Old Cookery Books and Ancient CuisineHazlitt, William Carew
History
Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine
Hazlitt, William Carew
Cooking -- Bibliography; Cooking -- History
also successively printed by Pegge and Warner, there is no apparent
trace of any systematic compilation of this nature at so remote a
date.
The "Form of Cury" was in the 28 Eliz., in the possession of the
Stafford family, and was in that year presented to the Queen by
Edward, Lord Stafford, as is to be gathered from a Latin memorandum
at the end, in his lordship's hand, preserved by Pegge and Warner in
their editions. The fellowship between the arts of healing and cooking
is brought to our recollection by a leonine verse at the end of one of
the shorter separate collections above described:--
"Explicit de Coquina
Quae est optima Medicina."
The "Form of Cury" will amply remunerate a study. It presents the
earliest mention, so far as I can discern, of olive oil, cloves, mace,
and gourds. In the receipts for making Aigredouce and Bardolf, sugar,
that indispensable feature in the _cuisine_, makes its appearance; but
it does so, I should add, in such a way as to lead to the belief
that the use of sugar was at this time becoming more general. The
difficulty, at first, seems to have been in refining it. We encounter
here, too, onions under the name borrowed from the French instead of
the Anglo-Saxon form "ynne leac"; and the prescriptions for making
messes of almonds, pork, peas, and beans are numerous. There is
"Saracen sauce," moreover, possibly as old as the Crusades, and pig
with sage stuffing (from which it was but one step to duck). More
than one species of "galantine" was already known; and I observe the
distinction, in one of the smaller collections printed by Warner,
between the tartlet formed of meat and the tartlet _de fritures_,
of which the latter approaches more nearly our notion. The imperfect
comprehension of harmonies, which is illustrated by the prehistoric
bag-pudding of King Arthur, still continued in the unnatural union of
flesh with sweets. It is now confined to the cottage, whence Arthur
may have himself introduced it at Court and to the Knights of the
Round Table.
In this authority, several of the dishes were to be cooked in _white
grease_, which Warner interprets into _lard_; others demanded olive
oil; but there is no allusion to butter. Among the receipts are
some for dishes "in gravy"; rabbits and chickens were to be treated
similarly; and the gravy appears to have consisted merely of the
broth in which they were boiled, and which was flavoured with pounded
almonds, powdered ginger, and sugar.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account