of King Henry the Fourth to the Heralds and ffrench men when they justed in Smytheffelde.' As Henry died in 1413, this repast was historical at the time assigned to our Boke.' The materials in the way of poultry and game seem to have been abundant, and they hold important places in each of the three courses. Fish eaten on fastdays, when flesh was not allowed, was sparingly, if at all, served on other days, and the Heraldes and ffrench men were not offered any fish.

6

But at the coronacon off King Henry the ffyfte' we read of pike, lamprey, gurnard, trout, roach, shrimps, eels, plaice, conger, bass, mullet, salmon, soles, halybut, sturgeon, tench, flounders, minnows, and porpoise (we modernise the spelling). Falstaff deplores the many fish meals,' which destroy manly vigour. But with so great a variety of sea as well as river fish, there was no lack of nutriment in such a meal.

The most important bills of fare, however, are those of the series of feasts on the occasion of the 'stallacion' of Neville, Archbishop of York and Chancellor of England. The vicissitudes of his career were so remarkable that a short sketch may not be out of place. Brother to the Kingmaker, George Neville was consecrate Bishoppe of Exeter' December 3, 1458, when not fully twenty years of age; in 1460 he was made Lord Chancellor of England; but after that marriage of the King to Elizabeth Woodville which was so great an insult to the Earl of Warwick, then in France intent on queen-making, Edward IV. felt the importance of weakening the power of the Neville family, and withdrew the seals from George.

Notwithstanding this alienation of the King from him, in the year 1464 hee obtained the Archbishopricke of Yorke, and held the same (but with great trouble) untill his death.3 It was the hap of this Archbishop to take King Edward prisoner at Owlney, in Northamptonshire, but soon King Edward was on the throne and Archbishop Neville in the Tower. He was, however, soon set at liberty and then permitted to hunt with the King, to whom he made relation of some extraordinary kind of game wherewith he was wont to solace himself at a house he had built, and furnished very sumptuously, called the Moore, in Hartfordshire. The King seemed desirous to be partaker of this sport, and appointed a day when hee would come thither to hunt. The Archbishop, taking his leave, got him home, sent for much plate he had hid during the warres, and borrowed also much of his friends. The Deere which the King hunted being thus brought into the toyle, the day before his appointed time hee sent for the Archbishop commanding him, all excuses set apart, to repayre to Windsor. As soon as he came he was arrested of treason; all his plate, money, and other moveable goods, to the value of twenty thousand pounds, were seized by the King, and himself a long space after was kept prisoner at Calis and Guisnes, during which time the King took to himself the profites and temporalties of

3 George Neville was sent over to Calais to a state prison and kept there till 1476, when he was liberated on the ground of declining health, and died soon after.Campbell's Chancellors.

Owlney is a false reading for Owndale, now Oundle.

his bishopricke. By intercession and entreaty of his friends he obtained. his liberty in the year 1476. The feast that was made at this mans installation was exceeding great and such as our age hath seldom (I will not say never) seen.

6

Sixty-two cooks were employed to prepare this feast: their labours could not have been light, for besides great beef and mutton,' oxene,' 'porcelle,' antelopes, boars' heads, venison, and roe, there were game birds and tame birds of every kind; swans and egrets, ganets and gulls, heron and peacock, pheasants, partridges (pertuches), plover, woodcock, goodwitts, redshanks, Yarowe helpes, knottes (birds named after King Knut), bittern and curlew, quails, pigeons, chyckens and capons, larks, dotterelles, martynets. Soups and potage, sweet dishes and fruits, 'peres in ceripe' (pears in syrup), but no vegetables are named. Dinner was served at mid-day, or earlier and before mid-day, so that cooks must have risen early in the morning to get ready the hot dishes.

