Violets were also used, and Miss Amherst quotes from an old cookery book the recipe of a pudding called “Mon amy,” which directs the cook to “plant it with flowers of violets and serve it forth.” Another recipe is for a dish called “Vyolette!” “Take flowrys of vyolet, boyle hem, presse hem, bray (pound) hem smal.” After this they are to be mixed with milk, ‘floure of rys,’ and sugar or honey, and finally to be coloured with violets. Pine-kernels were sometimes eaten. Shelley says of Marenghi:
“His food was the wild fig or strawberry;
The milky pine-nuts which the autumn blast
Shakes into the tall grass.”
And in England Parkinson writes, “The cones or apples are used of divers Vintners in this city, being painted to express a bunch of grapes, whereunto they are very like and are hung up on their bushes, as also to fasten keyes unto them, as is seene in many places. The kernels with the hard shels, while they are fresh, or newly taken out, are used by Apothecaries, Comfitmakers, and Cookes. Of them are made Comfits, Marchpanes and such like, and with them a cunning cook can make divers kech-choses for his master’s table.” Barberries were used as a garnish to salads and other dishes and sometimes as an ingredient. Evelyn mentions them as an item in “Sallet All-sorts,” and Gervase Markham describes the making of “Paste of Genoa,” a confection of Quince, and adds, “In this sort you now make paste of Peares, Apples, Wardens, Plummes of all kindes, Cherries, Barberries or whatever fruit you please.” He adds this fruit to the ingredients required in making aromatic vinegar, and also directs that a good quantity of whole Barberries, both branches and others, be served with Pike “or any fresh fish whatsoever.” Parkinson says, “The leaves are sometimes used in the stead of Sorrell to make sauce for meate, and by reason of their sournesse are of the same quality.” The “delicious confitures d’épine vinette, for which Rouen is famous,” are prepared from them, says Dr Fernie, and there is no doubt that they make an excellent jelly. Formerly they were so much prized that, as Miss Amherst quotes from Le Strange’s “Household Accounts,” in 1618, 3s. was paid for one pound of them.
Strawberry leaves were used as a garnish and for their flavour. Parkinson tells us that they were “alwayes used among other herbes in cooling drinks,” and Markham mentions both them and Violet leaves in his directions to “Smoar a Mallard,” and “to make an excellent Olepotrige, which is the only principall dish of boyled meate, which is esteemed in all Spaine. “For dessert”: The berries are often brought to the table as a rare service, whereunto Cleret wine, creame or milke is added with sugar. The water distilled of the berries is good for the passions of the heart, caused by the perturbation of the spirits being eyther drunk alone or in wine, and maketh the heart mery.” Such a pleasant and easy remedy against the evils arising from “perturbation of spirits” is worth remembering! Gerarde and Parkinson both speak of the prickly strawberry; a plant which is “of no use for meate” but which has “a small head of greene leaves, many set thick together like unto a double ruffe, and is fit for a gentlewoman to wear on her arme, etc. as a raritie instead of a flower.” Gerarde has a curious little note on its discovery. “Mr John Tradescant hath told me that he was the first that took notice of this Strawberry and that in a woman’s garden at Plimouth, whose daughter had gathered and set the roots in her garden, instead of the common Strawberry, but she finding the fruit not answer her expectation, intended to throw it away, which labour he spared her, in taking it and bestowing it among the lovers of such vanities.” The custom of transplanting wild strawberries was very general.
Wife, unto thy garden and set me a plot,
With strawberry rootes of the best to be got.
Such growing abroade, among thorns in the wood,
Wel chosen and picked proove excellent food.
September’s Husbandry.—Tusser.
Miss Amherst says that in the Hampton Court Accounts there are “several entries of money paid for strawberry roots, brought from the wood to the King’s garden.” The fact that this is no longer the custom, may explain the disappointment that some have experienced, who, in the hope of enjoying “the most excellent cordial smell” described by Sir Francis Bacon, have haunted their kitchen gardens when the strawberry leaves are dying, and without reward. The strawberries grown there at present are not, as in his day, natives, subjected to civilisation, but are chiefly of American or Asiatic origin (the first foreign strawberry cultivated in England was Fragaria virginiana, and was introduced from North America in 1629; four years after the Essay on Gardens was first published), and if their leaves have any fragrance, it must be of the faintest possible description. Anyone, however, who passes through a wood, towards evening, especially if it is a mild and slightly damp day in October, may speedily realise how true and admirable was this counsel given by the Great Lord Chancellor.
THE ARMS OF SAFFRON WALDEN.