BREAD-MAKING, GROCERY, AND CONFECTIONERY.
nder the designation of Panis, Mr. Hudson Turner thinks that grain and flour, as well as bread, were included. It would appear that bread of different degrees of fineness was used. Thus, in the Household Expenses of Eleanor, Countess of Leicester, third daughter of King John, and wife of the celebrated Simon de Montfort, 1265, "the earliest known memorial of the domestic expenditure of an English subject," we find that there was "bread purchased for the Countess," and "bread for the kitchen." Loaves or cakes were made of bolted flour, are twice mentioned, as well as cakes, or wastells, perhaps biscuits; on one occasion half a quarter of flour is set down for pastry. It is inferred that the bread generally used in the family was made of a mixture of wheat and rye. As the dogs were fed with corn, it may be concluded that the servants fared no worse: at any rate there is no distinct notice of bread made of barley, oats, or the more inferior grain which were commonly used in France and other countries.
It is not clear that their bread was leavened with yeast, as that article occurs but once, and then in connexion with malt. The price of the quarter of wheat or rye varied from 5s. to 5s. 8d.; of oats, from 2s. to 2s. 4d.; twenty-five quarters, however, were bought at Sandwich, at 1s. 10d. When grain was brought from the Countess' manors, some of the prices were rather below the average. The bailiff of Chalton was allowed 5s. the quarter for wheat, 4s. for barley, and 2s. 4d. for oats; the bailiff of Braborne had 4s. 4d. for wheat, and 1s. 3d. for oats.
The Manchet is a fine white roll, named, according to Skinner, from michette, French; or from main, because small enough to be held in the hand:
"No manchet can so well the courtly palate please
As that made of the meal fetch'd from my fertil leaze."
Drayton's Polyolbion.
Here are two olden recipes for manchets:
"Lady of Arundel's Manchet.—Take a bushel of fine wheat-flour, twenty eggs, three pound of fresh butter; then take as much salt and barm as to the ordinary manchet; temper it together with new milk pretty hot, then let it lie the space of half an hour to rise, so you may work it up into bread, and bake it: let not your oven be too hot."—True Gentlewoman's Delight, 1676.
"Take a quart of cream, put thereto a pound of beef-suet minced small, put it into cream, and season it with nutmeg, cinnamon, and rose-water; put to it eight eggs and but four whites, and two grated manchets; mingle them well together and put them in a buttered dish; bake it, and being baked, scrape on sugar, and serve it."—The Queene's Royal Cookery, 1713.
Manchets are used in the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge to this day. The manchets and cheese, and fine ale, of Magdalen College are well known.
The Manciple, a purveyor of victuals, a clerk of the kitchen, or caterer, still subsists in the universities, where the name is therefore preserved; but Archdeacon Nares believed nowhere else. One of Chaucer's pilgrims is a manciple of the Temple, of whom he gives a good character for his skill in purveying.
It is curious to find that one of the domestic arts which is somewhat neglected in the households of the present generation, should, in the last century, have been considered an accomplishment of such importance as to be taught in schools: this was Pastry-making. There was then resident in London one of the ancient family of the Kidders, of Maresfield, in Sussex, and a descendant of Richard Kidder, Bishop of Bath and Wells. This was Edward Kidder, a pastrycook, or, as he calls himself, "pastry-master," who carried on his business in Queen Street, Cheapside, and was induced to open two schools in the metropolis to teach the art of making pastry, one at his own place of business, and the other in Holborn. He also gave instructions to ladies at their private houses. So popular did his system of teaching become, that he is said to have instructed nearly 6,000 ladies in this art. He also published a book of Receipts of Pastry and Cookery, for the use of his scholars, printed entirely in copper-plate, with a portrait of himself, in the full wig and costume of the day, as a frontispiece. He died in 1739, at the age of seventy-three. By will, he gave to his wife, Mary Kidder, a gold watch, a diamond ring, and all the other rings and trinkets used by her, and also all the furniture of the best room in which she lay in the house in Queen Street; and to his daughters, Elizabeth and Susan, he bequeathed all his money, bank-stock, plate, jewellery, &c. Susan, among other bequests, gave to her cousin, George Kidder, of Canterbury, pastrycook, 150l. and the copper-plates for the receipt-book.
Some dishes of the olden dinner-table are not very inviting. Our ancestors had no objection to stale fish; and blubber, if they could get it from a stray whale, or grampus or porpoise, was considered a delicacy. Yet some of the old dishes have stood the test of ages, as we see in the case of a Christmas Pie, the receipt to make which is preserved in the books of the Salters' Company, in the City of London.
"For to make a moost choyce Paaste of Gamys to be eten at ye Feste of Chrystemasse" (17th Richard II. a.d. 1394). A pie so made by the Company's cook in 1836 was found excellent. It consisted of a pheasant, hare, and capon; two partridges, two pigeons, and two rabbits; all boned and put into paste in the shape of a bird, with the livers and hearts, two mutton kidneys, forced-meats, and egg-balls, seasoning, spice, catsup, and pickled mushrooms, filled up with gravy made from the various bones.
We must, however, remember that Cookery flourished in the reign of Richard II., who rebuilt Westminster Hall, and gave therein a house-warming, at which old Stow says, "he feasted ten thousand persons." Richard is also said to have kept 2,000 cooks, who left to the world their famous cookery-book, the "Form of Cury, or, a Roll of English Cookery," compiled about the year 1390, by the master-cooks of the Royal Kitchen.
Sugar was at first regarded as a spice, and was introduced as a substitute for honey after the Crusades. It was sold by the pound in the thirteenth century, and was procurable even in such remote towns as Ross and Hereford. Before the discovery of America, however, Sugar was a costly luxury, and only used on rare occasions. About 1459, Margaret Barton, writing to her husband, who was a gentleman and landowner of Norfolk, begs that he will vouchsafe "to buy her a pound of sugar." Again: "I pray that ye will vouchsafe to send me another sugar-loaf, for my old one is done." The art of refining sugar, and what is called loaf-sugar, was discovered by a Venetian about the end of the fifteenth, or the beginning of the sixteenth century. Sugar-candy is of much earlier date; for in Marin's Storia di Commercio de Veneziani, there is an account of a shipment made at Venice for England, in 1319, of 100,000 pounds of sugar, and 10,000 pounds of sugar-candy. Refined or loaf-sugar is thus mentioned in a roll of provisions in the reign of Henry VIII.: "two loaves of sugar, weighing sixteen pound two ounces, at —— per pound." A letter from Sir Edward Wotton to Lord Cobham, dated Calais, March 6, 1546, informs him that he had taken up for his lordship twenty-five sugar-loaves, at six shillings a loaf, "which is eightepence a pounde." Up to the close of the fifteenth century its price varied from one-and-sixpence to three shillings a pound, "or, on an average, to a sum equivalent to about thirty shillings at present." Sugar has become to us almost a necessary of life. "We consume it in millions of tons; we employ thousands of ships in transporting it. Millions of men spend their lives in cultivating the plants from which it is extracted, and the fiscal duties imposed upon it add largely to the revenue of nearly every established government. It may be said, therefore, to exercise a more direct and extended influence, not only over the social comfort, but over the social condition, of mankind, than any other production of the vegetable kingdom, with the exception, perhaps, of cotton alone."—J. F. W. Johnston, M.A.[51]
Coffee is mentioned in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, date 1621, several years before coffee-houses were introduced into England. The first coffee-house was opened in 1650, at Oxford, by Jacobs, a Jew, "at the Angel; and there it (coffee) was, by some who delighted in novelty, drunk." About this time, Mr. Edwards, a Turkey merchant, brought from Smyrna to London, one Pasqua Rosee, a Ragusan youth, who prepared this drink for him every morning. But the novelty thereof, drawing too much company to him, he allowed his said servant, with another of his son-in-law, to sell coffee publicly, and they set up the first coffee-house in London, in St. Michael's Alley, in Cornhill. The sign was Pasqua Rosee's own head.
