The Forme of Cury | Page 5

than 14 ingredients. The
physicians appear only to have taken care that nothing directly noxious
was suffered to enter the forms. However, in the Editor's MS. No. 11,
there is a prescription for making a _colys_, I presume a _cullis_, or
Invigorating broth; for which see Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. II. 124. vol.
V. 148. vol. VI. 355. and the several plays mentioned in a note to the
first mentioned passage in the Edit. 1780 [69].
I observe further, in regard to this point, that the quantities of things are
seldom specified [70], but are too much left to the taste and judgement
of the cook, if he should happen to be rash and inconsiderate, or of a
bad and undistinguishing taste, was capable of doing much harm to the
guests, to invalids especially.
Though the cooks at Rome, as has been already noted, were amongst
the lowest slaves, yet it was not so more anciently; Sarah and Rebecca
cook, and so do Patroclus and Automedon in the ninth Iliad. It were to
be wished indeed, that the Reader could be made acquainted with the
names of our _master-cooks_, but it is not in the power of the Editor to
gratify him in that; this, however, he may be assured of, that as the Art
was of consequence in the reign of Richard, a prince renowned and
celebrated in the Roll [71], for the splendor and elegance of his table,
they must have been persons of no inconsiderable rank: the king's first
and second cooks are now esquires by their office, and there is all the
reason in the world to believe they were of equal dignity heretofore
[72]. To say a word of king _Richard_: he is said in the proeme to have
been 'acounted the best and ryallest vyaund [curioso in eating] of all
esten kynges.' This, however, must rest upon the testimony of our
cooks, since it does not appear otherwise by the suffrage of history, that
he was particularly remarkable for his niceness and delicacy in eating,
like Heliogabalus, whose favourite dishes are said to have been the
tongues of peacocks and nightingales, and the brains of parrots and
pheasants [73]; or like Sept. Geta, who, according to Jul. Capitolinus
[74], was so curious, so whimsical, as to order the dishes at his dinners
to consist of things which all began with the same letters. Sardanapalus

again as we have it in Athenæus [75], gave a _præmium_ to any one
that invented and served him with some novel cate; and Sergius Orata
built a house at the entrance of the Lucrine lake, purposely for the
pleasure and convenience of eating the oysters perfectly fresh. Richard
II is certainly not represented in story as resembling any such epicures,
or capriccioso's, as these [76]. It may, however, be fairly presumed, that
good living was not wanting among the luxuries of that effeminate and
dissipated reign.
[Addenda: after _ninth Iliad_, add, 'And Dr. Shaw writes, p. 301, that
even now in the East, the greatest prince is not ashamed to fetch a lamb
from his herd and kill it, whilst the princess is impatient till she hath
prepared her fire and her kettle to dress it.']
[Addenda: after heretofore add, 'we have some good families in
England of the name of Cook or Coke. I know not what they may think;
but we may depend upon it, they all originally sprang from real and
professional cooks; and they need not be ashamed of their extraction,
any more than the _Butlers_, _Parkers_, _Spencers_, &c.']
My next observation is, that the messes both in the roll and the Editor's
MS, are chiefly soups, potages, ragouts, hashes, and the like
hotche-potches; entire joints of meat being never _served_, and animals,
whether fish or fowl, seldom brought to table whole, but hacked and
hewed, and cut in pieces or gobbets [77]; the mortar also was in great
request, some messes being actually denominated from it, as
_mortrews_, or morterelys as in the Editor's MS. Now in this state of
things, the general mode of eating must either have been with the spoon
or the fingers; and this perhaps may have been the reason that spoons
became an usual present from gossips to their god-children at
christenings [78]; nnd that the bason and ewer, for washing before and
after dinner, was introduced, whence the ewerer was a great officer
[79], and the ewery is retained at Court to this day [80]; we meet with
damaske water after dinner [81], I presume, perfumed; and the words
ewer &c. plainly come from the Saxon eþe or French eau, water.
Thus, to return, in that little anecdote relative to the Conqueror and
William Fitz-Osbern, mentioned above, not the crane, but the flesh of

the crane is said to have