Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

the comparatively limited information which we get upon this subject from the pages of Lacroix, the paucity of material is not confined to ourselves. The destruction and disappearance of such humble monuments of the civilisation of the past are easily explained ; and the survival of a slender salvage is to be treated as a circumstance not less remarkable than fortunate. It seems that the practice was to cut up, if not to slaughter, the animals used for food in the kitchen, and to prepare the whole carcase, some parts in one way and some in another. We incidentally collect from an ancient tale that the hearts of swine were much prized as dainties. Besides a general notion of the appointments of the cooking department, we are enabled to form some conception of the aspect of the early kitchen itself from extant representations in the “Archaeological Album,” the “Penny Magazine” for 1836, and Lacroix.* The last-named authority * “Moeurs, Usages et Costumes au Moyen Age," 1872, pp \66, 170, 177. [illustration: The Kitchen.] furnishes us with two interesting sixteenth century interiors from Jost Amman, and (from the same source) a portraiture of the cook of that period. The costume of the subject is not only exhibited, doubtless with the fidelity characteristic of the artist, but is quite equally applicable to France, if not to our own country, and likewise to a much earlier date. The evidences of the same class supplied by the “ Archaeological Album,” 1845, are drawn from the MS. in the British Museum, formerly belonging to the Abbey of St. Albans. They consist of two illustrations— one of Master Robert, cook to the abbey, as elsewhere noticed, accompanied by his wife — a unique relic of its kind ; the other a view of a small apartment with dressers and shelves, and with plates and accessories hung round, in which a cook, perhaps the identical Master Robert aforesaid, is plucking a bird. The fireplace is in the background, and the iron vessel which is to receive the fowl, or whatever it may really be, is suspended over the flame by a long chain. The perspective p [illustration: The Kitchen.] is rather faulty, and the details are not very copious ; but for so early a period as the thirteenth or early part of the following century its value is undeniable. The “ Penny Magazine” presents us with a remarkable exterior, that of the venerable kitchen of Stanton- Harcourt, near Oxford, twenty-nine feet square and sixty feet in height. There are two large fireplaces, facing each other, but no chimney, the smoke issuing at the holes, each about seven inches in diameter, which run round the roof. As Lamb said of his Essays, that they were all Preface, so this kitchen is all chimney. It is stated that the kitchen at Glastonbury Abbey wras constructed on the same model ; and both are probably older than the reign of Henry IV. The one to which I am more immediately referring, though, at the time (1835) the drawing was taken, in an excellent state of preservation, had evidently undergone repairs and structural changes. It was at Stanton-Harcourt that Pope wrote a portion of his translation of Homer, about [illustration: The Kitchen.] 21 1 A manufactory of brass cooking utensils was established at Wandsworth in or before Aubrey’s time by Dutchmen, who kept the art secret. Lysons states that the place where the industry was carried on bore the name of the “ Frying Pan Houses.”*