“Have you ever eaten cat?”

“Yes. My grandmother used to cook them.”

“Where did she get the cats from?”

“She raised them?”

“In a cage?”

“No, outside.”

“And to kill them?”

“You use a rifle.”

“What did you do yesterday?”

“I cooked lunch for my family. Polenta and roast beef. I prefer rabbit but my children don’t like it. I also like cat but they don’t like that either.”

“Cat with polenta?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of sauce?”

“Cacciatore. With tomato sauce.”

“Where do you get the cats?”

“Um.”

“Is it good?”

“If the cat is good, then yes. You don’t want a domestic cat that has been raised on food from a can. They need to eat mice and snakes.”

. . . . Now, I know that this cat is a specialty of the area I live in (Ticino), but I have not yet been actually offered it.

Notes On a Modern Epicure

They say the golden age will return. Let us hope so.

- Remy de Gourmont

- Mr. Antiphilos, Satyr

     Arthur Day diverted the gardener, having him plant and grow those vegetables of old, those, in an age of narrow taste, no longer available at the common grocer. There were purple hyacinth beans, once favoured by Thomas Jefferson, which matured into bleeding red pods containing cyanogenic glucosides, poison, but, if properly prepared, were delicious. Young and prehensile, the pods of devil’s claw resembled okra, but were far tastier. The garden was a veritable orchestra: the long and thin kipfelkrumpl potatoes, skirret, the ornamental yet exquisitely edible Joseph’s coat. Then winnigstädt cabbage, which twisted into a lovely pointed head and, turned into sauerkraut, went well along side a few roast squab. The blue shackamaxon bean made a black polenta, sapid, reminiscent of a creek at night; served with a shank of lamb, anointed with pinoli and claret gravy it was ideal for supping on a mellow spring night.

     These early, almost aboriginal vegetables, he found tasted best along odd sorts of game – rich meats. The classical horsetooth amaranth went well with roast rabbit or civet. Evening primrose added a certain piquancy to a Brunswick stew cooked with grey squirrel. Opossum and malabar spinach. Baked crane with barely cooked crosnes and syrup of violets. Bear and Texas bird pepper. Beaver tail and cymling squash. Woodchuck with welsh onions. The combinations were numerous; but not infinite.

     Perusing antique cookbooks he came upon attractive recipes and put them to practice:

Item: Three green geese in a dish, sorrell sauce

Item: Potage of sand Eeles and Lamprons

Item: Galandine for a crane or a Hearne or any other Foule that is black meat

Item: Lamb’s ears with shallots

Item: Chauldron for a Swan

     He was delighted with a recipe for stewed larks:

     First take them and drawe them cleane, and cut off their feete, and then take a good deale of wine in a platter, and take a good deale of marow, and put it in the Wine and set them on a Chafing dish, and let them stew there a good while, then take a quantitie of smal Raisins, and wash them clean and put them into the broth, and take a little sugar, and Sinamon, and a few crums of manchet bread, and put them into the Larkes, and let them stue altogither, than take and cut half a dosen Tostes, and lay them in a Platter, then put them in a dish with broth, and serve them out.

     The recipe ‘To still a cock for a weake body that is consumed’ he found infinitely amusing:

     Take a red Cock that is not too olde, and beate him to death, and when he is dead, fley him and quarter him in small peeces, and bruse the bones everye one of them. Then take roots of Fenell, persely, and succory, Violet leaves, and a good quantitye of Borage, put the Cock in an earthen pipkin and betweene everye quarter some rootes, hearbes, corance, whole mace, Anis seeds, being fine rubbed, and Licorice being scraped and sliced, and so fill your pipkin with al the quarters of the Cocke, put in a quarter of a pinte of Rosewater, a pinte of white wine, two or three Dates. If you put in a peece of golde, it will be the better, and halfe a pound of prunes, and lay a cover upon it, and stop it with dough, and set the pipkin in a pot of seething water, and so let it seethe twelve houres with a fire under the brasse pot that it standeth in, and the pot kept with licour twelve houres. When it hath sodden so many houres, then take out the pipkin, pul it open, and put the broth faire into a pot, give it unto the weak person morning and evening.

