Food & drink in the household of english nobility in the 15th and 16th centuries : procurement, preparation, service and consumption

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Andrzej K. Kuropatnicki

Food & Drink

in the Household of English Nobility

in the 15th and 16lh Centuries

Procurement ♦ Preperation ♦ Service and Consumption

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Food & Drink

in the Household of English Nobility

in the 15th and 16th Centuries

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Uniwersytet Pedagogiczny im. Komisji Edukacji Narodowej

w Krakowie

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Andrzej K. Kuropatnicki

Food & Drink

in the Household of English Nobility

in the 15th and 16th Centuries

Procurement ♦ Preperation ♦ Service and Consumption

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Reviewers

prof, dr hab. Mariusz Markiewicz

dr hab. Jarosław Dumanowski, prof. UMK

Cover design Janusz Schneider

Cover: The Tudor Kitchen at Cowdray House, Midhurst, West Sussex (photo by author)

A page from household accounts of Sir Edward Done (CR 895/106), Warwickshire County Record Office

ISSN 0239-6025

ISBN 978-83-7271-689-7

Wydawnictwo Naukowe UP

30-084 Kraków, ul. Podchorążych 2

teh/faks +48 12 662-63-83, tel. +48 12 662-67-56 e-mail: wydawnictwo@up.krakow.pl

http://www.wydawnictwoup.pl

Desktop publishing operator Jadwiga Czyżowska-Maślak Printed by Zespół Poligraficzny UP, 2 /12

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4.5.1. Household Accounts of Dame Alice de Bryene 169 4.5.2. Household Accounts of Sir Thomas Paget 1 71 4.5.3. Household Accounts of Sir Edward Don 1 73 4.5.4. Household Accounts of Sir William Petre 1 76 4.5.5. Household Accounts of Robert Dudley 1 78 4.5.6. Household Accounts of Sir William Cecil 181 4.5.7. Household Accounts of Richard Bertie and Duchess of Suffolk 182

4.6. Cookery Books 185

4.7. Books of Secrets and the Books on Husbandry 195

4.8. Herbals 196

Chapter V. The Food of English Noblemen 198

5.1. Bread 199 5.2. Pottage 207 5.3. Sauces 211 5.4. Meat 214 5.5. Fowl 227 5.6. Fish 233 5.7. Dairy Produce 239 5.8. Spices 243

5.9. Vegetables and Fruit 254

Chapter VI. The Beverages of Englrsh Noblemen 261

6.1. Water 262

6.2. Milk 263

6.3. Ale and Beer 266

6.4. Wine 274

6.5. Distillates 287

6.6. Cider 293

6.7. Mead 295

Chapter VII. The Theoretical Bases for Food and Cookery 298

7.1. The Theory of Humours 299

7.1.1. The Humours 302

7.1.2. Temperaments 3 04

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7.2. Healthy Eating 308

7.3. Dietary Literature 313

7.4. Religious Strictures 318

7.5. Feasts 324

7.6. The Humoral Balance of Dishes; Recipe Analysis 329

7.6.1. Roasted Salmon in Sauce 330

7.6.2. Tench in Sauce 331

7.6.3. Frumenty with Venison 333

7.6.4. Mawmeny 334 7.6.5. Crustarde 335 7.6.6. Chicken Endored 336 7.6.7. Baked Quinces 337 7.6.8. Roasted Venison 338 7.6.9. Roasted Crane 339 7.6.10. Hippocras 340

Chapter VIII. Eating in the Great Hall 342

8.1. Feast Planning 343

8.2. Food Ritual 344

8.3. Great Hall Organisation 346

8.4. The Great Hall Preparation 348

8.5. Rituals in the Great Hall 356

8.6. The Serving Order of Dishes 363

8.7. The Subtleties 366

8.8. Voiding the Tables 368

8.9. Banquetting Stuffe 369

8.10. Entertainment at Feasts 374

8.11. Table Manners 375

Conclusion 382

Bibliography 390

Appendix 1 The Household Accounts Used 421

Appendix 2 Weights and Measures 427

Appendix 3 Selected Humoral Qualities 432 Appendix 4 A Glossary of Medieval and Renaissance Household Terms 440 Appendix 5 A Glossary of Medieval and Renaissance Culinary Terms 452

Appendix 6 Selected Menus 475

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List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. Great Chain of Being

(Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana (Perugia, 1579) Fig. 2. Examples of livery badges

Fig. 3. Remains of Wingfield Manor House

(http://www.geograph.org.uk/reuse.php?id = 6280. Image Copyright Sam Styles. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence.)

Fig. 4. Cowdray House ruins (photo by author) Fig. 5. Gainsborough Old Hall (photo by author) Fig. 6. Stokesay Castle ground plan

(J. A. Gotch, The Growth of the English House (London, 1909), p. 37) Fig. 7. Bodiam Castle plan

(S. Toy, Castles: Their Construction and History (Dover Publications, 1985), p. 217)

Fig. 8. Cowdray House plan

(http://www.herriott-sadler.co.uk/cowdray/guide01 .html. Image Copyright Nigel Harriott-Sadler)

Fig. 9. Ingatestone Hall. Ground floor

(G. Emmison, Tudor Secretary Sir William Petre at Court and Home (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1961), p. 30)

Fig. 10. Ingatestone Hall. First floor

(G. Emmison, Tudor Secretary Sir William Petre at Court and Home (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1961), p. 31) Fig. 1 1. Page of the household book of Sir Edward Don

(Warwickshire County Record Office, CR895/106, photo by author) Fig. 12. Great Hall (Gainsborough Old Hall, photo by author)

Fig. 13. Great Chamber (Gainsborough Old Hall, photo by author)

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Fig. 14. Chimney stacks at Cowdray (photo by author) Fig. 15. Cowdray kitchen (photo by author)

Fig. 16. Gainsborough Old Flail kitchen (photo by author) Fig. 1 7. Kitchen hatch (Gainsborough Old Hall, photo by author) Fig. 18. Wet larder (Hampton Court, photo by author)

Fig. 19. Cellar (Hampton Court, photo by author) Fig. 20. Bread oven (Hampton Court, photo by author) Fig. 21. Spit (Gainsborough Old Hall, photo by author) Fig. 22. Cauldron (Plas Mawr, photo by author)

Fig. 23. Mortar and pestle (Plas Mawr, photo by author) Fig. 24. Kitchen pots on the hearth (Cowdray, photo by author) Fig. 25. Tudor cupboard (Gainsborough Old Hall, photo by author) Fig. 26. Tudor chair (Plas Mawr, photo by author)

Fig. 27. High table on the dais (Gainsborough Old Hall, photo by author) Fig. 28. Low table (Gainsborough Old Hall, photo by author)

Fig. 29. Ewer and basin (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) Fig. 30. Wooden trencher (Gainsborough Old Hall, photo by author)

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Acknowledgements

This monograph depends much on the work of others and especially of such authors as C. Anne Wilson, Peter Hammond, Peter Brears, Christopher M. Woolgar, Kate Mertes, Terence Scully, Ken Albala and Mark Dawson, whom I would like to thank very much.

