Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine — John Shaqi
Old Cookery Books and Ancient CuisineHazlitt, William Carew
History
Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine
Hazlitt, William Carew
Cooking -- Bibliography; Cooking -- History
Braithwaite dedicates a section to each officer; but I have only space
to transcribe, by way of sample, the opening portion of his account
of "The Officer of the Kitchen:" "The Master-Cook should be a man of
years; well-experienced, whereby the younger cooks will be drawn the
better to obey his directions. In ancient times noblemen contented
themselves to be served with such as had been bred in their own
houses, but of late times none could please some but Italians and
Frenchmen, or at best brought up in the Court, or under London cooks:
nor would the old manner of baking, boiling, and roasting please them,
but the boiled meats must be after the French fashion, the dishes
garnished about with sugar and preserved plums, the meat covered over
with orangeade, preserved lemons, and with divers other preserved and
conserved stuff fetched from the confectioner's: more lemons and sugar
spent in boiling fish to serve at one meal than might well serve
the whole expense of the house in a day." He goes on to describe and
ridicule the new fashion of placing arms and crests on the dishes.
It seems that all the refuse was the perquisite of the cook and his
subordinates in a regulated proportion, and the same in the bakery and
other branches; but, as may be supposed, in these matters gross abuses
were committed.
In the "Leisure Hour" for 1884 was printed a series of papers on
"English Homes in the Olden Times." The eleventh deals with service
and wages, and is noticed here because it affords a recital of the
orders made for his household by John Harington the elder in 1566,
and renewed by John Harington the younger, his son and High Sheriff of
Somersetshire, in 1592.
This code of domestic discipline for an Elizabethan establishment
comprises the observance of decorum and duty at table, and is at least
as valuable and curious as those metrical canons and precepts which
form the volume (Babees' Book) edited for the Early English Text
Society, etc.
There is rather too general a dislike on the part of antiquaries
to take cognisance of matter inserted in popular periodicals upon
subjects of an archaeological character; but of course the loose and
flimsy treatment which this class of topics as a rule receives in the
light literature of the day makes it perilous to use information
so forthcoming in evidence or quotation. Articles must be rendered
palatable to the general reader, and thus become worthless for all
readers alike.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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