     In his search for new peculiarities, ever inclined to the tender, he bent his brow toward the smaller creatures. In Australia he tried fried witchety grubs, enjoying, in a morbid sort of way, the creamy texture of the inside as it contrasted with the crisp and delicate skin. Venezuela offered the roasted tarantula, which he imbibed daily throughout his three week stay – Six to a plate; he cracked them open like crabs and, with naked fingers, advanced the bits of delicate flesh between his parted lips . . . While touring China he sampled scorpion soup, and then, with the stingers removed, the same creatures raw, crudo, a kind of hyper-exotic sushi . . . The mopane worms of Botswana he ate while sitting on an old log, under the flaring sun, the only white man for a hundred miles round . . . In Mexico ant larvae and pupae called escamole (a step above any brutish caviar), as well as fried red agave worms; the very same used in the popular drink mescal . . . Mealworms. Stinkbugs. Creatures that crept under rocks, existed in roiling bundles of multiplexed consciousness, honey-combs of living, crawling matter to be sampled in his nomadic journey through decadence.

     Yet, as interesting as bugs were, they were hardly worthy of being labelled more than a passing fad; – insects, though varying in flavour and possessing more finesse than cows or sheep, he found to be rather limiting as a culinary experience.

     “I’m fed up with the posing of the contemporary gourmet,” he told his friend Rudy one day. “Members of my species seem to imagine that a sprig of spring onion carelessly applied atop a spoonful of undercooked polenta is something to rave about. There is a shop in the Village making a killing on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The chef minces around the kitchenette, spreads the jelly with a bit of a flourish, and the mediocrity are thrilled. The extent of their naivete amazes me. Americans are the only people on earth who pride themselves on being lowbrow.”

     Rudy smiled, showing his fine, white, somewhat canine teeth. “You can’t expect everyone to have an appetite for poached eel and insects you know.”

     “Oh, I am pretty much through with insects,” Arthur said with a sweep of his hand.

     “Not quite profligate enough for you?”

     “That is not the point. There is no need to project your pre-fabricated morals on me. I simply feel that I have exhausted that sphere of edibles. Frankly,” he murmured in a confidential tone, leaning forward. “Frankly, I don’t know where my next meal will come from. The beasts of the forest and field, the sea and river, as well as those that soar in the sky, have one by one passed through my digestive tract. I sometimes wonder if it is not time to revert to simplicity.”

     “Well, stick to bread and cheese and you can’t go wrong. The Spartans-”

     “Please, let’s not talk about the Spartans,” Arthur said, rising from his seat. “It is true, a lesser man might retire from the high temperature of battle, scamper off and lick their wounds – hunker down with a roll and a cube of mozzarella, an olive, even a sliver of undercooked beef. But not I.”

     Shih Hu, the ancient Hun ruler, would, for special occasions, have one of his wives beheaded, roasted and served to his guests, while the uncooked head was placed on a golden platter, and displayed, so that all could admire her beauty while they supped. – A far cry from the debased form of cannibalism practised by those of the Donner party, on that snowy California pass over one-hundred years ago.

     Yes, Arthur Day knew full well that the eating of one’s own kind was in disrepute, but he tended to the belief that it was something of a modern prejudice. After all, many a stately being had tasted the flesh of human. Richard the Lionhearted was said to have enjoyed curried head of Saracen, prepared with ‘saffron of good colour.’ Abaga, the great grandson of Genghis Khan, often partook of his enemies, boiled and minced with chives. Amongst the Tartars, human flesh was consumed with surprising regularity, the breast meat of young girls, reportedly of exquisite tenderness, being set aside for the repast of nobles. Countess Elizabeth de Báthory disposed of a total of six hundred virgins, both drinking and bathing in their blood in order to keep herself young. Louis XI, during his great illness, drank the blood of children as a tonic.