When doing research for this book I had the opportunity to visit a few households and, in particular, the extant and reconstructed kitchens. For this my debts of grati tude go to Mr Marc Meltonville, a food archaeologist and historian, project co ordinator for the Historic Kitchens Team in Hampton Court Palace, Ms Bridget Howard, a historian, and Mr Terence Lewis both from Cowdray House, Midhurst, Mr Paul Mason from Gainsborough Old Hall, Lincolnshire, and Mr Jon Roberts from Weald & Downland Open Air Museum, Singleton, Chichester.

1 am deeply grateful to the reviewers of the book, Prof. Mariusz Markiewicz of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków for his helpful comments, and Prof. Jarosław Dumanowski of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń for his many remarkable insights and suggestions which helped improve the quality of this book. My special thanks go to Prof. Mariusz Misztal of the Pedagogical University in Kraków for his continuing interest and advice.

A debt of thanks is owed to the staff at the British Library, the Wellcome Library and the Institute of Historical Research Library in London as well as the staff at the Record Offices throughout Britain.

I wish to express my most sincere thanks to Ms Ann Cardwell of the Pedagogical University in Kraków for her careful reading of the manuscript that resulted in nu merous corrections and improvements to the language and style. I would also like to extend my thanks and gratitude to Mr Greg Beratan for the reviewing of the manu script and his helpful suggestions as for the content and the language. Any remaining errors are entirely my own responsibility.

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Introduction

In this monograph the procurement, storage, preparation, service and consumption of food in the households of greater and lesser nobility in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are investigated together with household structure and organisa tion. Both aristocracy and gentry spent significant sums of money on food and drink, which resulted from their desire to make an impression, on the one hand, and from the duty of hospitality, which was an important aspect of noble life, on the other. Hospitality was both a demonstration and an exercise of power and the invitations offered were very often clues to shifting alliances and the flow of power. Household accounts show that guests were regularly accommodated at the estates of the wealthy and dining and feasts were used for the purpose of networking.

The history of food has been given much attention, which resulted in a wide-ranging literature dealing with the meaning of food and its impact on people’s lives. We must remember, however, that food history is considered distinct from the more traditional field of culinary history, which focuses on the origin and recreation of specific reci pes. Surprisingly, food developed relatively recently as a field of study and is not yet fully recognised as an academic subject. In Great Britain much research on food history has been conducted by just a few academics but most has been undertaken by amateurs. Outside the UK culinary history groups formed mainly in the USA, Canada and Australia. Indeed, the Department of History at The University of Adelaide has established a Research Centre for the History of Food and Drink. The Centre’s activities embrace the history of food and drink in both an Australian and a global context. Additionally, many university departments offer postgraduate stud ies in the history of food, for instance, the Food Studies Program at the University of Adelaide, a multidisciplinary program for people who want to understand the history and culture of food and drink. A further example is The Food Studies Programme at Chatham University, USA, an interdisciplinary domain that includes agricultural and culinary history as well as sociological, cultural, political, economic, and geo graphic examinations of food production and consumption.

Almost seventy years ago, in 1939, Jack Drummond, a distinguished biochemist interested in gastronomy, published the results of his study in a book, co-authored with Anne Wilbraham, The Englishman ’s Food: A History of Five Centuries of Eng

lish Diet.' This ground-breaking volume is a survey of food production, consump- 1

1 J. Drummond and A . Wilbraham, The Englishman ’s Food: A History of Five Centuries of English Diet (London, 1939). The book was fully revised and edited in 1957 by Dorothy

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tion, fashions and follies over a period of five hundred years. Although Drummond looked at the structure of society and the nutritional effects of diet, he did not include in his book a variety of determinants which could affect an individual’s diet. In the first part of his work he is concerned with medieval and Tudor England, especially with the production of food, its quality, the meals eaten, diet and health. In the parts that follow he concentrates on the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As a biochemist much interested in nutrition and vitamins,2 Drummond devoted considerable space in his book to the importance of vitamins and the conse quences of their deficiencies. Interestingly, the revision of Jack Drummond’s book in

1957 by Dorothy Hollingsworth began a gradual process of opening up the study of the history of food in England.

In 1973 C. Anne Wilson published her book on food and drink in Britain in which she explored the development of cooking through British food.3 Wilson traced culi nary practices and preferences from the earliest prehistoric forebears to the genera tion of the Industrial Revolution. The work is divided into sections covering different types of food. The author examines British eating habits based on her study of the English cookery book collection in the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds. In each chapter of the book Wilson discusses the economic, social and religious rea sons for the popularity of certain foods in specific periods. C. Anne Wilson is also the editor of Banquetting Stuffe 4 and The Appetite and the Eye,5 both collections of papers by various authors.

Bridget A. Henisch, a pioneer in the field of medieval culinary history, in her 1976 book Fast and Feast 6 reviews and discusses cooking methods, menus and man ners and explains how fast and feast days were distinguished. She also shows how sophisticated, varied but rather alien with respect to modern tastes the medieval aesthetic was. From Henisch’s book one can learn that medieval cuisine favoured a combination of sweet and sour, laborious cooking methods, dazzling colours as well as elaboration. Henisch mentions the use of herbs and flowers in the medieval kitchen, because of their medicinal properties, but she never seriously explores the

Hollingsworth, who has also added a chapter entided “Th e Application of the Newer Knowledge of Nutrition” which replaced the older chapters “ The W ar” (of 1 9 14-1 8) and “A New Era” . The text was improved by the removal of some inessential details and brought up to date much of the technical material.

2 In the 1930s, he succeeded in isolating pure vitamin A . A t that time he became increasingly aware of the need to apply the new science of nutrition in practice.

3 C . Anne Wilson, Food and Drink, in Britain (Harmondsworth, 1973). 4 C . Anne Wilson (ed.), ‘Banquetting Stuffe’ (Edinburgh, 1986). 5 C . Anne Wilson (ed.), The Appetite and the Eye (Edinburgh, 1991).

6 B . A . Henisch, Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society (Pensylvania, 1976).

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idea that a cook might have evaluated the medicinal and humoral qualities of all the ingredients in a dish.

