Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine Part 10

Three rods of iron or hard wood lashed together, with a hook for taking the handle of the kettle, formed, no doubt, the original tripod. But among some of the tribes of the North of Europe, and in certain Tartar, Indian, and other communities, we see no such rudimentary subst.i.tute for a grate, but merely two uprights and a horizontal rest, supporting a chain; and in the ill.u.s.tration to the thirteenth or fourteenth century MS., once part of the abbatial library at St. Albans, a nearer approach to the modern jack is apparent in the suspension of the vessel over the flame by a chain attached to the centre of a fireplace.

Not the tripod, therefore, but the other type must be thought to have been the germ of the later-day apparatus, which yielded in its turn to the Range.

The fireplace with a ring in the middle, from which is suspended the pot, is represented in a French sculpture of the end of the fourteenth century, where two women are seated on either side, engaged in conversation. One holds a ladle, and the other an implement which may be meant for a pair of bellows.

In his treatise on Kitchen Utensils, Neckam commences with naming a table, on which the cook may cut up green stuff of various sorts, as onions, peas, beans, lentils, and pulse; and he proceeds to enumerate the tools and implements which are required to carry on the work: pots, tripods for the kettle, trenchers, pestles, mortars, hatchets, hooks, saucepans, cauldrons, pails, gridirons, knives, and so on.

The head-cook was to have a little apartment, where he could prepare condiments and dressings; and a sink was to be provided for the viscera and other offal of poultry. Fish was cooked in salt water or diluted wine.

Pepper and salt were freely used, and the former must have been ground as it was wanted, for a pepper-mill is named as a requisite. Mustard we do not encounter till the time of Johannes de Garlandia (early thirteenth century), who states that it grew in his own garden at Paris. Garlic, or gar-leac (in the same way as the onion is called _yn-leac_), had established itself as a flavouring medium. The nasturtium was also taken into service in the tenth or eleventh century for the same purpose, and is cla.s.sed with herbs.

When the dish was ready, it was served up with green sauce, in which the chief ingredients were sage, parsley, pepper, and oil, with a little salt. Green geese were eaten with raisin or crab-apple sauce.

Poultry was to be well larded or basted while it was before the fire.

I may be allowed to refer the reader, for some interesting jottings respecting the first introduction of coal into London, to "Our English Home," 1861. "The middle cla.s.ses," says the anonymous writer, "were the first to appreciate its value; but the n.o.bility, whose mansions were in the pleasant suburbs of Holborn and the Strand, regarded it as a nuisance." This was about the middle of the thirteenth century. It may be a mite contributed to our knowledge of early household economy to mention, by the way, that in the supernatural tale of the "Smith and his Dame" (sixteenth century) "a quarter of coal" occurs. The smith lays it on the fire all at once; but then it was for his forge.

He also poured water on the flames, to make them, by means of his bellows, blaze more fiercely. But the proportion of coal to wood was long probably very small. One of the tenants of the Abbey of Peterborough, in 852, was obliged to furnish forty loads of wood, but of coal two only.

In the time of Charles I., however, coals seem to have been usual in the kitchen, for Breton, in this "Fantasticks," 1626, says, under January:--"The Maid is stirring betimes, and slipping on her Shooes and her Petticoat, groaps for the tinder box, where after a conflict between the steele and the stone, she begets a spark, at last the Candle lights on his Match; then upon an old rotten foundation of broaken boards she erects an artificiall fabrick of the black Bowels of New-Castle soyle, to which she sets fire with as much confidence as the Romans to their Funerall Pyles."

Under July, in the same work, we hear of "a chafing dish of coals;"

and under September, wood and coals are mentioned together. But doubtless the employment of the latter was far less general.

In a paper read before the Royal Society, June 9, 1796, there is an account of a saucepan discovered in the bed of the river Withain, near Tattersall Ferry, in Lincolnshire, in 1788. It was of base metal, and was grooved at the bottom, to allow the contents more readily to come within reach of the fire. The writer of this narrative, which is printed in the "Philosophical Transactions," considered that the vessel might be of Roman workman-ship; as he states that on the handle was stamped a name, C. ARAT., which he interprets _Caius Aratus_. "It appears," he adds, "to have been tinned; but almost all the coating had been worn off.... The art of tinning copper was understood and practised by the Romans, although it is commonly supposed to be a modern invention."

Neckam mentions the roasting-spit, elsewhere called the roasting-iron; but I fail to detect skewers, though they can hardly have been wanting. Ladles for basting and stirring were familiar. As to the spit itself, it became a showy article of plate, when the fashion arose of serving up the meat upon it in the hall; and the tenure by which Finchingfield in Ess.e.x was held _in capite_ in the reign of Edward III.--that of turning the spit at the coronation--demonstrates that the instrument was of sufficient standing to be taken into service as a memorial formality.

The fifteenth century vocabulary notices the salt-cellar, the spoon, the trencher, and the table-cloth. The catalogue comprises _morsus, a bit_, which shows that _bit_ and _bite_ are synonymous, or rather, that the latter is the true word as still used in Scotland, Yorkshire, and Lincolnshire, from the last of which the Pilgrims carried it across the Atlantic, where it is a current Americanism, not for one bite, but as many as you please, which is, in fact, the modern provincial interpretation of the phrase, but not the antique English one. The word _towel_ was indifferently applied, perhaps, for a cloth for use at the table or in the lavatory. Yet there was also the _manuturgium_, or hand-cloth, a speciality rendered imperative by the mediaeval fashion of eating.

In the inventory of the linen at Gilling, in Yorkshire, one of the seats of the Fairfax family, made in 1590, occur:--"Item, napkins vj.

dozen. Item, new napkins vj. dozen." This entry may or may not warrant a conclusion that the family bought that quant.i.ty at a time--not a very excessive store, considering the untidy habits of eating and the difficulty of making new purchases at short notice.

Another mark of refinement is the resort to the _nap.r.o.n_, corruptly _ap.r.o.n_, to protect the dress during the performance of kitchen work.

But the fifteenth century was evidently growing wealthier in its articles of use and luxury; the garden and the kitchen only kept pace with the bed-chamber and the dining-hall, the dairy and the laundry, the stable and the out-buildings. An extensive nomenclature was steadily growing up, and the Latin, old French, and Saxon terms were giving way on all sides to the English. It has been now for some time an allowed and understood thing that in these domestic backgrounds the growth of our country and the minuter traits of private life are to be studied with most clear and usurious profit.

The trencher, at first of bread, then of wood, after a while of pewter, and eventually of pottery, porcelain or china-earth, as it was called, and the precious metals, afforded abundant scope for the fancy of the artist, even in the remote days when the material for it came from the timber-dealer, and sets of twelve were sometimes decorated on the face with subjects taken from real life, and on the back with emblems of the purpose to which they were destined.

Puttenham, whose "Art of English Poetry" lay in MS. some years before it was published in 1589, speaks of the posies on trenchers and banqueting dishes. The author of "Our English Home" alludes to a very curious set, painted in subjects and belonging to the reign of James I., which was exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries' rooms by Colonel Sykes.

It is to be augured that, with the progress of refinement, the meats were served upon the table on dishes instead of trenchers, and that the latter were reserved for use by the guests of the family. For in the "Serving-man's Comfort," 1598, one reads:--"Even so the gentlemanly serving-man, whose life and manners doth equal his birth and bringing up, scorneth the society of these sots, or to place a dish where they give a trencher"; and speaking of the pa.s.sion of people for raising themselves above their extraction, the writer, a little farther on, observes: "For the yeoman's son, as I said before, leaving _gee haigh!_ for, _Butler, some more fair trenchers to the table!_ bringeth these ensuing ulcers amongst the members of the common body."

The employment of trenchers, which originated in the manner which I have shown, introduced the custom of the distribution at table of the two s.e.xes, and the fashion of placing a lady and gentleman alternately. In former days it was frequently usual for a couple thus seated together to eat from one trencher, more particularly if the relations between them were of an intimate nature, or, again, if it were the master and mistress of the establishment. Walpole relates that so late as the middle of the last century the old Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Hamilton occupied the dais at the head of the room, and preserved the traditional manner by sharing the same plate. It was a token of attachment and a tender recollection of unreturnable youth.

The prejudice against the fork in England remained very steadfast actual centuries after its first introduction; forks are particularised among the treasures of kings, as if they had been crown jewels, in the same manner as the _iron_ spits, pots, and frying-pans of his Majesty Edward III.; and even so late as the seventeeth century, Coryat, who employed one after his visit to Italy, was nicknamed "Furcifer." The two-p.r.o.nged implement long outlived Coryat; and it is to be seen in cutlers' signs even down to our day. The old dessert set, curiously enough, instead of consisting of knives and forks in equal proportions, contained eleven knives and one fork for _ginger_. Both the fork and spoon were frequently made with handles of gla.s.s or crystal, like those of mother-of-pearl at present in vogue.

In a tract coeval with Coryat the Fork-bearer, Breton's "Court and Country," 1618, there is a pa.s.sage very relevant to this part of the theme:--"For us in the country," says he, "when we have washed our hands after no foul work, nor handling any unwholesome thing, we need no little forks to make hay with our mouths, to throw our meat into them."

Forks, though not employed by the community, became part of the effects of royal and great personages, and in the inventory of Charles V. of France appear the spoon, knife, and fork. In another of the Duke of Burgundy, sixty years later (1420), knives and other implements occur, but no fork. The cutlery is described here as of German make.

Brathwaite, in his "Rules for the Government of the House of an Earl,"

probably written about 1617, mentions knives and spoons, but not forks.

As the fork grew out of the chopstick, the spoon was probably suggested by the ladle, a form of implement employed alike by the baker and the cook; for the early tool which we see in the hands of the operative in the oven more nearly resembles in the bowl a spoon than a shovel. In India nowadays they have ladles, but not spoons.

The universality of broths and semi-liquid substances, as well as the commencement of a taste for learned gravies, prompted a recourse to new expedients for communicating between the platter and the mouth; and some person of genius saw how the difficulty might be solved by adapting the ladle to individual service. But every religion has its quota of dissent, and there were, nay, are still, many who professed adherence to the st.u.r.dy simplicity of their progenitors, and saw in this daring reform and the fallow blade of the knife a certain effeminate prodigality.

It is significant of the drift of recent years toward the monograph, that, in 1846, Mr. Westman published "The Spoon: Primitive, Egyptian, Roman, Mediaeval and Modern," with one hundred ill.u.s.trations, in an octavo volume.

The luxury of carving-knives was, even in the closing years of the fifteenth century, reserved for royalty and n.o.bility; for in the "Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VII.," under 1497, a pair is said to have cost 1 6s. 8d. of money of that day. Nothing is said of forks.

But in the same account, under February 1st, 1500-1, one Mistress Brent receives 12s. (and a book, which cost the king 5s. more) for a silver fork weighing three ounces. In Newbery's "Dives Pragmaticus,"

1563, a unique poetical volume in the library at Althorpe, there is a catalogue of cooking utensils which, considering its completeness, is worth quotation; the author speaks in the character of a chapman--one forestalling Autolycus:--

"I have basins, ewers, of tin, pewter and gla.s.s.

Great vessels of copper, fine latten and bra.s.s: Both pots, pans and kettles, such as never was.

I have platters, dishes, saucers and candle-sticks, Chafers, lavers, towels and fine tricks: Posnets, frying-pans, and fine puddingp.r.i.c.ks ...

Fine pans for milk, and trim tubs for sowse.

I have ladles, sc.u.mmers, andirons and spits, Dripping-pans, pot-hooks....

I have fire-pans, fire-forks, tongs, trivets, and trammels, Roast-irons, trays, flaskets, mortars and pestles...."

And among other items he adds rollers for paste, moulds for cooks, fine cutting knives, fine wine gla.s.ses, soap, fine salt, and candles.

The list is the next best thing to an auctioneer's inventory of an Elizabethan kitchen, to the fittings of Shakespeare's, or rather of his father's. A good idea of the character and resources of a n.o.bleman's or wealthy gentleman's kitchen at the end of the sixteenth and commencement of the seventeenth century may be formed from the Fairfax inventories (1594-1624), lately edited by Mr. Peac.o.c.k. I propose to annex a catalogue of the utensils which there present themselves:--

The furnace pan for beef.

The beef kettle.

Great and small kettles.

Bra.s.s kettles, holding from sixteen to twenty gallons each.

Little kettles with bowed or carved handles.

Copper pans with ears.

Great bra.s.s pots.

Dripping-pans.

An iron peel or baking shovel.

A brazen mortar and a pestle.

Gridirons.

Iron ladles.

A laten sc.u.mmer.

A grater.

A pepper mill.

A mustard-quern.

Boards.

A salt-box.

An iron range.

Iron racks.

A tin pot.

Pot hooks.

A galley bawk to suspend the kettle or pot over the fire.

Spits, square and round, and various sizes.

Bearers.

Crooks.

In the larders (wet and dry) and pastry were:--

Moulding boards for pastry.