     Of course, that most unusual of tastes could hardly be said to be reserved for the aristocracy. While the Aztec king Montezuma dieted on the still beating hearts of his enemies, his people grew fat on their flesh, boiled and served with squash blossoms. The Raft of the Medusa, the subject of Géricault’s monumental painting, which resides in the Louvre, was a craft on which the famished ate each other. Maupassant, in one of his tales, spoke of French soldiers slaughtering and eating their most exhausted companions while on the march, without food, through the deserts of the Middle East. Jeremiah Johnson ate over two hundred livers of Crow Indians. Herodotus tells of the Padaeans, who fed on their own sick and aged. In Egypt, during the dawn of the thirteenth century, endophagy was rampant; boiled babies and roast youngsters became a part of everyday fare.

     Arthur, at the age of twenty-five, had tried virtually every variety of cuisine but the cooked meat of his own species. Due to the promulgation of western thought, a veritable infection, the custom of cannibalism has long since retreated. – The Maori of New Zealand are now told to enjoy the hogget imported by the invaders and, under no circumstances, to indulge in the excesses of their ancestors . . . The practice of men dining upon men seems to have been reduced to cases of mere necessity, such as in the episode of the plane crash of the 1972 Uruguayan rugby team, the surviving members, upon being rescued, stating that they had formed quite a taste for rancid brain and lung.

     If the sensible man is considered one who adapts himself to the customs of the time and place in which he lives, then Arthur Day could by no means be qualified as a sensible man. But the narrow lanes, crowded, filled with the bleating of the common fold, were not those by which he travelled. He preferred to go off the beaten path. In his view, the habits of society as a whole had been long decanted from the decorated glass vessels of old, into plastic, present-day jugs – far more utilitarian, able to be handled by clumsy and plebeian hands, but altogether lacking in taste, refinement and the subtle aura of opulence. If the current grouping of humanity expected him to play by its rules, it was sorely mistaken. As far as Arthur was concerned, the game was still his.

     One mild afternoon, as Rudy and he sat in a Soho coffee shop, the former said: “So, are you still in the heat – I mean: Are you still in the high temperature of battle?”

     “The high temperature?” Arthur plucked a zaletta from the plate before him, his eyes glancing at it with a certain measure of disdain. “Naturally.”

     “So what is it this time?” Rudy asked. “Camel’s heels; peacock’s tongues; flamingo brains?”

     “No,” (chewing, blinking.) “Ever since gorging myself on sow’s utters stuffed with pearls I have been totally disinclined towards the Emperial Roman diet.”

     Rudy lit a cigarette. He was unsure if his friend’s last remark was in jest.

     “So then,” he said, leaning back, a shaft of sunlight striking through the cloud of bluish smoke before him. “Where does your campaign lead you?” He was beginning to enjoy the conversation. “I have known you for a long time Arthur, and I can always tell when you are beginning to boil – when you’re just about at a cross-roads. You act so damn calm, more aloof than usual – Yes, you don’t like the cookie, I can tell . . . In any case: Now – You’re searching for your next meal?”

     “I have been making inquiries,” Arthur replied, dusting the powdered sugar from his fingertips with a napkin.

     “Inquiries?”

     “Yes. I leave in two days for Brazil.”

     “Brazil? What for?”

     “Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies,” Arthur replied, removing a Churchill Hoy de Monterey from his jacket pocket.

      His inquiries led him to the Amazon of Brazil: The Uasca tribe, who dwelled along an offshoot of the Rio Tapauá, still, according to report, cooked every eighty-fifth inhabitant on the sixth full moon of the year. At that time, so went their tradition, the eating of human flesh was especially propitious. It rejuvenated the tribe for the coming seasons.