A work of great importance in understanding the late medieval and Elizabethan sense of regimen, or way of life, is Jane O ’Hara-May’s Elizabethan Dyetary of

Health,7 8 which provides much information, mostly taken from primary sources, on how Elizabethans viewed food. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is a detailed account of the development of Aristotelian and Galenic concepts concer ning the functions of the body and mind, and the implications of these principles when interpreted by various sixteenth-century English authors. This part focuses on the concept of “things natural”, or innate factors, and “things non-natural”, which were not part of the body but were capable of affecting the humoral balance. O ’Hara-May gives numerous examples of the ways in which Galen’s teaching was applied to diet in England by food writers of the sixteenth century. In the book food and drink receive special attention, as well as the effects of deficiency and excess. The second part two of the Elizabethan Dyetary of Health gives an interesting account of the foods and drinks available in the sixteenth century and their preparation in the kitchen. This is a scholarly work containing detailed information, drawn from the sixteenth-century English literature on the theoiy and practice of diet and the regi men for a healthy life.

Peter Hammond in Food and Feast in Medieval England 8 examines the range of food that was consumed by medieval English society, its distribution and methods of preparation. He describes almost every aspect of medieval food and the way in which the food supply of a large household was organised. Hammond presents some interesting information on nutrition and considers whether vitamin deficiency would have been prevalent in medieval England. The author attempts to evaluate the nutri tional value of the food in order to consider how well fed the people were. The book is firmly based on archaeological and documentary evidence.

Terence Scully, author of The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages,9 a compendium on practically all aspects of the art of cooking and dining in medieval Europe, confirms current scholarly suspicions that the science of cookery was highly advanced in the Middle Ages. He describes the food, the cooking methods and the preparation of dishes from the perspective of the humoral theoiy. In Scully’s opinion the medieval cook’s job was in many respects an offshoot of the work of a physician, which means that a skilled cook was expected to conform to the regimen of humoral medicine.

7 J. O ’Hara-May, Elizabethan Dyetary of Health (Lawrence, 1977).

8 P . W . Hammond, Food and Feast in Medieval England (Phoenix M ill, 1993). 9 T . Scully, The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1995).

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-Peter Brears in Cooking and Dining in Medieval England 10 looks at important elements of medieval cooking and dining. In his book he studies medieval cookery with an eye to the actual mechanics of food production and service: the household organisation, how kitchens were designed, their relation to other departments, and the equipment used. Brears also subjects many surviving documents relating to how food was served to critical study in an attempt to reconstruct the precise rituals and customs of the meals. The book contains numerous recipes that are based firmly on the manuscript sources but are modified for a modem use.

Food in Early Modem England by Joan Thirsk10 11 12 13 is an account of foods consumed in England between 1500 and 1 760. The author adopts a very practical strategy for monitoring the changes across the period by dividing the first half of the book into shorter time spans. The varying durations of these periods (from 20—60 years) re flect her belief that changes in dietary practice did not occur evenly. Within the time spans, Thirsk reconstructs patterns of consumption and cooking by moving between the world of writers on food and the world of the kitchen. In the second part of her book the author gives greater attention to certain groups of food, such as meat, eggs and bird meat, fish, dairy foods, vegetables and herbs, fruit, drinks and condiments. She makes use of household accounts and cookery books written for a readership drawn from the middle ranks and upwards. Thirsk emphasizes the importance of healthy eating, a factor which influenced the dietary habits of some people.

Ken Albala, in his Eating Right in the Renaissance 12 provides a useful introduction to food history and to the various interpretations to which dietary literature lends itself. The time frame chosen by the author is based on the printed diet literature published from the 1470s to 1650. The book consists of eight chapters, beginning with a brief overview of the genre. The next chapters deal with medieval concepts of health, including the four humours and six “non-naturals”. The rest of the book is devoted to a series of chapters concerning what diet literature can tell us about the perception and consumption of food. Chapter VII of his book is modelled on Nor bert Elias’s The Civilizing Process. The last chapter of Albala’s book deals with the relationship that existed between medicine and cuisine in the Middle Ages and the early modem period, one of the most hotly debated questions among food historians.

Food: The History of Taste 13 edited by Paul Freedman takes the reader on a gastro-

nomical tour through the history of food and the various roles it has played over time. 10 P . Brears, Cooking and Dining in Medieval England (Trowbridge, 20 08).

11 J . Thirsk, Food in Early Modem England: Phases, Fads, Fashions 1500-1760 (London, 2007).

12 K . Albeda, Eating Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2002). 13 P . Freedman, Food: The Flistory of Taste (London, 2007).

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It “offers comparisons among a wide range of places and across extensive time pe riods, culminating with the modem phenomena of global choices.”14 The text starts with a compelling introduction by Freedman, before ten essays to provide an overview of the history of food across time, from prehistory through modern gastronomy. The essays were written by well-respected historians, archaeologist, and social scientist. Another book dealing with the history of food is Food in History by Reay Tannahill,15 which is a comprehensive overview of both the history of food and how food changed history. Beginning with the prehistoric world and a discussion of scant information about food and cooking before 10,000 BC, the book continues to the present day. It looks at food trends and how they affected culture around the world at different times. Along the way, the author highlights some evolution-oriented opinions, such as that humans are omnivores through evolution, and salt is also an evolution-induced craving. It also illustrates how most history has been driven by one simple factor: hun ger. A History of Food by M. Toussaint-Samat16 was originally written in French in

1987 and is clearly a Franco-centric encyclopaedia of food. It teaches, for instance, that pizza is a French invention. The book covers in one volume the history of food stuffs, the story of cuisine, and the social history of eating. It discusses such aspects as the domestication of animals, farming and dietaiy issues. Each topic includes science and biology, etymology, natural history, mythology and legend, economics, and often food purchasing and preparation tips.

Colin Spencer in his account of the British culinary heritage17 tried to show how Brit ish history influenced the development of food, in particular by contrasting different classes. In the introduction he states that food “is a microcosm of what is shaping the world at the time. What you eat and how you eat it are the product of what you are doing there and then.”18 Subsequently he “unfolds a selective and sometimes slightly turgid potted history of Britain, into which he throws food.”19 The author looks be hind the food itself to explore each of the many influences and changes in eating in Britain. He writes that food eaten in the Middle Ages in Britain was stylish, tasteful and hugely influenced by Persian cuisine. He also presents a theory that the British taste in spices developed through Norman cooking after the latter conquered Moor ish Sicily.

14 Ibid.,p. 9.

15 R . Tannahill, Food in History (London, 1973).

16 M . Toussaint-Samat, A History of Food (Chichester, 20 09).

17 C . Spencer, British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History (London, 20 02). 18 Ibid.,p. 9.

19 S . Kapoor, “ British Food: A n Extraordinary Thousand Years of History by Colin Spencer” [a book review], The Independent (30 Nov. 20 02).

