Take chickens, and pigeons, and small birds, and make them clean, and chop them to pieces, and stew them altogether in a good broth made of fair grease and ground pepper and cloves, and add verjus to it, and colour it with saffron; then make raised crusts, and pinch them and lay the flesh therein, and put to it currants, and ground ginger, and cinnamon; and take raw eggs, and break them, and strain them through a strainer into the pottage of the stew, and stir it well together, and pour it into the raised crusts, above the flesh, and then place the covers on them and serve them.
The process of serving a peacock “with the skin” also requires some explanation. The skin was first stripped off, with the feathers, tail, and neck and head, and it was spread on a table and strewed with ground cummin; then the peacock was taken and roasted, and “endored” with raw yolks of eggs; and when roasted, and after it had been allowed to cool a little, it was sewn into the skin, and thus served on the table, always with the last course, when it looked as though the bird were alive. To make cokagrys, you must
Take an old cock and pull him, and wash him, and skin him all but the legs, and fill him full of the stuffing made for the pome de oringe; and also take a pig and skin him from the middle downwards, and fill him full of the same stuffing, and sew them fast together, and seethe them; and when they have seethed a good while, take them up and put them on a spit, and roast them well, and endore them with yolks of eggs mixed with saffron; and when they are roasted, before placing them on the table, lay gold and silver foil on them.
Flampoyntes have been already explained. Pears in syrup were merely boiled in wine, and seasoned with sugar and spices.
In these bills of fare, our readers who believe in the prevalence of “old English roast beef,” will find that belief singularly dissipated, for our ancestors seem to have indulged in all sorts of elaborately made dishes, in which immense quantities of spices were employed. The number of receipts in these early cookery-books is wonderfully great, and it is evident that people sought variety almost above all other things. Among the Sloane manuscripts in the library of the British Museum, there is a very complete cookery-book (MS. No. 1201) belonging to the latter part of the fifteenth century, which gives seven bills of fare of seven dinners, each to differ entirely in the dishes composing it from the other, with the object, of course, of giving a different dinner every day during seven consecutive days. In the foregoing bills of fare, we have seen that on flesh-days no fish was introduced on the table, but fish is introduced along with flesh in the seven dinners just alluded to, which are, moreover, curious for the number of articles, chiefly birds, introduced in them, which we are not now accustomed to eat. The first of these bills of fare, which are all limited to two courses, runs as follows:—
First Course, of Eleven Dishes.
Nowmbles (umbles) of an harte. Vyand ryalle. The syde of an hert rostede.
Swanne with chauderoun. Fesaunt rostede. Bytore (bittern) rostede.
Pyke, and grete gurnarde.
Haggesse of Almayne. Blaunche custade.
A sotelté, a blake bore enarmede with golde.
Second Course, of Eleven Dishes.
Gelé. Cream of almonds.
Kynd kydde. Fillets of an herte endored. Squyrelle rost.
Chykons (chickens) ylarded. Partriche and lark rost.
Perche and porpoys rost.
Frytours Lumbard. Payne puffe (puff-bread).
A sotelté, a castelle of sylver with fanes (vanes or flags) of gold.
It appears that at this time it was considered more absolutely necessary than at an earlier period, that each course at table should be accompanied with a subtilty, or ornamental device in pastry, representing groups of various descriptions, as here a black boar and a castle. We have here the porpoise eaten among fishes, and the squirrel among animals; we have before seen hedgehogs served at table. In the “Ménagier de Paris,” a French compilation, made in the year 1393, a hedgehog is directed to have its throat cut, and to be skinned and emptied, and then to be arranged as a chicken, and pressed and well dried in a towel; after this it was to be roasted and eaten with “cameline,” a word the exact meaning of which seems not to be known; or in pastry, with duckling sauce. Squirrels were to be treated as rabbits. The same book gives directions for cooking magpies, rooks, and jackdaws. The second of the seven bills of fare given in the Sloane Manuscript contains turtles (the bird) and throstles, roasted; in the third we have roasted egrets (a species of heron), starlings, and linnets; in the fourth, “martinettes;” in the fifth, barnacles, “molette,” sparrows, and, among fishes, minnows; and in the sixth, roasted cormorants, heathcocks, sheldrakes, dotterels, and thrushes. The seventh bill of fare runs thus:—