     He lost no time in making his way to Lábrea, where he hired an Indian guide to escort him on the more troublesome part of his journey. They went up the river in a canoe. During the night, an insect laid its eggs in his cheek, making it swell to the redness and roundness of an apple. He caught a spell of fever. The mosquitoes bit in abundance. He sipped gin and tonic from a canteen and stared into the green masses of undergrowth around him: branches wreathed with vines and snakes, the sponge like forest floor crawling with tens of millions of insects. Birds of all sorts hollered from the canopy above. Occasionally he caught sight of a monkey or sloth. Fish, tucuxi and manatees swam by the boat. 

     When he finally arrived at the village, a dirty patch of ground nestled amongst the dark forest, his body felt like a single raw wound, an aching pillar of flesh . . . If his estimations were correct the local feast would soon be commencing, as he had managed to arrive on the very day of that hallowed event . . . He had the guide inquire for him . . . The head villager, naked and serious, with coal black hair clipped as with the guidance of a bowl, nodded his head . . . He invited Arthur to join him in the repast, which was then boiling, and just hours away . . . Arthur ate his supper as the sun set and the sounds of the wild jungle filled the air . . . A woman with thin, pendulous breasts handed him a large leaf on which sat a kind of stewed flesh . . . He sampled . . . It was savoury . . . The villagers eyed him with great concern as he imbibed the strands of meat, and sucked on the gristle before him . . . He was offered a white liquid to drink . . . The flames of the fire danced, the liquor took effect, his stomach became unsettled.

     The next morning found him in a hut of mud and straw, a family of native Huascans piled up around him. He arose and, in the early morning light, approached the dead coals of the previous night’s fire. Bones sat in the ashes and dust. He picked one up and inspected it. In disgust he noted the femur’s construct; obviously that of some sort of primate, such as a howler monkey of the genus Alouatta, of the species palliata or seniculus.

On Escargot

Arthur Day went through a phase of snail addiction – Raising them himself, like a true Roman decadent, on bay, wine, and a spicy chiffonnade. He naturally preferred the Burgundy snail, or Helix pomatia over its slightly more coarse cousin, the Petit-Gris, or Helix aspersa, but at first did not so much as consider the challenge of cultivating it. And, as far as he was concerned, the Gros-Gris, or Helix aspersa maxima, was absolutely out of the question, with its dark mantle and generally uncouth persona. This snail might do for the commercial growing houses and those counterfeit gourmets whose faces appear like peruked balls of suet on the TV screen, but for him it held no more charm than a Van Gough painting reproduced on a coffee mug.

As he applied his little trident to a plate of well-prepared escargots à la bourguignonne, he would dream of his service to the world: A new breed of snail, one with all the nicety of the Burgundy, but as easy to cultivate as the Gros-Gris. He set himself to heliciculture with an admirable vigour. One March, he personally went to France, to the forests around Brive, and captured two hundred prime specimens of the Burgundy. He flew them home in a series of specially prepared, climate-controlled boxes. He was up to the challenge. The snails were put in cages containing a beautiful, black soil he had trucked in from his brother’s ranch. He watched the creatures with great interest as they slithered over the moist dirt, feeling a strange kinship to their hermaphroditic state. By May he had two thousand five hundred delightful little Burgundies, each one as delicate as a dew drop and as precious as a jewel. These he put in a ten square meter greenhouse, within which grew rows of young lettuce, chicory and basil interspersed with finger bowls of a very raw Slovenian wine called Terrain.

As the snails matured he pulled out the best: those whose shells were the largest in diameter and possessed of the most distinct and uniform coloring. These virgin mollusks he set aside in individual boxes, to hibernate until the next season. Those which remained he harvested as they matured, sinking them in boiled rose water for 3.5 minutes and then removing the bodies from the shell. The hepatopancreas of these snails were particularly delicious, so he let them remain, transferring the whole bodies into chilled water which had been previously dosed with sea salt. Kneaded together with butter, garlic, pepper, shallots and parsley, then returned to the sluiced shells, his effort produced many a good meal.