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Diverse aspects of medieval English food culture, with reference to continental exam ples, are explored in Food in Medieval England edited by Christopher M. Woolgar, Dale Serjeantson and Tony Waldron.20 The book consists of eighteen chapters writ ten by different scholars and is divided into two parts: a survey on foodstuffs and case studies in diet and nutrition. Of special interest for this study were “The Consump tion of Field Crops in Late Medieval England” by D. J. Stone, in which grain, the most important foodstuff in medieval England and the highest contributor to the gen eral calorific intake, is explored; “Gardens and Garden Produce in the Later Mid dle Ages” by Christopher C. Dyer, who analyses the role of garden produce based on late-medieval documentary sources and archaeological excavations. Dyer shows how garden produce varied between rich and poor, and how this pattern changed over time; “Meat and Dairy Products in Late Medieval England” by C. M. Wool- gar and “The Consumption and Supply of Birds in Late Medieval England” by D. Serjeantson. In the second part of the book, Dyer examines how seasonal patterns in food consumption by various groups were marked in the late-medieval period. He traces the changing availability of different foods, the variability in storage and distri bution, religious and family calendars as well as personal preferences. Dyer stresses the fact that upper class diets contained a significant element of choice as well as conditioning.21 22

The history of food and nutrition has also been of interest to encyclopaedists and many valuable works were written as a result. One of the best known is The Cam

bridge World History of Food 22 covering the full spectrum of foods that have been

“gathered, hunted, cultivated and domesticated.” Volume I contains the most ba sic information on specific food items, including the history of staple foods such as grains, foods from animal sources, dietary liquids, as well as information on nutri ents, minerals, proteins and fats. Volume II begins with food and drink around the world. Of special interest for us is “The History and Culture of Food and Drink in Europe”, which includes an essay by Colin Spencer describing the food and drink of the British Isles.23

An outstanding culinary reference is The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Da- vrdson, the second edition of whrch was edited by Tom Jaine and published in 2006.24 20 C . M . Woolgar, D . Serjeantson, T . Waldron (ed.), Food in Medieval England: Diet and

Nutrition (Oxford, 2006).

21 C , Dyer, “ Seasonal Patterns in Food Consumption in the Later Middle A ges” , [in:] Woolgar, et al., Food in Medieval England, pp. 201—214.

22 The Cambridge World History of Food, ed. K . F. Kipie and K . C . Ornelas, 2 vols. (Cambridge,

2000).

23 Ibid., 11:1193-1247.

24 A . Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford, 2006).

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The coverage is impressive, with the most wide-ranging treatment ever of foods and food products and how to use them. It contains 2,650 entries on foodstuffs, season ings, cuisines, cooking methods, and historical surveys. It is supplemented by some forty longer articles on staple foods. The companion is compiled with an especially strong coverage of European and, in particular British, cookery. The extensive and comprehensive bibliography is intended to help the reader find publications which have been referred to in the text of the book as sources of quotations or information. Noteworthy also is a compendium on food written by historians from various coun tries under the direction of Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari, Food:

A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present.25 26 This comprehensive work fo cuses primarily on the food history of Europe and consists of forty essays arranged chronologically, from prehistoric to modem times, with the bulk of the work con centrating on the medieval period and before. It explores the culinary evolution of cultures ranging from Mesopotamia to modem America, and explores every aspect of food history. In the process many myths about culinary heritage are dispelled, such as the notion that pasta originated in China or that the original recipe for chocolate served as a beverage contained chilli instead of sugar.

Apart from the books specifically aimed at food items, cooking methods and the tech nical details of food processes, there are also works which emphasise social historical analyses of food and eating in early modem society. Stephen Mennell in his All

Manners of Food26 not only describes the differences in tastes between England and

France, but he takes on the more difficult task of trying to explain the national differ ences. The book has been influenced to a great extent by Norbert Elias, a sociologist and author of The Civilizing Process.27 Both Elias and Mennell focus on the way the changing relations between the social classes worked to reorient eating behaviour. In his book Mennell writes that he “attempts to apply to the history of cooking and eating in England and France Elias’s ‘figurational’ or ‘sociogenetic’ approach.”28 In Chapter II Mennell raises the problem of appetite and makes an attempt to answer 25 J -L . Flandrin and M . Montanari (ed.), Food: Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present

(New York, 1999).

26 S . Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present (Oxford, 1985).

27 N . Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (Oxford, 20 00).

The Civilizing Process stands out as Norbert Elias’s greatest work, tracing the ‘civilizing’ of manners and personality in Western Europe since the Middle Ages, and showing how this was related to the formation of states and the monopolisation of power within them. Elias provides a general analysis of the diachronic development of table etiquette that forms part of the civilising process.

28 S . Mennell, All Manners of Food, p. 1 5. Mennell explains that Elias found a major driving force of social and cultural development in conflict and competition between social groups.

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the question of whether the appetite of Europeans has become ‘more civilised’ since the Middle Ages. In the chapters that follow he considers the development of cookery and the conceptions of ‘good food’ in both England and France.

Books of a slightly different genre, i.e. food-related history and culture, are represent ed by Massimo Montanari’s Food is Culture.29 The book offers a rich serving about food’s role in the history of humanity. It is the work of an anthropologist who knows food and medical literature very well. Montanari, who specialises in the food of the Middle Ages, shows how food, once a practical necessity, evolved into an indicator of social standing and religious and political identity. In his other book The Culture of

Food the author explains that he has “tried to identify the essential characteristics of

the history and culture of food in Europe, to reconstruct the origins, development and results.”30 This account of food in Europe from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century emphasizes class and regional differences in dietary habits. Montanari finds a correlation between diet and social status by contrasting royal meals, with many dishes, and the single-food diets of peasants.

Social structure, its hierarchy and development have been studied and analysed in depth by theoreticians, who came up with a number of concepts. Karl Marx and Max Weber are often cited as the principle architects of modem social science. Marx, who rejected Comtean positivism, aimed to establish a ‘science of society’ based on historical materialism. His social theory is based on society’s property rela tions, which express society’s relations of production. From the Marxist perspective, class relations involve the seizure by one class of the “surplus labour” created by another class. In medieval England such relations were expressed by peasants having to pay rent in the form of their labour on the lord’s demesne in order to survive. In opposition to the Marxist model is the theory of social stratification, which builds on the work of the nineteenth-century German sociologist Max Weber, who observed stratification along class and status lines. The theory stresses the plurality of criteria in social stratification, such as education, occupation or income and perceives social structure in gradated terms. Social class broadly pertaining to material wealth may be distinguished from status class based on honour, prestige, religious affiliation, and so on. However, status, defined in terms of lifestyle and the social estimation of honour, has been perceived as the key to social stratification.

