Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

of the Hospital of St. Bartholomew at Sand- wich, under 1569 : — “For tournynge the spytte, nijd.,” and this was when the mayor of the borough dined with the prior. A royal personage gave, of course, more. The play of “ Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” written about 1560, opens with a speech of Diccon the Bedlam, or poor Tom, where he says : — The Kitchen. 23 7 “ Many a gossip’s cup in my time have I tasted, And many a broach and spit have I both turned and basted.” The spit, again, was supplanted by the jack. The “History of Friar Rush,” 1620, opens with a scene in which the hero introduces himself to a monastery, and is sent by the unsuspecting prior to the master-cook, who finds him subordinate employment. MEALS. IT has been noted that for a great length of time two meals were made to suffice the requirements of all classes. Our own expe- rience shows how immaterial the names are which people from age to age choose to bestow on their feeding intervals. Some call supper dinner , and others call dinner luncheon. First comes the prevailing mode instituted by fashionable society, and then a foolish sub- scription to it by a section of the community who are too poor to follow it, and too proud not to seem to do so. Formerly it was usual for the Great to dine and sup earlier than the Meals. 239 Little \ but now the rule is reversed, and the later a man dines the more distinguished he argues himself. We have multiplied our daily seasons of refreshment, and eat and drink far oftener than our ancestors ; but the truly genteel Briton never sups ; the word is scarcely in his vocabulary, — like Beau Brum- mel and the farthing — “Fellow, I do not know the coin !” In a glossary of the tenth-eleventh century only two meals are quoted : undermeat = trandium, and even-meat = ccena. That is to say, our Saxon precursors were satisfied as a rule with two repasts daily, but to this in more luxurious times were added the supper and even the rear-supper, the latter being, so far as we know, a second course or dessert and the bipartite collation corresponding to the modern late dinner. But it is one of those strange survivals of ancient manners which people practise without any conscious- ness of the fact, which is at the root of the fashion, which still occasionally prevails, of dividing the chief meal of the day by an in- terval of repose, and taking the wine and 240 Meals. dessert an hour or two after the other courses ; and the usage in our colleges and inns of court of retiring to another apartment to “wine” may claim the same origin. It is obvious that the rear-supper was susceptible of becoming the most important and costly part of an entertainment; and that it fre- quently assumed extravagant proportions, many passages from our early poets might be adduced to prove.