We will rapidly glance over the alimentary matters which our forefathers obtained from the animal and vegetable kingdom, and then trace the progress of culinary art, and examine the rules of feasts and such matters as belong to the epicurean customs of the Middle Ages.

Aliments.

Bread.--The Gauls, who principally inhabited deep and thick forests, fed on herbs and fruits, and particularly on acorns. It is even possible that the veneration in which they held the oak had no other origin. This primitive food continued in use, at least in times of famine, up to the eighth century, and we find in the regulations of St. Chrodegand that if, in consequence of a bad year, the acorn or beech-nut became scarce, it was the bishop's duty to provide something to make up for it. Eight centuries later, when René du Bellay, Bishop of Mans, came to report to Francis I. the fearful poverty of his diocese, he informed the king that the inhabitants in many places were reduced to subsisting on acorn bread.

[Figs. 72 and 73.]--Corn-threshing and Bread-making.--Miniatures from the Calendar of a Book of Hours.--Manuscript of the Sixteenth Century.

In the earliest times bread was cooked under the embers. The use of ovens was introduced into Europe by the Romans, who had found them in Egypt. But, notwithstanding this importation, the old system of cooking was long after employed, for in the tenth century Raimbold, abbot of the monastery of St. Thierry, near Rheims, ordered in his will that on the day of his death bread cooked under the embers--panes subcinericios--should be given to his monks. By feudal law the lord was bound to bake the bread of his vassals, for which they were taxed, but the latter often preferred to cook their flour at home in the embers of their own hearths, rather than to carry it to the public oven.

[Fig. 74.]--The Miller.--From an Engraving of the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.

It must be stated that the custom of leavening the dough by the addition of a ferment was not universally adopted amongst the ancients. For this reason, as the dough without leaven could only produce a heavy and indigestible bread, they were careful, in order to secure their loaves being thoroughly cooked, to make them very thin. These loaves served as plates for cutting up the other food upon, and when they thus became saturated with the sauce and gravy they were eaten as cakes. The use of the tourteaux (small crusty loaves), which were at first called tranchoirs and subsequently tailloirs, remained long in fashion even at the most splendid banquets. Thus, in 1336, the Dauphin of Vienna, Humbert II., had, besides the small white bread, four small loaves to serve as tranchoirs at table. The "Ménagier de Paris" mentions "des pains de tranchouers half a foot in diameter, and four fingers deep," and Froissart the historian also speaks of tailloirs.

It would be difficult to point out the exact period at which leavening bread was adopted in Europe, but we can assert that in the Middle Ages it was anything but general. Yeast, which, according to Pliny, was already known to the Gauls, was reserved for pastry, and it was only at the end of the sixteenth century that the bakers of Paris used it for bread.

At first the trades of miller and baker were carried on by the same person (Figs. [74] and [75]). The man who undertook the grinding of the grain had ovens near his mill, which he let to his lord to bake bread, when he did not confine his business to persons who sent him their corn to grind.

[Fig. 75.]--The Baker.--From an Engraving of the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.