The following spring he took his breeders, the finest of the previous year’s crop, and set them in pairs amongst little beds of daffodils. He smiled as he saw the snails approach each other, extend their liquidy antennas and coquettishly touch, often drawing back with sudden, shy impulses. They would meet upon a slender stalk, dip and crone their shiny little heads and then, together, seemingly arm in arm, circle the flower’s corolla and disappear beneath the nearest petal.

All of the snails were gorgeous, but two were particularly remarkable. The colour of their shells were perfectly uniform and their size was incredible: One had a shell diameter of 74mm, the other of an astounding 80mm. He named them Adam and Eve.

In high spirits he wrote the following letter to Professor Bliez-Rien, president of the International Academy of Heliciculture, in Paris:

Dear Monsieur Bliez-Rein,

I am an amateur snail farmer currently residing in the United States of America. Though the country is rough, there are yet a few of us who are not totally devoid of higher aims and appreciations. Your book, translated into my tongue as Diverse Inspections into the Finer Mollusks of Gaul has been, to say the least, a great inspiration to me. Its pages are frayed and its spine cracked, as is the proper fate of a literary masterpiece.

But let me not swallow your precious minutes with unsatisfactory praise.

To come to the point: I have bred a fine series of Helix pomatia, two of which measure, respectively, 74mm and 80mm each in shell diameter. I attribute this great size to a number of factors, the foremost being the soil they were initially housed in. It is rich in calcium and numerous nice minerals and, to my knowledge, nothing like it is attainable outside a certain region of the United States which, due to familial delicacy, I will leave unnamed.

I have every reason to believe that this pair, were they to successfully mate, would produce a unique breeding race, with fixed traits. If luck is with me, and these two prodigies bear fruit, I plan to name the new race the Flaxen Bliez-Rein, in due respect to my mentor in the art of heliciculture -Provided, of course, that I have your kind consent.

If by any slim chance a period of a few days or more could be hedged out of your undoubtedly chock-a-block schedule, a personal rendezvous with these snails would, I venture to think, be of the greatest interest to you. I need not mention that all expenses entailed by such a voyage would be gratefully born by,

Your Faithful Apprentice,

Arthur Day

Just subsequent to posting this letter, Arthur went for a few days abroad. Upon returning he was met in the living-room by his house keeper, Theodore.

“Your sister is here,” the old man said darkly. “She came last night.”

“Oh, she is back from China is she?” Arthur flipped through his mail. “Had enough of the old fung-shui I imagine.”

“She—” He broke off, a look of despair in his eyes.Arthur had an awful foreboding. “What did she do?” he asked in a troubled voice. “What did Katie do?”

At that moment Katie herself entered the room, her bosom expanding a blue, rather coarse jacket which might have belonged to Mao Tse Tung during his boyhood. She was barefoot. Her blonde hair was done up in a long braid.

“Arthur!” she cried, galloping up and throwing her arms around him. “I missed you so much! China was wonderful! I practiced tai-chi! I drank green tea – ten cups a day! The people are so real – So human!”

“You don’t say.”

“I do!”

Theodore cleared his throat: “I was just about to tell him—”

“Don’t worry Theodore,” she said, turning and grasping his hand in both of hers. “Arthur won’t be angry with you. It’s all over with now.”

“Angry about what?” Arthur asked.

“Oh, your flowers,” she said, smiling. “When I came no one was here – Theodore must have been in town buying a hose or something. I went straight to the greenhouse and saw those beautiful beds of daffodils (they are my favourite flowers you know). Well, I stuck my face down and you’ll never guess what I saw! – Snails! Snails everywhere! Big ugly snails!”

Arthur sighed. He felt sick.

“Oh, its ok dear!” she continued. “I know you must be mad at Theodore for not noticing them, but I took care of it. I pulled them off – every one – and threw them outside – onto the rocks – behind the back porch.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, with a corrugated smile.

With steps somewhat agitated, he went outside to the spot she had indicated. A group of crows was gathered around. The snails were scattered pell-mell, their delicate shells broken, bodies damaged, oozing, disappearing down the pointed beaks of the scavengers.

