This said production of Neckam of St. Albans purports to be a guide to young housekeepers. It instructs them what they will require, if they desire to see their estab- lishment well-ordered ; but we soon perceive that the author has in view the arrangements indispensable for a family of high rank and pretensions ; and it may be once for all ob- served that this kind of literature seldom proves of much service to us in an investiga- tion of the state of the poor, until we come to the fifteenth or even sixteenth century, when the artists of Germany and the Low Countries began to delineate those scenes in industrial 54 Cookery Books. and servile life, which time and change have rendered so valuable. Where their superiors in rank regarded them as little more than mechanical instru- ments for carrying on the business of life, the poor have left behind them few records of their mode of sustenance and of the food which enabled them to follow their daily toil. The anecdotes, whatever they may be worth, of Alfred and the burnt cakes, and of Tom Thumb’s mamma and her Christmas pudding, made in a bowl, of which the principal material was pork, stand almost alone; for we get, wherever we look, nothing but descriptions by learned and educated men of their equals or betters, how they fed and what they ate — their houses, their furniture, their weapons, and their dress. Even in the passage of the old fabliau of the “ King and the Hermit” the latter, instead of admitting us to a cottage interior, has a servant to wait on him, brings outa tablecloth, lights two candles, and lays before his disguised guest venison and wine. In most of our own romances, and in the epics of antiquity, we have to be Cookery Books. 55 satisfied with vague and splendid generalisa- tions. We do not learn much of the dishes which were on the tables, how they were cooked, and how ot 7 roWoi cooked theirs. The Liber , or rather Codex , Princeps in the very long and extensive catalogue of works on English Cookery, is a vellum roll called the Form of Cury, and is supposed to have been written about the beginning of the fif- teenth century by the master-cook of Richard II., who reigned from 1377 to 1399, and spent the public money in eating and drinking, instead of wasting it, as his grandfather had done, in foreign wars. This singular relic was once in the Harleian collection, but did not pass with the rest of the MSS. to the British Museum; it is now however, Addi- tional MS. 5016, having been presented to the Library by Mr. Gustavus Brander. It was edited by Dr. Pegge in 1780, and included by Warner in his “ Antiquitates Culinariae,” 1791. The Roll comprises 196 receipts, and commences with a sort of preamble and a Table of Contents. In the former it is worth noting that the enterprise was under- 5 6 Cookery Books.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

This said production of Neckam of St. Albans purports to be a guide to young housekeepers. It instructs them what they will require, if they desire to see their establishment well-ordered ; but we soon perceive that the author has in view the arrangements indispensable for a family of high rank and pretensions ; and it may be once for all observed that this kind of literature seldom proves of much service to us in an investigation of the state of the poor, until we come to the fifteenth or even sixteenth century, when the artists of Germany and the Low Countries began to delineate those scenes in industrial Cookery Books. and servile life, which time and change have rendered so valuable. Where their superiors in rank regarded them as little more than mechanical instruments for carrying on the business of life, the poor have left behind them few records of their mode of sustenance and of the food which enabled them to follow their daily toil. The anecdotes, whatever they may be worth, of Alfred and the burnt cakes, and of Tom Thumb’s mamma and her Christmas pudding, made in a bowl, of which the principal material was pork, stand almost alone; for we get, wherever we look, nothing but descriptions by learned and educated men of their equals or betters, how they fed and what they ate — their houses, their furniture, their weapons, and their dress. Even in the passage of the old fabliau of the “ King and the Hermit” the latter, instead of admitting us to a cottage interior, has a servant to wait on him, brings outa tablecloth, lights two candles, and lays before his disguised guest venison and wine. In most of our own romances, and in the epics of antiquity, we have to be Cookery Books. satisfied with vague and splendid generalisations. We do not learn much of the dishes which were on the tables, how they were cooked, and how others cooked theirs. The Liber , or rather Codex , Princeps in the very long and extensive catalogue of works on English Cookery, is a vellum roll called the Form of Cury, and is supposed to have been written about the beginning of the fifteenth century by the master-cook of Richard II., who reigned from 1377 to 1399, and spent the public money in eating and drinking, instead of wasting it, as his grandfather had done, in foreign wars. This singular relic was once in the Harleian collection, but did not pass with the rest of the MSS. to the British Museum; it is now however, Additional MS. 5016, having been presented to the Library by Mr. Gustavus Brander. It was edited by Dr. Pegge in 1780, and included by Warner in his “ Antiquitates Culinariae,” 1791. The Roll comprises 196 receipts, and commences with a sort of preamble and a Table of Contents. In the former it is worth noting that the enterprise was under- 5 6 Cookery Books.

Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine