And grapes, long lingering on my only wall;
And figs from standard and espalier join;
The devil is in you if you cannot dine.”
The bill of fare at this time often consisted in the month of April of the following: green geese, or veal and bacon—haunch of venison roasted—a lumber pie—rabbits and tarts. Second course: cold lamb—cold neat’s-tongue pie—salmon, lobsters, and prawns—asparagus.
But in other months the following dishes were given—brawn and mustard, hashed shoulder of mutton, broiled geese, minced pies, a loin of veal, marrow pie, venison pasty, a lambstone pie, Westphalia bacon, a Westphalia ham, artichoke pie, neat’s-tongue, and udder roasted, a roast turkey stuck with cloves, and for a second course, Bologna sausages, anchovies, mushrooms, caviare, and pickled oysters, in a dish together.
And now a word as to English cookery books. The “Queen’s Closet Opened,” published in 1662, is the first English cookery book I have been able to meet with, for the “Treasure of Hidden Secrets, or Good Huswife’s Closet,” published in 1600, is but a congeries of receipts for perfumes, essences, and candies. Some of the dishes in the “Queen’s Closet,” maintain their popularity to the present day,—as, for instance, chicken and pigeon pie, boiled rump of beef, and potted venison; but others have wholly passed away,—as, for example, a baked red deer, a capon larded with lemons, a steak pie with a French pudding in it, a fricase (we retain the spelling) of campigneons, a salet of smelts, flounders, or plaice, with garlick and mustard, an olive pie, and dressed snails.
The “Gentleman’s Companion,” published in 1673, is the earliest work of the kind met with after the “Queen’s Closet,” for “May’s Cookery,” “The Ladies’ Companion,” or even “Mrs. Glasse,” written by Dr. Hill, and which has become exceedingly scarce, I do not possess. To what a civilized and social state our gentlewomen had attained 171 years ago, will be apparent from the following extract from Mrs. Woolley.
Some choice observations for a gentlewoman’s behaviour at table. “Gentlewoman, the first thing you are to observe, is to keep your body straight in the chair, and do not lean your elbows on the table. Discover not by any ravenous gesture your angry appetite, nor fix your eyes too greedily on the meat before you, as if you would devour more that way than your throat can swallow. In carving at your own table, distribute the best pieces first, and it will appear very comely and decent to use a fork, if so, touch no piece of meat without it.
“I have been invited to dinner, where I have seen the good gentlewoman of the house sweat more in cutting up a fowl, than the cookmaid in roasting it, and when she had soundly beliquored her joints, hath smelt her knuckles, and to work with them again in the dish; at the sight whereof my belly hath been three-quarters full, before I had swallowed one bit!”—Page 65.
“Do not eat spoon-meat so hot, that the tears stand in your eyes, or that thereby you betray your intolerable greediness. Do not bite your bread, but cut or break it, and keep not your knife always in your hand, for that is as unseemly as a gentlewoman who pretended to have as little a stomach as she had a mouth, and therefore would not swallow her peas in spoonfuls, but took them one by one, and cut them in two before she would eat them.