Their vicinity to East Cheap, the great centre of early taverns and cook's-shops, obtained for Pudding Lane and Pie Corner those savoury designations.
Paris, like London, had its cook's-shops, where you might eat your dinner on the premises, or have it brought to your lodging in a covered dish by a porte-chape. In the old prints of French kitchen interiors, the cook's inseparable companion is his ladle, which he used for stirring and serving, and occasionally for dealing a refractory garçon de cuisine a rap on the head.
The Dictionary of Johannes de Garlandia (early thirteenth century) represents the cooks at Paris as imposing on the ignorant and inexperienced badly cooked or even tainted meat, which injured their health. These "coquinarii" stood, perhaps, in the same relation to those times as our keepers of restaurants.
He mentions in another place that the cooks washed their utensils in hot water, as well as the plates and dishes on which the victuals were served.
Mr. Wright has cited an instance from the romance of "Doon de Mayence," where the guards of a castle, on a warm summer evening, partook of their meal in a field. Refreshment in the open air was also usual in the hunting season, when a party were at a distance from home; and the garden arbour was occasionally converted to this kind of purpose, when it had assumed its more modern phase. But our picnic was unknown.
ETIQUETTE OF THE TABLE.
Paul Hentzner, who was in England at the end of the reign of Elizabeth, remarks of the people whom he saw that "they are more polite in eating than the French, devouring less bread, but more meat, which they roast in perfection. They put a good deal of sugar in their drink."