In the “ Book of Cookery,” 1500, we have the menu at the installation of Archbishop Nevill in York in 1467 ; but the bill of fare of a feast given by him in 1452 at Oxford, where he is mentioned as Master Nevill, son of the Earl of Salisbury, is inserted from the Cotton MS. Titus, in “Reliquiae Antiquae,” 1841. It consisted of three courses, which seem to have been the customary limit. Of course, however, the usage varied, as in the “Song of the Boar’s Head,” of which there are two or three versions, two courses only are specified in what has the air of having been a rather sumptuous entertainment. The old low- Latin term for the noonday Meals. 241 meal was merenda , which suggests the idea of food to be earned before it was enjoyed. So in “Friar Bacon’s Prophesie,” 1604, a poem, it is declared that, in the good old days, he that wrought not, till he sweated, was held unworthy of his meat. This re- minds one of Abernethy’s maxim for the preservation of health, — to live on sixpence a day, and earn it. The “ Song of the Boar’s Head,” just cited, and printed from the Porkington MS. in “Reli- quiae Antiquae” (ii, 30), refers to larks for ladies to pick as part of the second course in a banquet. On special occasions, in the middle ages, after the dessert, hippocras was served, as they have liqueurs to this day on the Conti- nent both after dinner and after the mid-day breakfast. The writer of “Piers of Fulham” lived to see this fashion of introducing a third meal, and that again split into two for luxury’s sake ; for his metrical biographer tells us, that he refused rear-suppers, from a fear of surfeiting. I collect that in the time of Henry VIII. R 242 Meals. the supper was a well-established institution, and that the abuse of postponing it to a too advanced hour had crept in ; for the writer of a poem of this period especially counsels his readers not to sup late. Rear-suppers were not only held in private establishments, but in taverns ; and in the early interlude of the “ Four Elements,” given in my edition of Dodsley, and originally pub- lished about 1519, a very graphic and edify- ing scene occurs of a party of roisterers ordering and enjoying an entertainment of this kind. About seventy years later, Robert Greene, the playwright, fell a victim to a surfeit of pickled herrings and Rhenish wine, at some merry gathering of his intimates falling under this denomination. Who will venture to deny that the first person who kept unreasonable hours was an author and a poet? Even Shake- speare is not exempt from the suspicion of hav- ing hastened his end by indulgence with one or two friends in a gay carouse of this kind. The author of the “Description of England” enlightens us somewhat on the sort of kitchen which the middle class and yeomanry of his Meals . 243

AI-modernized reading of the original text

In the “ Book of Cookery,” 1500, we have the menu at the installation of Archbishop Nevill in York in 1467 ; but the bill of fare of a feast given by him in 1452 at Oxford, where he is mentioned as Master Nevill, son of the Earl of Salisbury, is inserted from the Cotton MS. Titus, in “Reliquiae Antiquae,” 1841. It consisted of three courses, which seem to have been the customary limit. Of course, however, the usage varied, as in the “Song of the Boar’s Head,” of which there are two or three versions, two courses only are specified in what has the air of having been a rather sumptuous entertainment. The old low-Latin term for the noonday Meals. meal was merenda , which suggests the idea of food to be earned before it was enjoyed. So in “Friar Bacon’s Prophesie,” 1604, a poem, it is declared that, in the good old days, he that wrought not, till he sweated, was held unworthy of his meat. This reminds one of Abernethy’s maxim for the preservation of health, — to live on sixpence a day, and earn it. The “ Song of the Boar’s Head,” just cited, and printed from the Porkington MS. in “Reliquiae Antiquae” (ii, 30), refers to larks for ladies to pick as part of the second course in a banquet. On special occasions, in the middle ages, after the dessert, hippocras was served, as they have liqueurs to this day on the Continent both after dinner and after the mid-day breakfast. The writer of “Piers of Fulham” lived to see this fashion of introducing a third meal, and that again split into two for luxury’s sake ; for his metrical biographer tells us, that he refused rear-suppers, from a fear of surfeiting. I collect that in the time of Henry VIII. R Meals. the supper was a well-established institution, and that the abuse of postponing it to a too advanced hour had crept in ; for the writer of a poem of this period especially counsels his readers not to sup late. Rear-suppers were not only held in private establishments, but in taverns ; and in the early interlude of the “ Four Elements,” given in my edition of Dodsley, and originally published about 1519, a very graphic and edifying scene occurs of a party of roisterers ordering and enjoying an entertainment of this kind. About seventy years later, Robert Greene, the playwright, fell a victim to a surfeit of pickled herrings and Rhenish wine, at some merry gathering of his intimates falling under this denomination. Who will venture to deny that the first person who kept unreasonable hours was an author and a poet? Even Shakespeare is not exempt from the suspicion of having hastened his end by indulgence with one or two friends in a gay carouse of this kind. The author of the “Description of England” enlightens us somewhat on the sort of kitchen which the middle class and yeomanry of his Meals .

Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine