“A perfume for a sweet bagg. Take half a pound of Cypress Roots, a pound of Orris, 3 quarters of a pound of Rhodium, a pound of Coriander Seed, 3 quarter of a pound of Calamus, 3 orange stick wth cloves, 2 ounces of Benjamin, and an ounce of Storax and 4 pecks of Damask Rose leaves, a peck of dryed sweet Marjerum, a pretty stick of Juniper shaved very thin, some lemon pele dryed and a stick of Brasill; let all these be powdered very grosely for ye first year and immediately put into your baggs; the next year pound and work it and it will be very good again.”
The “Countesse of Kent’s” still-room book, which was one of the first to be published, contains more recipes against the Plague than most, and with one of these we find the instruction that it must be taken three times, “for the first helpeth not.” Amongst much that is gruesome there is a pleasant recipe entitled “A comfortable cordial to cheer the heart,” which runs thus: “Take one ounce of conserve of gilliflowers, four grains of the best Musk, bruised as fine as flower, then put it into a little tin pot and keep it till you have need to make this cordial following: Viz.: Take the quantity of one Nutmeg out of your tin pot, put to it one spoonful of cinnamon water, and one spoonful of the sirrup of gillifloures, ambergreece, mix all these together and drink them in the morning, fasting three or four hours, this is most comfortable.” The chef d’œuvre of the collection, at least in the author’s opinion, is one introduced with this flourish, but it is too long for me to quote more than the comprehensive title:—“The Countesse of Kent’s powder, good against all malignant and pestilent diseases, French Pox, Small Pox, Measles, Plague, Pestilence, Malignant or Scarlet Feavers, good against melancholy, dejection of Spirits, twenty or thirty grains thereof being exhibited in a little warm Sack or Hartshorn Jelly to a Man and half as much or twelve grains to a Childe.”
Far more attractive than the volume which bears the “Countesse of Kent’s” name are the little-known books by Tryon. They are full of discourses and sermons, introduced at the most unexpected moments. Indeed, there are few subjects on which Tryon does not lecture his readers, from giving servants extra work on Sundays by having “greasy platters and Bloody-Bones more on Sunday than any other Day,” to sleeping in feather beds. It is interesting to find that women had already taken to smoking in the seventeenth century, and Tryon admonishes them thus:—“Nor is it become infrequent, for women also to smoak Tobacco. Tobacco being an Herb of Mars and Saturn, it hath its fiery Quality from Mars, and its Poysonous fulsome attractive Nature from Saturn: the common use of it in Pipes is very injurious to all sorts of people but more especially to the Female Sex.” Tryon seems to have been somewhat of a Socialist, and he takes great delight in commiserating “Lords, Aldermen, the Rich and the Great,” who are driven to “heartily envying those Jolley Swains, who feed only with Bread and Cheese, and trotting up to the knees in Dirt, do yet with lusty limbs, and vigorous stomach, and merry Hearts, and undisturbed Heads, whistle out more sollid joys than the others, with all their Wealth and State can purchase.”
The most famous of all still-room books was that written by Sir Kenelm Digby, the friend of Kings and philosophers and himself a man of science, a doctor, an occultist, a privateer and a herbalist. Indeed it would be impossible to catalogue his activities, and he has always been recognised as the type par excellence of the gifted amateur. Sir Kenelm was the elder son of the Digby who was one of the leaders in the Gunpowder Plot. Himself a man of European reputation, he numbered among his friends Bacon, Ben Jonson, Galileo, Descartes, Harvey and Cromwell. Queen Marie de’ Medici was only one of many women who fell in love with him, but his one love was his wife, one of the most beautiful women of her day—Venetia Anastasia Stanley, immortalised by Van Dyck and Ben Jonson. Sir Kenelm Digby was the intimate friend of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, and after the Restoration he was a prominent figure at the Court of Charles II. When the Royal Society was inaugurated in 1663, he was one of the Council, and his house in Covent Garden was a centre where all the wits, occultists and men of letters forgathered. Aubrey tells us that after the Restoration he lived “in the last faire house westward in the north portico of Covent Garden where my lord Denzill Hollis lived since. He had a laboratory there.”[133] One reads so much of the extravagances and excesses of Restoration days that it is all the pleasanter to remember the people of whom little has been written, the thousands of quiet folk who loved their homes and gardens and took delight in simple pleasures. It is of these people Sir Kenelm Digby’s book reminds us, and even the names of his recipes are soothing reading—syllabubs, hydromel, mead, quidannies, tansies, slipp-coat-cheeses, manchets, and so forth. Moreover, there is no savour of the shop in these recipes, the book being full rather of flowers and herbs. It is also very leisurely, and in these days that, too, is soothing. Time we frequently find measured thus:—“Whiles you can say the Miserere Psalm very slowly” or “about an Ave Maria while.” It takes us back to a simple old world when great ladies not only looked well to the ways of their households, but attended themselves to the more important domestic matters. Sir Kenelm collected these recipes assiduously from his friends, and each housekeeper’s pride in her speciality is very evident. To mention only a few of these, we find:—“Scotch Ale from my Lady Holmeby,” “A very pleasant drink of Apples,” “Master Webb’s Ale and Bragot,” “Apples in Gelly,” “To make Bisket,” “Sir Paul Neal’s way of making Cider,” “My Lord of St. Alban’s Cresme Fouettee,” “The Queen’s Barley Cream,” “To pickle capons my Lady Portland’s way,” “Pickled Champignons,” “A Flomery-Caudle,” “My Lord Hollis Hydromel,” “Master Corsellises Antwerp Meath,” “My own considerations for making of Meathe,” “Meathe from the Muscovian Ambassadors Steward,” “White Metheglin of my Lady Hungerford’s which is exceedingly praised,” “My Lord of Denbigh’s Almond March-pane,” “My Lord Lumley’s Pease-pottage,” “Pease of the seed, buds of Tulips,” “A soothing Quiddany or Gelly of the Cores of Quinces,” “Sack with clove gilly-flowers,” “My Lord of Carlile’s Sack-posset,” “To make a whip Syllabub,” “Sucket of Mallow-stalks,” “The Countess of Newport’s Cherry Wine.” We may forget the recipes themselves, but the memory of them is associated with the fragrance of gillifiowers, roses, cowslips, elder flowers, violets, thyme, marjoram and the like. I give but these few below, and I wish there were space for more; for not only are they excellent in themselves, but, in common with all those in Sir Kenelm Digby’s book, they give more, perhaps, of the atmosphere of the old still-rooms than is to be found in any other collection.