Thorstein Veblen developed his twentieth century evolutionary economics based upon Darwinian principles and new ideas emerging from anthropology, sociology,

29 M . Montanari, Food is Culture: Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History (New York, 2006).

30 M . Montanari, The Culture of Food (Oxford, 1994), p. xi. ~ 2 0 ~

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and psychology. His best known work The Theory of the Leisure Class 31 is of special interest for the purpose of this book. Veblen writes that “in the sequence of cultural evolution the emergence of a leisure class coincides with the beginning of ownership.” Wealth “awarded only on evidence” serves to impress an individual’s importance on others and “to keep their sense of his importance alive and alert.” Since, according to Veblen, the ‘predatory’ stage a life of leisure has been the sign of financial strength and superior force. What leisure implies is a non-productive consumption of time. Time can be consumed non-productively “as an evidence of pecuniary ability to af ford a life of idleness.” Most of the time of a gentleman of leisure is spent before the eyes of spectators “who are to be impressed with that spectacle of honorific leisure which in the ideal scheme makes up his life.” The remaining part of his life is spent in private, however, for the sake of his good name he should provide an account of that time. The lasting evidence can be a material product, i.e. some article of consumption or immaterial goods. “Such immaterial evidences of past leisure are quasi-scholarly or quasi-artistic accomplishments and a knowledge of processes and incidents which do not conduce directly to the furtherance of human life.” Additionally, there are also social facts which transit from the region of learning into that of physical habit and dexterity. “Such are what is known as manners and breeding, polite usage, decorum, and formal and ceremonial observances generally.”32

A significant group of historians see medieval English society as composed of estates defined by their status and privileges. The traditional estates societies were described in the sixteenth century by William Harrison,33 Thomas Wilson,34 and Thomas Smith.35 All of them considered social stratification as a determining factor. Both Harrison and Smith placed the monarch at the top of the upper level of English soci ety, followed by the peerage. “Dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, and barons either be created of the prince or come to that honor by being the eldest sons.”36 In conse quence, the eldest son of a duke was an earl and an earl’s eldest son was a viscount or baron, who were called “gentlemen of the greater sort”,37 whereas the younger sons of the family were “but esquires”. Knights, gentlemen and esquires formed,

31 T . Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (London, 1915).

32 Ibid., pp. 22,36-38, 43-46.

33 W . Harrison, The Description of England: The Classic Contemporary Account of Tudor Social Life, ed. G . Edelen (New York, 1994).

34 T . Wilson, The State of England, 1600, ed. F .J . Fisher (London, 1936). 35 T . Smith, De Republica Anglorum (London, 1583).

36 Harrison, The Description of England, p. 100. 37 Ibid., 94.

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according to Smith, the “Nobilitas minor”.38 The middle level of English society, according to Harrison, consisted of citizens and burgesses, as well as merchants, lawyers and medical practitioners. In the third tier of society were yeomen who lived from cultivating the land. Their position varied considerably, since some were little better off then husbandmen, whereas others were as well off as gentlemen. There was considerable mobility between yeomen and rural gentlemen, who could buy land from “unthrifty gentlemen”, were able to send their sons to university or the Inns of Court and leave them “sufficient lands whereupon they may live without labour, do make them by those means to become gentlemen.”39 The fourth and last “sort of people in England are day labourers, poor husbandmen, and some retailers (which have no free land), copyholders, and all artificers, as tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, brickmakers, masons, etc.”40

One of the twentieth century’s most influential historians of late medieval England was Kenneth Bruce McFarlane. His most important contribution to the field was his revision of the understanding of late medieval feudal relationships, known as “bastard feudalism”.41 Maurice Keen too is of the opinion that the theory of three estates provides an approximation of the social structure of medieval England. In his social history of Britain between 1348-1500, he described medieval society with its rigid stratifications of nobility and peasant, and its transition to the beginning of the early modem period.42 43 In The Origins of an English Gentleman 43 Keen explores the history of this difficult to define group of English society and traces changes in the use of heraldry from a practical to symbolic entity, explaining how and why this transformation took place. Nobles and the Noble Life by Joel Thomas Rosenthal44 consists of two parts, of which the first part was most useful for the purpose of this book. In it the aristocracy is treated as a class of individuals of high status and privi lege. Rosenthal discusses the isolation of social rank, describes the categorisation of families into greater or lesser ranks, and provides a case study of the way an elite group is created and defined.

Steve Rigby’s book on medieval English society is located within a broader discus sion of the nature of social stratification. The author makes use of several sociological 38 Smith, De Republica Anglorum,Ch. 18.

39 Harrison, The Description of England, pp. 11 7-11 8. 40 Ibid., 1 18.

41 K . B . McFarlane, England in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1981); K . B . McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 197 3).

42 M . Keen, English Society in the Later Middle Ages 1348-1500 (London, 1990).

43 M . Keen, Origins of the English Gentleman: Heraldry, Chivalry and Gentility in Medieval England, c. 1300-1500 (Stroud, 20 02).

44 J . T . Rosenthal, Nobles and the Noble Life, 1295-1500 (London, 1976).

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approaches in order to clarify the nature of the forms of social inequality in medieval society in England. The book is heavily influenced by sociologists who developed the so-called ‘closure theory’, such as Frank Parkin. The concept of social closure states that a dominant group safeguards its position and privileges by monopolizing resources and opportunities for its own group while denying access to outsiders. The book is a result of Rigby’s investigation of seven social groups: lords, peasants, urban artisans, merchants, the clergy, women and Jews.

The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages by Chris Given-Wilson45 encompasses

the whole of the upper section of late medieval society, which the author calls ‘nobil ity’, so using the broad sense of the word. Although he hesitates to define the word, he employs it to designate an elite social stratum whose members were distinguished by ‘good’ birth, substantial wealth derived from inherited land and lordship, chi- valric ethos and a lifestyle involving social, political and often military leadership. In this sense, the nobility in the fourteenth century comprised the emerging peerage as well as knights and esquires. Given-Wilson examines the relation of social status and political influence within the nobility, describes the noble household and coun cil, examines the territorial and familial policies pursued by great landholders and emphasises the inter-relationship of local and national affairs. The book combines comprehensive synthesis with lucid analysis in this vivid reconstruction of political society in late medieval England.

Social changes in English society have also been the subject of analysis of authors such as Nigel Heard,46 who re-examines the topics of population change, inflation, agriculture, industry, overseas trade, poverty, elite society and elite culture, in the light of recent interpretations and research. Worth noting also are collections of es says on late-medieval English society edited by Rosemary Horrox47 and Michael Jones.48 A well-known historian of eveiyday life, Christopher Dyer,49 focused his research on standards of living and patterns of consumption in England between the thirteenth and early sixteenth century. The book looks in turn at aristocrats, peas ants, townsmen, wage-earners and paupers, and examines how they obtained their incomes and how they spent them.

45 C . Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages: The Fourteenth-Century Political Community, 2 nd edition (New York, 1996).

46 N . Heard, Tudor Economy and Society (London, 1992).

47 R . Horrox, (ed.), Fifteenth-Century Attitudes: Perceptions of Society in Late Medieval England

(Cambridge, 1994).

48 M . Jones (ed.), Gentry and Lesser Nobility in Late Medieval Europe (Gloucester, 1986). 49 C . Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989).

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English society in the late Middle Ages was inseparably allied with the concept of or der, order in civil society and order in the domestic household. Both depended on the maintenance of hierarchy “through the conscientious discharge of their obligations by every rank of society.”50 This feudal order was present in the ancient concept of the Great Chain of Being, which implied a hierarchy of gender, and hence paternalism was its characteristic feature. The great lords required service in their households, on their estates and in return provided legal protection. “This was a world in which lords were always seeking clients to bolster their power and where men sought pa tronage for advancement and protection.”51 In the time under review it was com mon practice for gentle persons to be in the service of the high born. Such service conferred honour and prestige on both parties. Many important posts in aristocratic households, such as those of steward, marshal, chamberlain, comptroller, treasurer, or chief usher, were filled by gentle bom followers and relatives. Many household offices or departments were staffed by sons of the master’s acquaintances and associ ates, as it was common practice in the Middle Ages, and also in the Tudor period, to send youngsters from affluent homes to a great lord’s household, where they received regular instruction in chivalry.

Medieval Europe witnessed the harnessing of knights to a code of chivalry and the flourishing of a romantic troubadour culture demanding particular rules of conduct. However, it was not until the Renaissance that social codes and conventions were brought to new levels of importance. With the development of the printing press, courtesy books, such as Baldassare Castiglione’s II Cortegiano (1528) proliferated to meet a growing demand.52 53 The book most brilliantly epitomized the rules by which the perfect courtier should live. In 1531 Sir Thomas Elyot, an English humanist and diplomat, published The Boke Named the GovernourN the first and probably the most comprehensive English exposition of an ideal of upper-class accomplishments, which combined the courtly, the administrative, the martial and the academic in the service of ‘public weal.’ Manners preoccupied early modem intellectuals as well. In 1 530 Erasmus of Rotterdam published De civilitate morum puerilium (On civility in children),54 which became one of the most influential and best-sellmg treatises

50 R . Horrox and W . M . Ormrod (ed.), A Social History of England 1200-1500 (Cambridge, 2 0 0 6 ), p. 91.

51 Ibid., p. 43.

52 The English translation entitled The Book of the Courtier by Thomas Hoby was published in 1561.

53 T . Elyot, The Boke Named the Govemour Devised by Sir Thomas Elyot, ed. H . H . S . Croft (London, 1880).

54 D . Erasmus, A Handbook on Good Manners for Children: De civilitate morum puerilium libellus,

trans. E . Merchant (London, 20 08).

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of the sixteenth century. “Underneath Erasmus’ injunctions that boys not eat with their mouths open or cast sidelong glances at others were deeper issues concerning self-regulation and emerging notions of shame that centered upon the body.”55 The author described how the young men were responsible for their outward behaviour: their physical gestures should show respect for other people, their bodily functions should be kept under control. Erasmus emphasized modesty and propriety.

Social historians such as Norbert Elias have seen Erasmus’ work as “a kind of bridge between those of the Middle Ages and modem times.”56 However, De civilitate mo

rum puerilium stands in many respects entirely within medieval tradition. Almost all

the rules of the courtois society described in the books of courtesy presented in Chap ter I of this book reappear in Erasmus’ treatise, which is “a collection of observations from the life of his society.”57 In Chapter II of his work Elias selected three countries, France, England and Germany, and performed a content analysis of medieval texts on manners, etiquette, and the transformation of the nobility from a class of warriors into courtiers. He wanted to show how the concept of civilite developed in these Western societies by comparing etiquette rules concerning table manners (especially when eating meat), blowing one’s nose, spitting, and behaviour in the bedroom. He also analyses changes in attitude toward relations between the sexes and changes in aggressiveness.

In fifteenth and sixteenth century England for nobles and their dependents the household was an important institution, which took on many of the roles of extended kin groups. The household was synonymous with familia, the latter understood in a sense known since classical antiquity as all those like the spouse, blood relatives and servants, who lived together under the same roof and under the authority of a male head, as befitted the paternalistic medieval society. Although we know a substantial amount about medieval noble households in the late Middle Ages, since numerous household documents have survived, very little detailed work has been done so far on their structures and functioning, and even less on their food and diet. Although the noble household has failed to capture much attention among historians so far, it is not a completely neglected historical topic. Initial interest in the subject can be seen among nineteenth-century antiquarians, who produced editions of aristocratic household accounts.58 Soon other editions followed, for instance, the accounts of the

55 S . Covington, “Etiquette” , New Dictionary of the History of Ideas. 2005. Encyclopedia.com

< http://www.encyclopedia.com > , accessed on 6.0 5.201 1.

56 N . Elias, The Civilizing Process: The Development of Manners (New York, 1978), p. 70 57 Ibid.,p. 71.

58 For example, B . Botfield (ed.), Manners and Household Expenses in England in the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London, 1841).

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le Strange family of Hunstanton,59 the household book of Dame Alice de Bryene of Acton Hall,60 the household book of Sir Edward Don,61 or the accounts and dis bursement books of Robert Dudley.62

Certain aspects of household life, such as consumption, have been addressed by C.A. Musgrave63 64 and Paul V.B. Jones in his Household of a Tudor Nobleman.M Jones’s book, focused mostly on the ordinances of the Northumberland household, is a merely descriptive work, dealing superficially with the problem of household struc ture and functioning without an in-depth analysis of the role of the servants and the actual working of the household departments. Besides, the Northumberland House

hold Book shows an almost ideal household and cannot be the only source of such

information without further reference to a wider selection of household accounts. At the end of the twentieth century a few interesting works appeared on the sub ject. Worthy of note is The Great Household in Late Medieval England by Chris

M. Woolgar, who set out to present the workings of the medieval household. The book in various chapters deals with the population, service, architectural plan, meals and other aspects of household life. Woolgar draws on rich documentation such as household accounts, ordinances and archaeological sources as well as contemporary treatises. A substantial part of the book is devoted to food and diet in noble house holds, both great and lesser, up to the fifteenth century. Woolgar based his analysis on the records of seven households, the households of two aristocrats, two gentry, one knight and two bishops. Another interesting book dealing with medieval household records is Household Accounts from Medieval England, edited by C. M. Woolgar.65 In the introduction the household accounts are discussed and presented as a coherent body of records. Woolgar places them in the context of the administrative systems for which they were created. The forms and development of such documents in England

59 “ Extracts from the Household, and Privy Purse Accounts of the le Stranges of Hunstanton“ , ed. D . Gurney [in:] Archaeologia, vol. 25 (1 834 ), pp. 41 1-569.