The preparation of the ornamental dishes required much time and skill. We read of sutteltes,' that is, towers and castles, with banners and devices, counterfeit birds and beasts, with 'skriptures' attached to them, conveying to the royal personage some word of exhortation: Regardez Roi La droit voy,' 'Eyez pete des comunalte." Sometimes thesotelte' was Madonna Mary, and probably the dishes called 'mon ami' and 'mamony' were named after the Blessed Virgin.

6

From the bills of fare we pass on to the Kalender of the Boke of Cookry,' and the 'Dighting of the Dysshes.' The recipes are in the Anglo-French of the cook of that time, and both writing and spelling so uncertain, that it requires bold guessing to affix a meaning to them. To any ingenious person desiring a change from guessing acrostics we would suggest taking these recipes to turn them into the English of the present day and make their meaning plain. The recipes for bread sauce are headed (page 51) Wellid peper;' (page 77) Sauce aliper.' These are corrupt writing for 'Sauce a le pain.” It is easy to recognise pain perdu' in pain pardieu,' 'civet' in 'cevy,' 'Charlotte' in Charlet.' 'Bruet' is from the German 'brühen ;' 'buknad,' from 'backen.' 'Obleys' are the thin wafers or biscuits, now called oblaten,' and well known as a Carlsbad speciality. Is 'votose' a travestie for 'tot fait,' which is the origin of our schoolboys' Toffy'?

6

To mak votose tak gobettes of mary (marrow) and dates cutt gret sugur and poudur of guinger, saffron, and salt, and mak afoile as ye did befor, and do it out of the pot, and mak another, then tak the for said stuf and couche thes in almost as brod as the foile, and wet the bredes of the foille aboue and closse and bak it essely, and when it is bak cutt it in peces eury pece ij enche square.

The recipe for oile' or 'oyle soupes' (page 81) is a refined dish, but does not contain any oil:

Tak and boyll mylk and yolks of eggs and draw them thro' a streiner, and cast it into the mylk and heet it, but lett it not boill, and stir it till it be somdele thick, then cast thes to sugur and salt, and cutte whit bred in sopes and cast the sopes ther in, and serue it in the manner of potage. (Page 81.)

The derivation is from the French word 'oille,' Spanish 'olla,' and may be found in the Dictionnaire of the Académie, 1718, where the potage is said to be made with divers meats and herbs.

Cratones' (page 122) is 'cretons,' an old French word for a preparation of scraps of pork or other meat (Littré).

Mortis' is probably the dish described by Lord Bacon as excellent to nourish those that are weak. It is made with the brawn of capons stamped, strained, and mingled with like quantity of almond. butter.

Another of the recipes found in the 'Boke' is also given by the philosopher, as for 'chuets' (or 'chewets'),

which are likewise minced meat instead of butter and fat; it were good to moisten them partly with cream, or almond or pistachio milk, or barley, or maiz cream, adding a little coriander seed and carraway seed, and a very little saffron.

A preparation which is not to be met with in the older work is so curious that we are tempted to quote it :

Take (says the great Chancellor) two large capons, parboil, add in the decoction the pill of a sweet lemon and a little mace, cut off the shanks and throw them away; mince the capons small, put them in a neat boulter (sieve), then take a kilderkin of four gallons 8s. beer new as it cometh from the tunning, thrust the boulter in the kilderkin, and let it steep three days and three nights, the bung-hole being open to work, then close in the bunghole and so let it continue a day and a half, then draw it in bottles, and you may drink it well after three days bottling, and it will last six weeks. It is an excellent drink for consumption.5

The word 'a coles' looks rather perplexing at page 21 of the 'Boke;' at page 112 it is spelt a colles; and the cullice' of cocks is another of Lord Bacon's dishes. In modern cookery books it is known as coulis,' the juice that flows from meat.

What garden stuff was to be had in those days? Cabbage, cane beans, peas, parsley, sage, 'ysope,' 'nettilles,'' sorell,' mint, onyons,' leeks, saffron, rosemary. A limited range for food. To obtain or to heighten flavour the medieval cook, like some of the present day, made a profuse use of spices. In every dish we find ginger, cloves, mace, canelle' (cinnamon). Sugar, honey, with currants (raissins of corans,' in the French of to-day raisins de Corinthe'), were mixed in fish and savoury dishes. The expression groseille à maquereau' is still used in French to distinguish gooseberries from currants, both of them being 'groseilles.' This term must have arisen from the practice of eating green gooseberry sauce with mackerel, probably an

6

6

• Natural and Experimental History, vol. i. p. 90.

old Norman custom, which is still faithfully retained in Norfolk and on the eastern coast of Britain, where the mackerel and the green gooseberries arrive at the same season.

It is a canon of cookery that there should be a little salt in all sweet dishes, and a little sugar in all savoury dishes, but that the palate should not perceive the mixture. In many of the recipes of the fifteenth century large quantities of sugar or honey are mixed with spices and saffron, and few dishes can have had distinctive flavour or colour.

Spices and sugar were brought from Venice in 1485; the freight for gross spice, small spice, and Levant sugar is regulated by no less a person than the Doge. Later on in 1505 pepper is worth 18 gros the pound, equal to 56 ducats the cargo; ginger from Alexandria 24 gros, and what comes from Portugal, of which there is very little, fetches 17. The ducat at Antwerp is worth 76 gros.6

Milk and butter are so seldom used, we infer they were very scarce articles. May butter' is once named as an ingredient. Probably no butter was made for many months of the year, during which the cows were too ill fed to yield milk, or the calves required it exclusively. Salted butter there was, but over-salted and ill-made, and no improvement to 'cookry.' Milk of almonds is constantly named, where we should use cream or milk; though it must always have been a costly material. Perhaps the explanation is that these recipes came from the south of France and Italy, where the climate does not favour the use of cream.

The impression we receive from a study of these recipes is not favourable to the taste of our ancestors. Savoury dishes are spoiled by the introduction of sweet ingredients, sweet dishes by an indiscriminate use of spices. If a number of dishes are desirable, each dish should have its distinct flavour, and should be acceptable to different palates, or to the palate at different stages of a repast.

We feel a natural curiosity to know as much as we can of the manner of life of our forefathers-the hours they kept, their diet, their amusements, their banquets, their bills of fare, and even of their cooks. It is only from the old household records of past centuries, which now and then come to light, as this volume has done from the treasures of the Holkham Library, and from the Privy Purse expenses of the court, and of a few noble families, that these details can be ascertained. They remind us of the marvellous contrast which exists between the hard life and limited resources of even the highest ranks of society in the fifteenth century and the supplies drawn from every quarter of the globe which now find their way to the humblest table. Commerce and free communication have opened the markets of the world to the tea of China, the sugar of the West Indies, the oranges and pine-apples of the Azores, the corn of America, and even to meat brought from the Antipodes. In the fifteenth century there

• Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1202-1509, vol. i.

may have been at times of festivity a kind of rude abundance, but it could only draw its supplies from the adjacent waters-the pool, the stream, or the sea; from the game of the forest and the fen; from the farm-yard or the poultry-yard; but this only during the finer months of the year; for the winter, meat was salted down for household consumption. Vegetables were scarce, and few kinds of them were known. The potato was not, and, as the old rhyme tells us, even hops, turkeys, and beer came into England at a later date. The art of the cook was, therefore, circumscribed by the materials at his disposal, and many of the commonest and most essential elements of good cookery were wanting. Their place appears to have been supplied by elaborate ornamental devices and by the use of the condiments which reached this country from Italy and Flanders. But these of course were costly, and only to be met with at the tables of the great. The fare of the humbler classes was necessarily coarse and homely; but the price of meat was relatively low. The English were always celebrated as a meat-eating nation-far more so than the French, the Scotch, or the Irish-and to this circumstance was ascribed much of their prowess and vigour. Something, no doubt, diet has to do with national character, and the cookery of a people cannot be altogether disconnected from its history.