“Sweet meat of Apples. My Lady Barclay makes her fine Apple-gelly with slices of John apples. Sometimes she mingles a few pippins with the Johns to make the gelly. But she liketh best the Johns single and the colour is paler. You first fill the glass with slices round-wise cut, and then the Gelly is poured in to fill up the vacuities. The Gelly must be boiled to a good stiffness. Then when it is ready to take from the fire, you put in some juyce of Lemon, and of Orange too, if you like it, but these must not boil; yet it must stand a while upon the fire stewing in good heat, to have the juyces incorporate and penetrate well. You must also put in some Ambergreece, which doth exceeding well in this sweet-meat.”
“Wheaten Flommery. In the West Country they make a kind of Flommery of wheat flower, which they judge to be more harty and pleasant then that of Oat-meal, thus; take half, or a quarter of a bushel of good Bran of the best wheat (which containeth the purest flower of it, though little, and is used to make starch), and in a great wooden bowl or pail, let it soak with cold water upon it three or four days. Then strain out the milky water from it, and boil it up to a gelly or like starch. Which you may season with Sugar and Rose or Orange-flower-water and let it stand till it be cold, and gellied. Then eat it with white or Rhenish-wine, or Cream, or Milk, or Ale.”
“A Flomery Caudle. When Flomery is made and cold, you may make a pleasant and wholesome caudle of it by taking some lumps and spoonfuls of it, and boil it with Ale and White wine, then sweeten it to your taste with Sugar. There will remain in the Caudle some lumps of the congealed flomery which are not ungrateful.”
“Conserve of Red Roses. Doctor Glisson makes his Conserve of red Roses thus: Boil gently a pound of red Rose-leaves (well picked, and the nails cut off) in about a pint and a half (or a little more, as by discretion you shall judge fit, after having done it once; the Doctor’s Apothecary takes two pints) of Spring water; till the water have drawn out all the Tincture of the Roses into itself, and that the leaves be very tender, and look pale like Linnen; which may be in a good half hour, or an hour, keeping the pot covered whiles it boileth. Then pour the tincted Liquor from the pale leaves (strain it out, pressing it gently, so that you may have Liquor enough to dissolve your Sugar) and set it upon the fire by itself to boil, putting into it a pound of pure double refined Sugar in small Powder; which as soon as it is dissolved, put into it a second pound, then a third, lastly a fourth, so that you have four pounds of sugar to every pound of Rose-leaves. (The Apothecary useth to put all the four pounds into the Liquor altogether at once.) Boil these four pounds of Sugar with the tincted Liquor, till it be a high Syrup, very near a candy height (as high as it can be not to flake or candy). Then put the pale Rose-leaves into this high Syrup, as it yet standeth upon the fire, or immediately upon the taking it off the fire. But presently take it from the fire, and stir them exceeding well together, to mix them uniformly; then let them stand till they be cold, then pot them up. If you put your Conserve into pots whiles it is yet thoroughly warm, and leave them uncovered some days, putting them in the hot Sun or stove, there will grow a fine candy on the top, which will preserve the conserve without paper upon it, from moulding, till you break the candied crust to take out some of the conserve.
“The colour both of the Rose-leaves and the Syrup about them, will be exceedingly beautiful and red, and the taste excellent, and the whole very tender and smoothing, and easie to digest in the stomack without clogging it, as doth the ordinary rough conserve made of raw Roses beaten with Sugar, which is very rough in the throat. The worst of it is, that if you put not a Paper to lie always close upon the top of the conserve, it will be apt to grow mouldy there on the top; especially après que le pot est entamé.”
Under another “conserve of red roses” we find this note:—“Doctor Bacon useth to make a pleasant Julip of this Conserve of Roses, by putting a good spoonful of it into a large drinking glass or cup; upon which squeeze the juyce made of a Lemon, and slip in unto it a little of the yellow rinde of the Lemon; work these well together with the back of a spoon, putting water to it by little and little, till you have filled up the glass with Spring water: so drink it. He sometimes passeth it through an Hypocras bag and then it is a beautiful and pleasant Liquor.”