60 The Household Book of Dame Alice de Bryene, of Acton Hall, Sept. 1412-Sept. 1413, ed. V . Redstone (Ipswich, 1931)

61 The Household Book (1510-1551) of Sir Edward Don: An Anglo-Welsh Knight and his Circle,

ed. R . Griffiths. Buckinghamshire Record Society, no. 33 (2004).

62 Household Accounts and Disbursement Books of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1558-1561, 1584-1586, ed. S . Adams, Camden fifth series, vol. 6 (Cambridge, 1995).

63 C . A . Musgrave, Household Administration in the Fourteenth Century with Special Reference to the Household of Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare, unpublished M .A . thesis (University of London, 1923).

64 P .V .B . Jones, The Household of a Tudor Nobleman (Chicago, 1917).

65 C . M . Woolgar (ed.), “ Household Accounts from Medieval England” , [in:] Records of Social and Economic History, New series 17 -18, British Academy (1992—3).

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are analysed and compared with those on the Continent. The book contains carefully selected and edited accounts of twenty-eight households to illustrate the full variety of texts that have survived.

A more detailed analysis is Kate Mertes’s The English Noble Household 1250— /600,66 which is concerned with the form and substance of the noble household in the later Middle Ages. Mertes draws on evidence as well as information about house holds in contemporary literature, chronicles, correspondence, and court records. The book is a comprehensive analysis of the noble household, both lay and secular, with a special focus on its structure, organisation, economy and certain other aspects, like religious life. The author looks at the noble household from a historical but also eco nomic perspective, showing that it was quite frequently a well-managed enterprise. She stresses the importance of household accounts and accounting and presents the methods used to keep household books. Mertes addresses the noble household separately from the royal household, considering it a completely different institution, which many authors writing on the noble household fail to do. Besides, contrary to the royal household, whose organisation was clear and rarely changed, each noble household was different as was its size and importance. The book does not deal with food, except when describing accounts concerning purchased food items, nor its preparation and consumption in households.

Plenti and Grase: Food and Drink in a Sixteenth-Century Household by Mark Daw

son67 is another important study of household affairs, which has recently been pub lished. The author, drawing upon household accounts, describes the patterns of food purchase and supply in the Willoughby family of Wollaton Hall in Nottingham and Middleton Hall in Warwickshire. He analyses the consumption of food and drink and their domestic arrangements. The book provides evidence concerning kitchen administration and organisation, as well as the provisioning and dietary customs in a nobilitas minor household in Tudor England based on the household of one se lected family. There is an account of the strategies of purchase, the preservation and storage of foods, the kitchen equipment, and the operations and staff in the kitchen. In his book Dawson has constructed a valuable account of the role food played in the running of a large household and also identified many interesting developments in the Tudor kitchen and dining-chamber.

However, none of these books deals with the fundamental concept of medieval and Tudor dietetics, which lay at the heart of the provisioning, the operations in the kitchen, and the consumption of the food. So far, no scholarly work on food and diet

66 K . Mertes, The English Noble Household, 1250—1600 (Oxford, 1988).

67 M . Dawson, Plenti and Grase: Food and Drink, ш a Sixteenth-Century Household (Trowbridge, 20 09).

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in the noble household in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, based on a relatively wide selection of documents relating to a variety of households, from lesser to greater, and most importantly, taking into consideration the impact the theory of humours had on an Englishman’s diet, has been written. The only known attempt was The

Diet and Domestic Households of English Lay Nobility by Jennifer M. Thurgood,68

however, this is restricted to a description of the food and drink provisioned and consumed, without any thought given as to why certain foods were avoided and without presenting any culinary methods employed in preparing dishes that relied on maintaining or restoring humoral balance.

The evidence provided by the analysed documents is insufficient to say authori tatively what was actually eaten, and in what quantities as well as what were the methods of food preparation in fifteenth and sixteenth century England. A problem arises, first of all, from incomplete accounting evidence, especially the omission of home-produced crops, livestock, as well as garden and orchard produce. Some food products came from the lords’ own demesne land, some were presented by various people and only in some cases is there a record of these in the accounts. There is also another problem in determining who ate what within the household. The only calculation that can be done is to divide the amount of food that was entered into accounts by the number of people present. All such calculations are statistical and hypothetical and are not accurate whatsoever. From the beginning of the fifteenth century it was possible to say which meals were being eaten in the household and by how many individuals.69 In some household accounts, like those of Dame Alice de Bryene or Sir Thomas Paget, the number of people invited to particular meals are provided and the amounts of foods served. Also some evidence can be drawn from the descriptions of feasts as to the quantity of food served and the amount of people present. However, the calculations can only be made as to the average amount of certain food items served to a mess in order to estimate how much an average person could have eaten. What we do not know is what dishes an individual person chose and how much of the food chosen he ate. Much food was taken away by servants and put in voiders to be distributed among the poor.

68 J . M . Thurgood, The Diet and Domestic Households of English Lay Nobility, 1265-1531,

unpublished M Phil Thesis (University of London, 1982). This is an interesting work in which the author analyses basic foods and drinks consumed in lay noble households in the Middle Ages against a background of domestic economy and supply. Unfortunately, the author merely men tions the theory of humours which results in misconceptions concerning nutrition in general but also cooking methods and the selection of foods in particular.

69 In the fourteenth century records of fercula started to appear in diet accounts. See C . Woolgar, “ Fast and Feast: Conspicuous Consumption and the Diet of the Nobility in the Fifteenth Century”, [in:] ed. M . Hicks, Revolution and Consumption in Late Medieval England

(Woodbridge, 2 0 0 1 ), p. 9.

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Before the age of printed books, evidence of what people ate is scarce and therefore from the fall of the Roman Empire until the fourteenth century it is not well docu mented. We know of more than a hundred manuscripts from the period between the fourteenth and early sixteenth century that have been the subject of serious studies. The fifteenth century witnessed the development of printed cookery books, which increased in numbers of titles and copies published. The problem with cookery books as a source of information for historians is that they do not describe how food was actually prepared, only how it may have been prepared if the cook closely followed the recipes. We know, however, that these collections of recipes, whether manu scripts or books, were not prepared for the cooks, who knew their trade too well to use them. What is more, although the cookery books tell the reader what ingredients were needed for the preparation of certain dishes, no quantities or detailed cooking instructions were provided. This is why it would be practically impossible to recon struct the methods of food preparation, although some attempts are made on an experimental basis in such places as Hampton Court Palace kitchens70 or the Weald and Downland Museum in Sigleton, Chichester.71 None of the historical evidence, in fact, tells us what actually was done with the food, what precisely happened in the kitchen and what the food really looked like when it reached the table. It is very difficult to find answers to these questions and they will, most probably, never be resolved. The only clues come from recipes, inventories of kitchen equrpment and archaeological evidence.

