But although we have abundant evidence of the general fact that our Norman and English forefathers loved the table, we have but imperfect information on the character of their cookery until the latter half of the fourteenth century, when the rules and receipts for cooking appear to have been very generally committed to writing, and a certain number of cookery-books belonging to this period and to the following century remain in manuscript, forming very curious records of the domestic life of our forefathers. From these I will give a few illustrations of this subject. These cookery-books sometimes contain plans for dinners of different descriptions, or, as we should now say, bills of fare, which enable us, by comparing the names of the dishes with the receipts for making them, to form a tolerably distinct notion of the manner in which our forefathers fared at table from four to five hundred years ago. The first example we shall give is furnished by a manuscript of the beginning of the fifteenth century, and belongs to the latter part of the century preceding; that is, to the reign of Richard II., a period remarkable for the fashion for luxurious living: it gives us the following bill of fare for the ordinary table of a gentleman, which I will arrange in the form of a bill of fare of the present day, modernizing the language, except in the case of obsolete words. _First Course._ Boar’s head enarmed (_larded_), and “bruce,” for pottage. Beef. Mutton. Pestles (_legs_) of Pork. Swan. Roasted Rabbit. Tart. _Second Course._ Drope and Rose, for pottage. Mallard. Pheasant. Chickens, “farsed” and roasted. “Malachis,” baked. _Third Course._ Conings (_rabbits_), in gravy, and hare, in “brasé,” for pottage. Teals, roasted. Woodcocks. Snipes. “Raffyolys,” baked. “Flampoyntes.” It may be well to make the general remark, that the ordinary number of courses at dinner was three. To begin, then, with the first dish, boar’s-head was a favourite article at table, and needs no explanation. The pottage which follows, under the name of _bruce_, was made as follows, according to a receipt in the same cookery-book which has furnished the bill of fare:-- Take the umbles of a swine, and parboil them (_boil them slowly_), and cut them small, and put them in a pot, with some good broth; then take the whites of leeks, and slit them, and cut them small, and put them in, with minced onions, and let it all boil; next take bread steeped in broth, and “draw it up” with blood and vinegar, and put it into a pot, with pepper and cloves, and let it boil; and serve all this together. In the second course, _drope_ is probably an error for _drore_, a pottage, which, according to the same cookery-book, was made as follows:--