Or midst those thund'ring spears an orange place,
Sauce like himself, offensive to its foes,
The roguish mustard, dang'rous to the nose.
Sack and the well spiced Hippocras the wine,
Wassail the bowl with ancient ribbands fine,
Porridge with plumbs, and turkeys with the chine."
The seventeenth century was prolific of cook-books, most of which continued to republish the ancient recipes, with but slight augmentations or changes. Many of the old-fashioned dishes still appear in "The Art of Cookery Refined and Augmented," a treatise published in 1654 by Joseph Cooper, former kitchener of Charles I. These indigestibilities abound in "The English Housewife" of Gervaise Markham, an early production of the century, which reached its eighth edition in 1675, "much augmented, purged, and made most profitable and necessary for all men, and the general good of this Nation."[16]
It may be assumed that Markham's recipes were not original with him, but were compiled mostly from anterior works; we have no knowledge of his having been a practical cook. For that matter, he states in his dedication to the Countess Dowager of Exeter that he does not "assume to himself the full invention and scope of the work, for it is true that much of it was a manuscript which many years agone belonged to an Honourable Countess, one of the greatest Glories of our Kingdom." The material, therefore, is due mainly to a member of the gentler sex, while Markham is responsible for the liaison. A voluminous author, he did not hesitate to appropriate whatever material he could find on any topic, more especially on husbandry and angling, and send it out as his own. It is well known, for example, that his "Art of Fishing" in his "Country Contentments" is only a prose rendition of Dennys' attractive poem "The Secrets of Angling." He has been spoken of as the first hack writer of England, all subjects seeming to have been alike to him. So that "The English Housewife," which also includes much interesting information on physics, the dairy, etc., may be regarded as virtually a work of the Elizabethan period.
THE ENGLISH HOUSEWIFE