Food has accompanied human beings from the beginnrng of trme and eating has rich personal associations for the individual. The saying ‘y°u are what you eat’ depicted an individual’s position in society, his status and the state of his finances. Roast peacock, or crane, boar’s head or cockentrice, were definitely not to be found on a poor man’s table. What is more, many gentlemen could not afford such delicacies and even if invited to a splendid feast or banquet would probably never have a chance to taste them but simply to look upon them. Feasting was where powerful people

Headed by Marc Meltonville, a team of experimented archaeologists based at Hampton Court Palace, are involved in practical research into the kind of food that the palace would have seen over the last six hundred years. The team consisting of food archaeologists, food historians and also a trained chef, a blacksmith and other craftsmen dissect old recipes, menu lists and banquet records in order to reconstruct medieval dishes. They also recreate kitchen utensils and vessels used both in the kitchen and the dining hall so that they can experiment with the genuine environ ment of a medieval kitchen. (The information was passed by M r Marc Meltonville to the author on his visits to Hampton Court Palace kitchens in June 20 09 and October 20 11).

The Open A ir Museum runs a working kitchen (Winkhurst Kitchen) to discover what a farmstead kitchen in 1540 may have looked like in Tudor England. The interpretation team provides a variety of seasonal domestic demonstrations throughout the year, such as baking bread, brewing ale in the copper, or preparing various dishes and beverages.

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could impress and be impressed. No wonder mighty people wanted to make such events exclusive, theatrical, almost mystical, with only a few invited to the high table. Feasting was also a method of control by powerful institutions, like the Church. All through the period under consideration both religion and the conventions of upper class society influenced dining etiquette, shaped it and moulded it. The Church’s influence permeated throughout most aspects of daily life in medieval Europe, and English kitchens were no exception to the rule. The best example of this is supplied by the regular rhythm offish days and flesh days as well as the periods of fasting, i.e., Advent, Lent, Epiphany and Pentecost.

Feasts, as unique occasions for display and ostentation, for flattery and for the spec tacle of rank and hierarchy, have been the topic of numerous scholarly works by historians, anthropologists, and sociologists, which were studied and analysed for the purpose of this monograph. One of the oldest books in this field is The English

Medieval Feast by William Edward Mead,72 published in 1931. The book, how

ever, contains some information that is already out of date and has been proved to be erroneous. For example, he presents as fact such myths as that medieval cooks used spices to disguise the flavour of spoiled meat73 and that vegetables were hardly ever eaten by the rich.74 He also propagates the opinion that “such beverages as brandy, whisky, champagne and gin were quite unknown in medieval times.”75

Other books in this category are Fabulous Feasts by Madeline Cosman,76 which contains plenty of information about food preparation and laws in medieval Europe, including modern ‘adaptations’ of medieval recipes. The previously mentioned book by Peter Hammond Food and Feast in Medieval England, concludes with an exa mination of medieval feasts. A recent compendium on feasts is Feast: A FUstory of

Grand Eating by Sir Roy Strong,77 in which the author depicts not only the food

eaten but also the setting, from the design and development of rooms for dining to the clothes, utensils, people and etiquette. In Chapter III of his book Strong describes the emergence of cooks and cookbooks in the Middle Ages, writes about the importance of good manners and explains the phenomenon of entremets, which were in England exclusively called subtleties.

Subtleties, made of sugar-paste hardened by gum tragacanth, were in fact works of art or sculpture. They were reserved for the high table alone since sugar until the late 72 W . E . Mead, The English Medieval Feast (London, 1931).

73 Ibid.,p. 77.

74 Ibid.,p. 100.

75 Ibid.,p. 48.

76 M . P . Cosman, Fabulous Feasts (New York, 197 6).

7/ R . Strong, Feast: A History of Grand Eating (London, 20 03).

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seventeenth century was a very expensive commodity. Sugar was treated as a spice or condiment since it alters the flavour of food as does any other spice. The best known and influential book dealing with sugar, its production, and consumption, as well as the role it has played in societies is Sweetness and Power by Sidney W. Mintz,78 a book with a very broad scope. In the first chapter of his book Mintz introduces the “carbohydrate core” principle, based on the idea that a given food can usually be classified either as a nutritious carbohydrate core food that sustains a populace or as one of the multiple alternative supplementary taste foods to provide a variety of tastes. Much of the work is cautious theorising about consumption patterns in the light of the carbohydrate core principle and the apparent changes in social perceptions of sugar. In the chapter on consumption, Mintz discusses the historical awareness and consumption of sugar by the British, beginning with the earliest mention of it, around AD 1100, up to modern times. Sugar had been also known for its medicinal proper

ties and “long before most north Europeans came to know of it, sugar was consumed ...as a medicine and spice in the eastern Mediterranean, in Egypt, and across North Africa.”79 It came to be prized among the affluent of western Europe from the times of Crusades onwards. Sweetness and Power investigates the physical, historical, so cial, and economic aspects of sugar throughout British culture.

The aim of the present work is to characterise food purchase, storage and consump tion in households of the English nobilitas major and nobilitas minor in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. As stated earlier, no work which undertakes an in-depth analysis of the noble household in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, focusing on food and diet and taking into consideration the impact of the humoral theory on an Englishman’s diet, has been written so far. The broad selection of documents that survive from the fifteenth century onwards makes secondaiy histori cal work easier and more accurate. What is important is the fact that many of these documents are more complete than the accounts from earlier periods. I made use of a wide range of primary materials including household accounts of various kinds, inventories, ordinances and other household documents as well as recipes collected in manuscripts and cookery books, mostly published in the period under consideration. For this study seven household account systems were analysed, from different times as well as, from different levels of society, from great lords, such as Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, to lesser nobles, such as Sir Edward Don, and their families. Appendix 1 includes a selection of the household account books that were used to perform the analysis of foods provisioned and consumed by noble households in the period under consideration. The households differ in size, the rank of their master, 78 S . W . Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modem History (New York,

1985). 79 Ibid., p. 80.

Food & drink in the household of english nobility in the 15th and 16th centuries : procurement, preparation, service and consumption

Andrzej K. Kuropatnicki

Food & Drink

in the Household of English Nobility

in the 15th and 16lh Centuries

Procurement ♦ Preperation ♦ Service and Consumption

Food & Drink

in the Household of English Nobility

in the 15th and 16th Centuries

Andrzej K. Kuropatnicki

Food & Drink

in the Household of English Nobility

in the 15th and 16th Centuries

Table of contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction