About prices I find that a leg of mutton cost half-a-crown; a hand of pork eighteenpence; butter was eightpence a pound; sugar, sixpence; candles, fivepence; bacon, sevenpence; rice, sevenpence; tea was sixty shillings a pound. They seem to have had all our vegetables, all our fruit, and all our spices. But the fruit lasted only a short time; oranges appeared at Christmas, but were then unripe and sour; they lasted till April or May; strawberries lasted three or four weeks; cherries about the same time. They knew how to preserve fruit for a short time; and they pickled everything, including nasturtium buds, lime-tree buds, and elder roots. In the stillroom the housewife made wine out of cowslips, gooseberries, raspberries, and any kind of fruit; she also made certain cordials and strong waters; and she made plague water, hysterical water, fever water, and many other efficacious remedies in case of need. The supper, of which very little is said, was served at five or six; it was, like breakfast, a mere informal stay. Cold meat with a “sallet,” a tankard of strong ale, and a pipe of tobacco generally formed this meal. As additional notes on food, one may note that asparagus was common, but as yet very dear; goose-pie was a favourite dish; buttered shrimps were also much in demand; vinegar and pepper were taken with roast beef; the potato was in use since the year 1586, but as yet by no means universally known; roast mutton was stuffed with oysters; young peacock was a stately dish, served only on great occasions; oysters were stewed with white wine; pigeons were stuffed, in the season, with green gooseberries; radishes were taken with meat as a salad; grapes were boiled in butter and served with sips of bread and sugar; turkey was stuffed with cloves; hot salmon was thought unwholesome; dates were put into broth; they used habitually mushrooms, sorrel, capers, and snails. When a man gave a great dinner, he did not expect it to be prepared at home but ordered it at the cooks’ shops, whence it was carried through the streets in a kind of triumphal procession, a server with an apron and a white cap going before. The fiddlers and the trumpeters went the round of the cooks’ shops every day in order to learn where their services might be accepted. In Howell’s _Letters_ we read how, on one occasion, he finds a cook for a lady, and thus describes his qualities:—