Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine. William Carew Hazlitt

on private hospitality.

      A friend says: "The Scotch were long very poor. Only their fish, oatmeal, and whiskey kept them alive. Fish was very cheap." This remark sounds the key-note of a great English want—cheaper fish. Of meat we already eat enough, or too much; but of fish we might eat more, if it could be brought at a low price to our doors. It is a noteworthy collateral fact that in the Lord Mayor of London's Pageant of 1590 there is a representation of the double advantage which would accrue if the unemployed poor were engaged to facilitate and cheapen the supply of fish to the City; and here we are, three centuries forward, with the want still very imperfectly answered.

      Besides the bread and oatmeal above named, the bannock played its part. "The Land o' Cakes" was more than a trim and pretty phrase: there was in it a deep eloquence; it marked a wide national demand and supply.

      The "Penny Magazine" for 1842 has a good and suggestive paper on "Feasts and Entertainments," with extracts from some of the early dramatists and a woodcut of "a new French cook, to devise fine kickshaws and toys." One curious point is brought out here in the phrase "boiled jiggets of mutton," which shews that the French gigot for a leg of mutton was formerly in use here. Like many other Gallicisms, it lingered in Scotland down to our own time.

      The cut of the French cook above mentioned is a modern composition; and indeed some of the excerpts from Ben Jonson and other writers are of an extravagant and hyperbolical cast—better calculated to amuse an audience than to instruct the student.

      Mr. Lucas remarks: "It is probable that we are more dependent upon animal food than we used to be. In their early days, the present generation of dalesmen fed almost exclusively upon oatmeal; either as 'hasty-pudding,'—that is, Scotch oatmeal which had been ground over again, so as to be nearly as fine as flour; … or 'lumpy,'—that is, boiled quickly and not thoroughly stirred; or else in one of the three kinds of cake which they call 'fermented,' viz., 'riddle cake,' 'held-on cake,' or 'turn-down cake,' which is made from oatcake batter poured on the 'bak' ston'' from the ladle, and then spread with the back of the ladle. It does not rise like an oatcake. Or of a fourth kind called 'clap cake.' They also made 'tiffany cakes' of wheaten flour, which was separated from the bran by being worked through a hair-sieve tiffany, or temse:—south of England Tammy—with a brush called the Brush shank."

ROYAL FEASTS AND SAVAGE POMP.

       Table of Contents

      In Rose's "School of Instructions for the Officers of the Mouth," 1682, the staff of a great French establishment is described as a Master of the Household, a Master Carver, a Master Butler, a Master Confectioner, a Master Cook, and a Master Pastryman. The author, who was himself one of the cooks in our royal kitchen, tells Sir Stephen Fox, to whom he dedicates his book, that he had entered on it after he had completed one of a very different nature: "The Theatre of the World, or a Prospect of Human Misery."

      At the time that the "School of Instructions" was written, the French and ourselves had both progressed very greatly in the Art of Cookery and in the development of the menu. DelaHay Street, Westminster, near Bird-Cage Walk, suggests a time when a hedge ran along the western side of it towards the Park, in lieu of brick or stone walls; but the fact is that we have here a curious association with the office, just quoted from Rose, of Master Confectioner. For of the plot of ground on which the street, or at any rate a portion of it stands, the old proprieter was Peter DelaHaye, master confectioner of Charles II. at the very period of the publication of Rose's book. His name occurs in the title-deeds of one of the houses on the Park side, which since his day has had only five owners, and has been, since 1840, the freehold of an old and valued friend of the present writer.

      It may be worth pointing out, that the Confectionery and Pastry were two distinct departments, each with its superintendent and staff. The fondness for confections had spread from Italy—which itself in turn borrowed the taste from the East—to France and England; and, as we perceive from the descriptions furnished in books, these were often of a very elaborate and costly character.

      The volume is of the less interest for us, as it is a translation from the French, and consequently does not throw a direct light on our own kitchens at this period. But of course collaterally it presents many features of likeness and analogy, and may be compared with Braithwaite's earlier view to which I shall presently advert.

      The following anecdote is given in the Epistle to Fox: "Many do believe the French way of working is cheapest; but let these examine this book, and then they may see (for their satisfaction) which is the best husbandry, to extract gold out of herbs, or to make a pottage of a stone, by the example of two soldiers, who in their quarters were minded to have a pottage; the first of them coming into a house and asking for all things necessary to the making of one, was as soon told that he could have none of these things there, whereupon he went away, and the other coming in with a stone in his knap-sack, asked only for a Pot to boil his stone in, that he might make a dish of broth of it for his supper, which was quickly granted him; and when the stone had boiled a little while, then he asked for a small bit of beef, then for a piece of mutton, and so for veal, bacon, etc., till by little and little he got all things requisite, and he made an excellent pottage of his stone, at as cheap a rate (it may be) as the cook extracted Gold from Herbs."

      The kitchen-staff of a noble establishment in the first quarter of the seventeenth century we glean from Braithwaite's "Rules and Orders for the Government of the House of an Earl," which, if the "M.L." for whom the piece was composed was his future wife, Mistress Lawson, cannot have seen the light later than 1617, in which year they were married. He specifies—(1) a yeoman and groom for the cellar; (2) a yeoman and groom for the pantry; (3) a yeoman and groom for the buttery; (3a) a yeoman for the ewery; (4) a yeoman purveyor; (5) a master-cook, under-cooks, and three pastry-men; (6) a yeoman and groom in the scullery, one to be in the larder and slaughter-house; (7) an achator or buyer; (8) three conducts [query, errand-boys] and three kitchen-boys.

      The writer also admits us to a rather fuller acquaintance with the mode in which the marketing was done. He says that the officers, among other matters, "must be able to judge, not only of the prices, but also of the goodness of all kinds of corn, cattle, and household provisions; and the better to enable themselves thereto, are oftentimes to ride to fairs and great markets, and there to have conference with graziers and purveyors." The higher officers were to see that the master was not deceived by purveyors and buyers, and that other men's cattle did not feed on my lord's pastures; they were to take care that the clerk of the kitchen kept his day-book "in that perfect and good order, that at the end of every week or month it be pied out," and that a true docket of all kinds of provisions be set down. They were to see that the powdered and salted meats in the larder were properly kept; and vigilant supervision was to be exercised over the cellar, buttery, and other departments, even to the prevention of paring the tallow lights.

      Braithwaite dedicates a section to each officer; but I have only space to transcribe, by way of sample, the opening portion of his account of "The Officer of the Kitchen:" "The Master-Cook should be a man of years; well-experienced, whereby the younger cooks will be drawn the better to obey his directions. In ancient times noblemen contented themselves to be served with such as had been bred in their own houses, but of late times none could please some but Italians and Frenchmen, or at best brought up in the Court, or under London cooks: nor would the old manner of baking, boiling, and roasting please them, but the boiled meats must be after the French fashion, the dishes garnished about with sugar and preserved plums, the meat covered over with orangeade, preserved lemons, and with divers other preserved and conserved stuff fetched from the confectioner's: more lemons and sugar spent in boiling fish to serve at one meal than might well serve the whole expense of the house in a day." He goes on to describe and ridicule the new fashion of placing arms and crests on the dishes. It seems that all the refuse was the perquisite of the cook and