_Almonds_ are an olden delicacy of our table, and have for ages been very extensively used in a variety of preparations. Almond-milk, composed of almonds ground and mixed with milk or other liquid, was a favourite beverage, as was also almond-butter and almond-custard. The antiquity of the practice of serving almonds and raisins together at dessert seems to be shown from the name Almonds-and-raisins being given as that of an old English game in _Useful Transactions in Philosophy_, 1700. _Biscuits_ (originally Biskets) of various kinds were in use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; among which that most in repute was called Naples Biscuit, from the place where it was first made: it occurs in the Carpenters' Company's books in 1644. _Orange-Flower Water_ has been a favourite perfume in England since the reign of James I. It occurs in Copley's _Wits, Fits, and Fancies_, 1614; and in the _Accomplished Female Instructor_, 1719, is the following recipe:--Take two pounds of orange-flowers, as fresh as you can get them, infuse them in two quarts of white wine, and so distil them, and it will yield a curious perfuming spirit.--_Orange Butter_ was made, according to the _Closet of Rarities_, 1706, by beating up new cream, and then adding orange-flower and red wine, to give it the colour and scent of an orange.[53] DESSERT FRUITS. The only kinds of fruits named in the Countess of Leicester's Expenses, are apples and pears: three hundred of the latter were purchased at Canterbury; probably from the gardens of the monks. It is believed, however, that few other sorts were generally grown in England before the latter end of the fifteenth century; although Matthew Paris, describing the bad season of 1257, observes that "apples were scarce, and pears scarcer, while quinces, vegetables, cherries, plums, and all shell-fruits, were entirely destroyed." These shell-fruits were probably the common hazel-nut, walnuts, and perhaps chestnuts: in 1256, the Sheriffs of London were ordered to buy two thousand chestnuts for the King's use. In the Wardrobe Book of the 14th of Edward the First, before quoted, we find the bill of Nicholas, the royal fruiterer, in which the only fruits mentioned are pears, apples, quinces, medlars, and nuts. The supply of these, from Whitsuntide to November, cost 21_l_. 14_s_. 1-1/2_d_. This apparent scarcity of indigenous fruits naturally leads to the inquiry, what foreign kinds besides those included in the term spicery, such as almonds, dates, figs, and raisins, were imported into England in this and the following century? In the time of John and of Henry the Third, Rochelle was celebrated for its pears and conger eels: the Sheriffs of London purchased a hundred of the former for Henry, in 1223.