William Carew Hazlitt

“ And this seems to be necessary, especially for those who were advanced in age, whose palates, with their bodies, had lost their vigour as to taste, whose digestive faculty grew weak and impotent; and thence proceeded the use of soops and savoury messes; so that cookery then began to become a science, though luxury had not brought it to the height of an art. Thus we read, that Jacob made such palatable pottage, that Esau purchased a mess of it at the extravagant price of his birthright. ”

“ The eye seems to meet for the first time with hasty pudding, plum-porridge (an experiment toward the solidification of the older plum-broth) , rolled beef-steaks, samphire, hedgehog cream (so called from its shape, currants being used for the eyes, and cut almonds for the bristles) , cocks'-combs, orange, spinach and bean tarts, custards in cups (the 1723 book talks of jellies served on china plates) , and lastly, jam—the real jam of these days, made to last, as we are told, the whole year. ”

“ What you will find in the following sheets, are directions generally for dressing after the best, most natural, and wholesome manner, such provisions as are the product of our own country, and in such a manner as is most agreeable to English palates: saving that I have so far temporized, as, since we have to our disgrace so fondly admired the French tongue, French modes, and also French messes, to present you now and then with such receipts of French cookery, as I think may not be disagreeable to English palates. ”

“ The "Liber Cure Cocorum," which is apparently extant only in a fifteenth century MS., is a metrical treatise, instructing its readers how to prepare certain dishes, condiments and accessories; and presents, for the most part, a repetition of what has already occurred in earlier and more comprehensive undertakings. ”

“ And I cannot but believe, that those celebrated performers, notwithstanding all their professions of having ingenuously communicated their art, industriously concealed their best receipts from the publick.
"But what I here present the world with is the product of my own experience, and that for the space of thirty years and upwards; during which time I have been constantly employed in fashionable and noble families, in which the provisions ordered according to the following directions, have had the general approbation of such as have been at many noble entertainments. ”

“ They are very proper for those generous, charitable, and Christian gentlewomen that have a disposition to be serviceable to their poor country neighbours, labouring under any of the afflicted circumstances mentioned; who by making the medicines, and generously contributing as occasions offer, may help the poor in their afflictions, gain their good-will and wishes, entitle themselves to their blessings and prayers, and also have the pleasure of seeing the good they do in this world, and have good reason to hope for a reward (though not by way of merit) in the world to come. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Even in the latter part of the seventeenth century the old-fashioned dishes, better suited to the country than to the Court taste, remained in fashion, and are included in receipt-books, even in that published by Joseph Cooper, who had been head-cook to Charles I, and who styles his 1654 volume "The Art of Cookery Refined and Augmented." He gives us two varieties of oatmeal pudding, French barley pudding, and hasty pudding in a bag. ”

“ Albans," 1486, is, perhaps, next to the "Noble Book of Cookery," the oldest receptacle for information on the subject in hand. The former, however, deals with cookery only in an incidental and special way. Like Arnold's Chronicle, the St. Albans volume is a miscellany comprehending nearly all the matters that were apt to interest the few educated persons who were qualified to peruse its pages; and amid a variety of allied topics we come here across a catalogue of terms used in speaking of certain dishes of that day. ”

“ But when men began to pass from a vegetable to an animal diet, and feed on flesh, fowls, and fish, then seasonings grew necessary, both to render it more palatable and savoury, and also to preserve that part which was not immediately spent from stinking and corruption: and probably salt was the first seasoning discover'd ”

“ Where their superiors in rank regarded them as little more than mechanical instruments for carrying on the business of life, the poor have left behind them few records of their mode of sustenance and of the food which enabled them to follow their daily toil. ”

“ That Esau was the first cook, I shall not presume to assert; for Abraham gave order to dress a fatted calf; but Esau is the first person mentioned that made any advances beyond plain dressing, as boiling, roasting, &c. For though we find indeed, that Rebecca his mother was accomplished with the skill of making savoury meat as well as he, yet whether he learned it from her, or she from him, is a question too knotty for me to determine. ”

“ It instructs them what they will require, if they desire to see their establishment well-ordered; but we soon perceive that the author has in view the arrangements indispensable for a family of high rank and pretensions; and it may be once for all observed that this kind of literature seldom proves of much service to us in an investigation of the state of the poor, until we come to the fifteenth or even sixteenth century, when the artists of Germany and the Low Countries began to delineate those scenes in industrial and servile life, which time and change have rendered so valuable. ”

“ Venner, who practised in the spring and autumn at Bath as a physician, had no relish for the poorer classes, who did not fare well at the hands of their superiors in any sense in the excellent old days. ”

“ In 1683 we come to a little volume entitled "The Young Cook's Monitor," by M.H., who made it public for the benefit of his (or her) scholars; a really valuable and comprehensive manual, wherein, without any attempt at arrangement, there is an ample assemblage of directions for preparing for the table all kinds of joints, made dishes, soups and broths, frigacies, puddings, pies, tarts, tansies, and jellies. Receipts for pickling are included, and two ways are shown how we should treat turnips after this wise. Some of the ingredients proposed for sauces seem to our ears rather prodigious. ”

“ These receipts are all suitable to English constitutions and English palates, wholesome, toothsome, all practicable and easy to be performed. Here are those proper for a frugal, and also for a sumptuous table, and if rightly observed, will prevent the spoiling of many a good dish of meat, the waste of many good materials, the vexation that frequently attends such mismanagements, and the curses not unfrequently bestowed on cooks with the usual reflection, that whereas God sends good meat, the devil sends cooks. ”

“ There is a receipt for a carraway cake, for a cabbage pudding, and for a chocolate tart.
The production by his Grace of Bolton's other chef, John Middleton, is "Five Hundred New Receipts in Cookery, Confectionary, Pastry, Preserving, Conserving, Pickling," and the date is 1734. Middleton doubtless borrowed a good deal from his predecessor; but he also appears to have made some improvements in the science. We have here the methods, to dress pikes à la sauce Robert, to make blackcaps (apples baked in their skins) ; to make a Wood Street cake; to make Shrewsbury cakes ”

“ Nott opens with Some Divertisements in Cookery, us'd at Festival-Times, as Twelfth-Day, etc., which are highly curious, and his dictionary itself presents the novelty of being arranged, lexicon-wise, alphabetically. He seems to have been a fairly-read and intelligent man, and cites, in the course of his work, many celebrated names and receipts. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Roll comprises 196 receipts, and commences with a sort of preamble and a Table of Contents. In the former it is worth noting that the enterprise was undertaken "by the assent and avisement of masters of physic and of philosophy, that dwelled in his (Richard II.'s) court," which illustrates the ancient alliance between medicine and cookery, which has not till lately been dissolved. The directions were to enable a man "to make common pottages and common meats for the household, as they should be made, craftily and wholesomely;" ”

“ One of the engravings in the "French Gardener" represents women rolling out paste, preparing vegetables, and boiling conserves.
There is a rather quaint and attractive class of miscellaneous receipt-books, not made so on account of any particular merit in their contents, but by reason of their association with some person of quality. MS. Sloane 1367, is a narrow octavo volume, for instance, containing "My Lady Rennelagh's choice Receipts: as also some of Capt. Gvilt's, who valued them above gold." ”

“ The treatise is divided into ten parts: cookery contains above an hundred receipts, pickles fifty, puddings above fifty, pastry above forty, cakes forty, creams and jellies above forty, preserving an hundred, made wines forty, cordial waters and powders above seventy, medicines and salves above two hundred ”