Tea was first sold in London by Thomas Garway, in Change Alley, in 1651, at from 16s. to 50s. per pound; it had been previously sold at from six pounds to ten pounds per pound. Pepys, in his Diary, tells, Sept. 25, 1669, of his sending "for a cup of Tea, a China drink he had not before tasted." Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, about 1666, had introduced Tea at Court. And, in Sir Charles Sedley's Mulberry Garden, we are told that "he who wished to be considered a man of fashion always drank wine-and-water at dinner, and a dish of tea afterwards."[52]
Spices and other condiments are mentioned in the Countess of Leicester's accounts, viz., anise, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cloves, cummin, dried fennel, saffron, sugar, liquorice, mustard, verjuice, and vinegar, the prices of which were very low. It must not be supposed, from the low prices of some of these articles, that they were generally used in the country; the arrival of a ship laden with spices was an event of such importance, and perhaps rarity, that the King usually hastened to satisfy his wants before the cargo was landed. Thus in the 10th of Henry the Third, the bailiffs of Sandwich were commanded to detain, upon their coming to port, two great ships laden with spices and precious merchandises, which were expected from Bayonne; and not to allow anything to be sold until the King had had his choice of their contents.
Among the glories of olden confectionery was March-pane, a biscuit composed of sugar and almonds, like those now called Macaroons. It is also called massepain in some old books. The word March-pane exists, with little variation, in almost all the European languages; yet the derivation of it is uncertain. In the Latin of the Middle Ages, March-panes were called Martii panes, which gave occasion to Hermolaus Barbaras to inquire into their origin, in a letter to Cardinal Piccolomini, who had some sent to him as a present. Balthazar Bonifacius says they were named from Marcus Apicius, the famous epicure. Minshew, following Hermolaus, will have them originally sacred to Mars, and stamped with a castle.
Whatever was the origin of their name, the English receipt-books show that they were composed of almonds and sugar, pounded and baked together. Here is a receipt:
"To make a March-pane.—Take two pounds of almonds, being blanched, and dryed in a sieve over the fire, beate them in a stone mortar, and when they bee small, mixe them with two pounds of sugar beeing finely beaten, adding two or three spoonefuls of rose-water, and that will keep your almonds from oiling: when your paste is beaten fine, drive it thin with a rowling pin, and so lay it on a bottom of wafers; then raise up a little edge on the side, and so bake it; then yce it with rose-water and sugar, then put it into the oven againe, and when you see your yce is risen up and drie, then take it out of the oven and garnish it with pretie conceipts, as birdes and beasts being cast out of standing-moldes. Sticke long comfits upright into it, cast bisket and carrowaies in it, and so serve it: you may also print of this march-pane paste in your moldes for banqueting dishes. And of this paste our comfit makers at this day make their letters, knots, armes, escutcheons, beasts, birds, and other fancies."—Delightes for Ladies 1608.
March-pane was a constant article in the desserts of our ancestors, and appeared sometimes on more solemn occasions. When Elizabeth visited Cambridge, the University presented their chancellor, Sir William Cecil, with two pairs of gloves, a march-pane, and two sugar-loves. In the old play of Wits we find a reference to
"——dull country madams that spend
Their time in studying recipes to make
March-pane and preserve plumbs."
Castles and other figures were often made of march-pane for splendid desserts, and were demolished by shooting or throwing sugar-plums at them.
Almonds are an olden delicacy of our table, and have for ages been very extensively used in a variety of preparations. Almond-milk, composed of almonds ground and mixed with milk or other liquid, was a favourite beverage, as was also almond-butter and almond-custard. The antiquity of the practice of serving almonds and raisins together at dessert seems to be shown from the name Almonds-and-raisins being given as that of an old English game in Useful Transactions in Philosophy, 1700.
Biscuits (originally Biskets) of various kinds were in use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; among which that most in repute was called Naples Biscuit, from the place where it was first made: it occurs in the Carpenters' Company's books in 1644.
Orange-Flower Water has been a favourite perfume in England since the reign of James I. It occurs in Copley's Wits, Fits, and Fancies, 1614; and in the Accomplished Female Instructor, 1719, is the following recipe:—Take two pounds of orange-flowers, as fresh as you can get them, infuse them in two quarts of white wine, and so distil them, and it will yield a curious perfuming spirit.—Orange Butter was made, according to the Closet of Rarities, 1706, by beating up new cream, and then adding orange-flower and red wine, to give it the colour and scent of an orange.[53]