The Dudley book of cookery and household recipes

While all possible forms of intemperance and excess are denounced both in the Old Testament and in the New, the substantial viands, viands gathered from the fields and the vineyards, the firstling of the fiocks and herds, the fig, the olive, and the pure juice of the grape are promised over and over again, as the rewards of virtuous toil — and catalogued with the blessings to be received from this lower world. I have no patience," says a wise writer, “ with those who pretend not to care for their dinner, or the ludicrous assumption that ‘ spiritual ’ negations imply superior souls. A man who is careless about his dinner is generally one of flaccid body and feeble mind. As old Samuel Johnson authoritatively said. Sir, a man seldom thinks of anything with more earnestness than he thinks of his dinner, and if he cannot get that well dressed, he may be suspected of inaccuracy in other things." When a man is not barely insensible to hunger of soul, the keen intellectual voracities and intellectual desires, he is all the healthier, all the stronger, all the better for a noble capacity for food — a capacity which becomes noble when ministers to a fine and not merely a gluttonous nature. Even a plain diet is but half good. It cannot be doubted that on the whole, refinement in board as well as lodgings being a fruit of intelligence, is honourable alike to health and longevity. There are advantages we little think of in those ordinary ingenuities which, not significantly adding to the cost of our food, in fact reducing it by assisting to diminish waste, at once modify and reduce ill flavours, and so greatly augment its pleasant sapidity. The pleasure of meal times is one of the prerogatives of human nature ; the lower mammalia — the only other animals who appear to enjoy the flavour of their food — are insensible to haute cuisine Granivorous birds and most kinds of fishes not only have cartilaginous tongues — which prevent them from tastings but swallow their food whole^ guided probably to the choice of it by sight rather than by taste or smell. FRUITS IN ENGLAND IN XIII 4- XV CENTURIES The only kinds named are apples and pears; three hundred of the latter were purchased at Canterbury^ probably from the gardens of the 262 FRUITS IN ENGLAND monks. It is believed, however, that few other sorts were generally grown in England before the latter end of the fifteenth century, although Matthew Paris, describing the bad season 1257, observes that apples were scarce, and pears scarcer, while quinces, vegetables, cherries, plums, and all shell fruits were entirely destroyed.'*'' These shell fruits were probably the common hazel-nut^ walnuts^ and perhaps chestnuts. In 1256 the Sheriffs of London were ordered to buy two thousand chestnuts for the King'*s use. In the Wardrobe book of the 14th of Edward the First's before quoted, we find the bill of Nicholas, the Royal fruiterer, in which the only fruits mentioned are pears, apples, quinces, medlars and nuts. The supply of these from Whitsuntide to November cost £1 14s. 1d.. This apparent scarcity of indigenous fruits naturally leads to the inquiry what foreign kinds, besides those included in the term spicery, such as almonds, dates, figs and raisins, were imported into England in this and the following century? In the time of John and of Henry the Third, Rochelle was celebrated for its pears and conger