The domestic comforts that graced the private life within these castle halls, formed striking contrasts to the magnificence of the knightly and military displays, although the walls often were hung with gorgeous tapestries, and the banqueting table groaned beneath the weight of gold and silver, the refinements essential to modern ideas of comfort were unknown. The fingers of the eater supplied the place of forks, and when withdrawn from rich dishes, were often employed in tearing the morsels of food asunder. Straw and rushes were the substitutes for carpets, and clumsy wooden benches and tables supported the guests and viands at these entertainments; those who were unfortunate enough not to obtain a seat at the board were compelled to make use of the floor. Several English estates were held upon condition of furnishing straw for royal beds, and litter for the apartment floors of a palace; and the office of rush strewer remained in the list of the royal household to a very late period. Doubtless these deficiences were of slight importance to an active out-door people, whose happiness consisted in large retinues, rich armours, and splendid tournaments; even the ladies, with hunting, hawking, and the occasional amusement of displaying their skill in archery from the loop-holes or ramparts of their castles, when acting as viceroys for their sovereign lords, no doubt could well dispense with the minor occupations of refined civilization. The bill of fare of a feudal banquet would possibly astonish and puzzle the gastronomic powers and digestive organs of the nineteenth century, although cookery was esteemed as a noble science even then, in the days when Soyer was not. The boar’s head, the peacock, occasionally served up in his feathers, the crane or young herons, might not have been altogether bad substitutes for turkeys and geese, but whether larded, roasted, and eaten with ginger, and often served in their feathers, they might have been suited to our modern tastes is problematical; porpoises and seals that often appeared in the list of “goodly provisions” for special occasions, may scarcely be deemed more of dainties; and the compounds that figure in some of the recipes extant, of the more mystical entrées, present to the eye such medleys, that we feel certain of a preference for the plain “roast” or “boil,” in feudal times, at least, if not at all others. Force-meats, compounded of pork, figs, cheese, and ale, seasoned with pepper, saffron, and salt, baked in a crust, and garnished with powderings of sugar and comforts, may be quoted as a sample of their made dishes, while beef-tea, enriched with pork fat, beaten up with cream and sweetened with honey, as directed by their form, possibly was classed among the delicate soups, or ranged under the head of “_sick cookery_.”