It is a mark of Anglo-Saxon delicacy, that table-cloths were features at Anglo-Saxon feasts; but, as the long ends were used in place of napkins, the delicacy would be of a somewhat dirty hue, if the cloth were made to serve at a second feast. There was a rude sort of display upon the board; but the order of service was of a quality that would strike the “Jeameses” of the age of Victoria with inexpressible disgust. The meat was never “dished,” and “covers” were as yet unknown. The attendants brought the viands into the dining hall on the spits, knelt to each guest, presented the spit to his consideration; and, the guest having helped himself, the attendant went through the same ceremony with the next guest. Hard drinking followed upon these same ceremonies; and even the monasteries were not exempt from the sins of gluttony and drunkenness. Notwithstanding these bad habits, the Anglo-Saxons were a cleanly people. The warm bath was in general use. Water, for hands and feet, was brought to every stranger on entering a house wherein he was about to tarry and feed; and, it is said that one of the severest penances of the Church was the temporary denial of the bath, and of cutting the hair and nails.
With the Normans came greater grandeur and increased discomfort. They neither knew nor tolerated the use of table-cloths or plain steel forks; but their bill of fare showed more variety and costliness than the Saxons cared for. Their cookery was such an improvement on that of their predecessors in the island, that Norman French, and Norman dishes, flung the Saxon tongue and table into the annihilating position of “vulgarity.” The art was so much esteemed, that Monarchs even granted estates, on condition that the holder thereof should, through his cook, prepare a certain dish at stated periods, and set it before the King. It was under the Normans that the boar’s head had regal honours paid it; and its progress from the kitchen to the banquet was under escort of a guard, and behind the deafening salutes of puffy-cheeked trumpeters. The crane was then what the goose is now,—highly esteemed; yet labouring under the shadow of a suspicion of being “common.” The peacock, on the other hand, was only seen, tail and all, at the tables of the wealthy. Their beverage was of a very bilious character,—spicy and cordialed; namely, hippocras, piment, morat, and mead. The drink of the humbler classes partook of a more choleraic quality. It consisted of cider, perry, and ale. The Norman maxim for good living and plenty of it, was to “rise at five, dine at nine, sup at five, and bed at nine, if you’d live to a hundred all but one.” Dinner at nine is, however, a contradiction of terms; for dinner, as I have said, is the abbreviation of dixième heure, or “ten o’clock,” the time at which all people sat down to a solid repast in the days of the first Williams.
In the two following centuries, cooks and Kings launched into far greater magnificence than had ever, hitherto, been seen in England. Richard II. entertained ten thousand guests daily at his numerous tables; and the exceedingly fast Earl of Leicester, grandson of the equally slow Henry III., is said to have spent twenty-two thousand pounds of silver in one year, in eating, alone. His thirsty household retainers drank no less than three hundred and seventy-one pipes of wine, in the same space of time. At great banquets, the dishes were reckoned by thousands, and Kings in vain dictated decrees denouncing such dinners; for cooks and convives considered them with contempt. As a show of moderation, the old four meals a day were now reduced to two; but these two were connected by such a savoury chain of intermeats and refections, that the board was spread all day long, and guests were never weary:—
“Their life like the life of the Germans would be,
Du lit à la table; de la table au lit.”
To have things “brennying like wildfire,” was the characteristic of the cookery of the period. Confectionery of the richest sorts were the lighter materials of meals, which were abundantly irrigated by hippocras, piment, or claret, or the simpler and purer wines of France, Spain, Syria, and Greece. Thus might a host say:—
“Ye shall have rumney and malespine,
Both ypocrasse and vernage wine;
Mountrasse and wyne of Greke,
Both algrade and despice eke,