Practical gastronomy and culinary dictionary

There is certainly nothing in the French cookery to equal an English baron of beef, the noble sirloins^ nor haunches, legs, saddles and loins of Southdown mutton. The principal articles of food, in the quality of which the French surpass the English, are poultry and veal ; but such are the skill and science of their cooks that, with worse mutton, worse beef, and worse lamb than the Enghsh, they produce better made dishes of every kind. THE ART OF COOKERY 27 Feasts and Epicures of Olden Times. An old cook gives the following as the ordinary- bill of fare for a gentleman's table about Candlemas. The first course consisted of cock-a-leekie, a Chatham pudding, a fricassee of chicken, a leg of mutton, all garnished with barberries ; the second, the more sub- stantial, included a chine of mutton, a chine of veal, a lark pie, a pullet larded, a pullet plain, all garnished with slices of orange ; the third, woodcocks, a couple of rabbits, asparagus, a Westphalia gammon ; the fourth, two orange tarts, a bacon tart, an apple tart, a tart of Bon Chretien pears, a dish of pippins, and a dish of pearmains. Still earlier (1470), at a tremendous banquet given by the Earl of Warwick to George Neville, his brother, upon his being raised to the dignity of Arch- bishop of York, the provisions are on a truly Gargantuan scale. This is the authentic list of material used on the occasion : — 300 quarters of wheat 400 hernsies 300 tuns of ale 200 pheasants 104 tuns of wine 500 partridges 1 tun of spic'd ale 4,000 woodcocks 10 fat oxen 400 plovers 6 wild bulls 100 curlews 300 pigs 100 quails 1,004 wethers 1,000 eggets 28 PRACTICAL GASTRONOMY 300 hogs 200 rees 300 calves 4,000 bucks, does, and roebucks 3,000 geese 155 hot venison pasties 3,000 capons 1,000 dishes of jellies 100 peacocks 4,000 cold venison pasties 200 cranes 2,000 hot custards 200 kids 4,000 cold custards 2,000 chickens 400 tarts 4,000 pigeons 300 pikes 4,000 rabbits 300 breams 204 bitterns 8 seals 4,000 ducks 4 porpoises It is not surprising to learn that such a vast pantry required for its working 1,000 cooks, 62 kitcheners, and 515 scullions. Massinger, in " The City Madam," gives us incidentally a glimpse of the extravagance of material of which our forefathers were guilty. The old steward grumbles — * ' Men may talk of country Christmases and Court gluttony, Their thirty pound buttered eggs, their pies of carps' tongues, Their pheasants dressed with ambergris, the carcasses Of three fat wethers bruised for gravy, to Make sauce for a single peacock." Yet all that, he says, is nothing — merely " fasts " — compared with the City feasts. It is enough to make one pause and to provoke to an invective anent the decadence of all that is virtuous to read that in the thirteenth century a rabbit and a lamb each cost the same, fourpence to wit ; that a turbot was to be obtained for sixpence, a salmon for three shillings, a THE ART OF COOKERY 29 fat hog for three shillings and f ourpence, and a fat sheep for one shilling and twopence. In those halcyon days twenty eggs could be bought for a penny, you could indulge in a swan for fourpence, and wash the banquet down with ale at three halfpence the gallon !