Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

by William Carew Hazlitt

Another mark of refinement is the resort to the napron, corruptly apron, to protect the dress during the performance of kitchen work. But the fifteenth century was evidently growing wealthier in its articles of use and luxury; the garden and the kitchen only kept pace with the bed-chamber and the dining-hall, the dairy and the laundry, the stable and the out-buildings. An extensive nomenclature was steadily growing up, and the Latin, old French, and Saxon terms were giving way on all sides to the English. It has been now for some time an allowed and understood thing that in these domestic backgrounds the growth of our country and the minuter traits of private life are to be studied with most clear and usurious profit.

The trencher, at first of bread, then of wood, after a while of pewter, and eventually of pottery, porcelain or china-earth, as it was called, and the precious metals, afforded abundant scope for the fancy of the artist, even in the remote days when the material for it came from the timber-dealer, and sets of twelve were sometimes decorated on the face with subjects taken from real life, and on the back with emblems of the purpose to which they were destined.

Puttenham, whose "Art of English Poetry" lay in MS. some years before it was published in 1589, speaks of the posies on trenchers and banqueting dishes. The author of "Our English Home" alludes to a very curious set, painted in subjects and belonging to the reign of James I., which was exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries' rooms by Colonel Sykes.

It is to be augured that, with the progress of refinement, the meats were served upon the table on dishes instead of trenchers, and that the latter were reserved for use by the guests of the family. For in the "Serving-man's Comfort," 1598, one reads:—"Even so the gentlemanly serving-man, whose life and manners doth equal his birth and bringing up, scorneth the society of these sots, or to place a dish where they give a trencher"; and speaking of the passion of people for raising themselves above their extraction, the writer, a little farther on, observes: "For the yeoman's son, as I said before, leaving gee haigh! for, Butler, some more fair trenchers to the table! bringeth these ensuing ulcers amongst the members of the common body."

The employment of trenchers, which originated in the manner which I have shown, introduced the custom of the distribution at table of the two sexes, and the fashion of placing a lady and gentleman alternately. In former days it was frequently usual for a couple thus seated together to eat from one trencher, more particularly if the relations between them were of an intimate nature, or, again, if it were the master and mistress of the establishment. Walpole relates that so late as the middle of the last century the old Duke and Duchess of Hamilton occupied the dais at the head of the room, and preserved the traditional manner by sharing the same plate. It was a token of attachment and a tender recollection of unreturnable youth.

The prejudice against the fork in England remained very steadfast actual centuries after its first introduction; forks are particularised among the treasures of kings, as if they had been crown jewels, in the same manner as the iron spits, pots, and frying-pans of his Majesty Edward III.; and even so late as the seventeeth century, Coryat, who employed one after his visit to Italy, was nicknamed "Furcifer." The two-pronged implement long outlived Coryat; and it is to be seen in cutlers' signs even down to our day. The old dessert set, curiously enough, instead of consisting of knives and forks in equal proportions, contained eleven knives and one fork for ginger. Both the fork and spoon were frequently made with handles of glass or crystal, like those of mother-of-pearl at present in vogue.

In a tract coeval with Coryat the Fork-bearer, Breton's "Court and Country," 1618, there is a passage very relevant to this part of the theme:—"For us in the country," says he, "when we have washed our hands after no foul work, nor handling any unwholesome thing, we need no little forks to make hay with our mouths, to throw our meat into them."

Forks, though not employed by the community, became part of the effects of royal and great personages, and in the inventory of Charles V. of France appear the spoon, knife, and fork. In another of the Duke of Burgundy, sixty years later (1420), knives and other implements occur, but no fork. The cutlery is described here as of German make. Brathwaite, in his "Rules for the Government of the House of an Earl," probably written about 1617, mentions knives and spoons, but not forks.

As the fork grew out of the chopstick, the spoon was probably suggested by the ladle, a form of implement employed alike by the baker and the cook; for the early tool which we see in the hands of the operative in the oven more nearly resembles in the bowl a spoon than a shovel. In India nowadays they have ladles, but not spoons. The universality of broths and semi-liquid substances, as well as the commencement of a taste for learned gravies, prompted a recourse to new expedients for communicating between the platter and the mouth; and some person of genius saw how the difficulty might be solved by adapting the ladle to individual service. But every religion has its quota of dissent, and there were, nay, are still, many who professed adherence to the sturdy simplicity of their progenitors, and saw in this daring reform and the fallow blade of the knife a certain effeminate prodigality.

It is significant of the drift of recent years toward the monograph, that, in 1846, Mr. Westman published "The Spoon: Primitive, Egyptian, Roman, Mediaeval and Modern," with one hundred illustrations, in an octavo volume.