaviour at table, as evidences of an increasing cultivation both in manners and the variety of appliances for domestic use, including relays of knives for the successive courses. Distinctions were gradually drawn between genteel and vulgar or coa.r.s.e ways of eating, and facilities were provided for keeping the food from direct contact with the fingers, and other primitive offences against decorum. Many of the precepts in the late fifteenth century "Babies' Book," while they demonstrate the necessity for admonition, speak also to an advance in politeness and delicacy at table. There must be a beginning somewhere; and the authors of these guides to deportment had imbibed the feeling for something higher and better, before they undertook to communicate their views to the young generation.

There is no doubt that the "Babies' Book" and its existing congeners are the successors of anterior and still more imperfect attempts to introduce at table some degree of cleanliness and decency. When the "Babies' Book" made its appearance, the progress in this direction must have been immense. But the observance of such niceties was of course at first exceptional; and the ideas which we see here embodied were very sparingly carried into practice outside the verge of the Court itself and the homes of a few of the aristocracy.

There may be an inclination to revolt against the barbarous doggerel in which the instruction is, as a rule, conveyed, and against the tedious process of perusing a series of productions which follow mainly the same lines. But it is to be recollected that these manuals were necessarily renewed in the ma.n.u.script form from age to age, with variations and additions, and that the writers resorted to metre as a means of impressing the rules of conduct more forcibly on their pupils.

Of all the works devoted to the management of the table and kitchen, the "Book of Nurture," by John Russell, usher of the chamber and marshal of the ball to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, is perhaps, on the whole, the most elaborate, most trustworthy, and most important.

It leaves little connected with the _cuisine_ of a n.o.ble establishment of the fifteenth century untouched and unexplained; and although it a.s.sumes the metrical form, and in a literary respect is a dreary performance, its value as a guide to almost every branch of the subject is indubitable. It lays bare to our eyes the entire machinery of the household, and we gain a clearer insight from it than from the rest of the group of treatises, not merely into what a great man of those days and his family and retainers ate and drank, and how they used to behave themselves at table, but into the process of making various drinks, the mystery of carving, and the division of duties among the members of the staff. It is, in fact, the earliest comprehensive book in our literature.

The functions of the squire at the table of a prince are, to a certain extent, shown in the "Squire of Low Degree," where the hero, having arrayed himself in scarlet, with a chaplet on his head and a belt round his waist, cast a horn about his neck, and went to perform his duty in the hall. He approaches the king, dish in hand, and kneels.

When he has served his sovereign, he hands the meats to the others.

We see a handsome a.s.sortment of victuals on this occasion, chiefly venison and birds, and some of the latter were baked in bread, probably a sort of paste. The majority of the names on the list are familiar, but a few--the teal, the curlew, the crane, the stork, and the snipe--appear to be new. It is, in all these cases, almost impossible to be sure how much we owe to the poet's imagination and how much to his rhythmical poverty. From another pa.s.sage it is to be inferred that baked venison was a favourite mode of dressing the deer.

The precaution of coming to table with clean hands was inculcated perhaps first as a necessity, when neither forks nor knives were used, and subsequently as a mark of breeding. The knife preceded the spoon, and the fork, which had been introduced into Italy in the eleventh century, and which strikes one as a fortuitous development of the Oriental chopstick, came last. It was not in general use even in the seventeenth century here. Coryat the traveller saw it among the Italians, and deemed it a luxury and a notable fact.

The precepts delivered by Lydgate and others for demeanour at table were in advance of the age, and were probably as much honoured in the breach as otherwise. But the common folk did then much as many of them do now, and granted themselves a dispensation both from knife and fork, and soap and water. The country boor still eats his bacon or his herring with his fingers, just as Charles XII. of Sweden b.u.t.tered his bread with his royal thumb.

A certain cleanliness of person, which, at the outset, was not considerably regarded, became customary, as manners softened and female influence a.s.serted itself; and even Lydgate, in his "Stans Puer ad Mensam (an adaptation from Sulpitius)," enjoins on his page or serving-boy a resort to the lavatory before he proceeds to discharge his functions at the board--

"Pare clean thy nails; thy hands wash also Before meat; and when thou dost arise."

Other precepts follow. He was not to speak with his mouth full. He was to wipe his lips after eating, and his spoon when he had finished, taking care not to leave it in his dish. He was to keep his napkin as clean and neat as possible, and he was not to pick his teeth with his knife. He was not to put too much on his trencher at once. He was not to drop his sauce or soup over his clothes, or to fill his spoon too full, or to bring dirty knives to the table. All these points of conduct are graphic enough; and their trite character is their virtue.

Boiled, and perhaps fried meats were served on silver; but roasts might be brought to table on the spit, which, after a while, was often of silver, and handed round for each person to cut what he pleased; and this was done not only with ordinary meat, but with game, and even with a delicacy like a roast peac.o.c.k. Of smaller birds, several were broached on one spit. There is a mediaeval story of a husband being asked by his wife to help her to the several parts of a fowl in succession, till nothing was left but the implement on which it had come in, whereupon the man determined she should have that too, and belaboured her soundly with it. At more ceremonious banquets the servants were preceded by music, or their approach from the kitchen to the hall was proclaimed by sound of trumpets. Costly plate was gradually introduced, as well as linen and utensils, for the table; but the plate may be conjectured to have been an outcome from the primitive _trencher_, a large slice of bread on which meat was laid for the occupants of the high table, and which was cast aside after use.

Bread served at table was not to be bitten or broken off the loaf, but to be cut; and the loaf was sometimes divided before the meal, and skilfully pieced together again, so as to be ready for use.