The greater number of these soups were very rich, very expensive, several being served at the same time; and in order to please the eye as well as the taste they were generally made of various colours, sweetened with sugar, and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and aromatic herbs, such as marjoram, sage, thyme, sweet basil, savoury, &c. [Illustration: Fig. 114.--Coppersmith, designed and engraved in the Sixteenth Century by J. Amman.] These descriptions of soups were perfect luxuries, and were taken instead of sweets. As a proof of this we must refer to the famous _soupe dorée_, the description of which is given by Taillevent, head cook of Charles VII., in the following words, "Toast slices of bread, throw them into a jelly made of sugar, white wine, yolk of egg, and rosewater; when they are well soaked fry them, then throw them again into the rosewater and sprinkle them with sugar and saffron." [Illustration: Fig. 115.--Kitchen and Table Uensils:-- 1, Carving-knife (Sixteenth Century); 2, Chalice or Cup, with Cover (Fourteenth Century); 3, Doubled-handled Pot, in Copper (Ninth Century); 4, Metal Boiler, or Tin Pot, taken from "L'Histoire de la Belle Hélaine" (Fifteenth Century); 5, Knife (Sixteenth Century); 6, Pot, with Handles (Fourteenth Century); 7, Copper Boiler, taken from "L'Histoire de la Belle Hélaine" (Fifteenth Century); 8, Ewer, with Handle, in Oriental Fashion (Ninth Century); 9, Pitcher, sculptured, from among the Decorations of the Church of St. Benedict, Paris (Fifteenth Century); 10, Two-branched Candlestick (Sixteenth Century); 11, Cauldron (Fifteenth Century). ] It is possible that even now this kind of soup might find some favour; but we cannot say the same for those made with mustard, hemp-seed, millet, verjuice, and a number of others much in repute at that period; for we see in Rabelais that the French were the greatest soup eaters in the world, and boasted to be the inventors of seventy sorts. We have already remarked that broths were in use at the remotest periods, for, from the time that the practice of boiling various meats was first adopted, it must have been discovered that the water in which they were so boiled became savoury and nourishing. "In the time of the great King Francis I.," says Noël du Fail, in his "Contes d'Eutrapel," "in many places the saucepan was put on to the table, on which there was only one other large dish, of beef, mutton, veal, and bacon, garnished with a large bunch of cooked herbs, the whole of which mixture composed a porridge, and a real restorer and elixir of life. From this came the adage, 'The soup in the great pot and the dainties in the hotch-potch.'"