Arthur clasped his hands. He felt the thinness of a letter in one. Opening it, he read the following, which was written in the swift, slanting hand of Professor Bliez-Rein:

Dear Mr. Day,

It would be difficult to describe the emotion I felt upon reading your letter. One more skilled in your English tongue might be able to find the proper words, but for me, a man nursed on frog legs, such a thing is impossible: I am thrilled with your high regard of me, though I doubt very much that I deserve it.

Regarding the snails – As for the snails Mr. Arthur Day: If your measurements are correct, and the starters were indeed Helix pomatia, then I can say without the slightest reserve: You have bred miracles! The smaller of your snails (I believe this is your Eve) comes in a full 21 mm larger than any I have ever seen or heard of in all my forty-seven years of heliciculture. The very thought of it makes me restless to the extreme. The words Flaxen Bliez-Rein make me giddy, my head light – like so much Champagne.

Needless to say, I would like to pay your establishment a visit as soon as it is reasonably convenient for yourself. As for me: All work is as ashes compared to this. Your offer of financial assistance is warmly accepted.

I eagerly await your confirmation.

Kindest Regards,
Pr. Bliez-Rein
Président, International Acadéemie de Héliciculture

How to Bake a Cockatrice, and Other Gastronomic Oddities

A Window on Renaissance Dining

    Have you ever been struck with a sudden urge for a dish of quails farced with figs, or desired nothing so much as a plate of cockscombs on lettuce? Maybe not, but for a decadent of the Italian Renaissance, such dishes were the standard fare. In imitation of the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus, who ate such extravagant things as peas with gold-pieces, lentils with onyx or beans with amber, the Renaissance nobles were true gourmands.

     Classes however were drastically divided. While the rich were living in sumptuous conditions, unheard of today, the common people generally suffered a great deal. Throughout the whole of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries alone there was on average a famine in Europe every eight years.

     The poorer people ate, for the most part, things such as corn mush, coarse bread, stock fish and salt pork. Those of a somewhat higher standing ate beef, white bread, wine, and cheese.

     For the nobles and their circles, meal time was an altogether different matter.

     The Italians led Europe in virtually all things; in the art of cooking no less than that of painting, dress and conversation. While England and France were still using their hands to eat with, the Italians had developed the novelty of the fork. The Englishman Thomas Coryate, upon visiting Italy at the turn of the fifteenth century, commented that he had never in all his travels seen such a wondrous way of eating, and forthwith brought the custom back to England for the enrichment of his own civilisation. Catherine Medici had brought forks with her to France nearly seventy years earlier, but their use apparently never caught on. It is interesting to note that she is also considered responsible for first bringing liqueurs to France, an invention which caught on very well.

     In Italy, those of especially high rank were sure to have a nervous venom taster near at hand, nibbling at each dish and desperately hoping that he would not successfully swallow a poisoned one. Agate cups were used to drink from, because it was thought that poison would become non-toxic in such a vessel.

     There were numerous myths concerning food: Salad was considered efficacious for whitening the skin, and meat for making the muscles flexible. To overcome the fear of water, you ate the partially digested small fish found in the belly of a larger. To have strong legs you ate mountain goat. A jelly of quinces prevented ‘vapours.’

     A typical meal of a well to do Italian of the fifteenth century might have consisted of the following: A broth of beef and barley, roasted venison or pig, minced chicken livers in paste balls, batter fried goose breasts, and leeks parboiled and fried in oil. For dessert there would be candied prickly pears and coriander seeds steeped in marjoram vinegar and crusted with sugar.

     Dessert in general has always been something that the Italians excelled at. The secrets of sherbet had been handed down from the Emperor Nero, and greatly improved by the syrups brought to Venice by Arab traders. At a pageant, the nobility liked nothing so much as a hard candy called Manis Christi, or hand of Christ, which was made of sugar, rose water and gold leaf. The ingredients were mixed together and then cast in moulds, in the shapes of flowers, birds or little beasts, medallions or ornaments, producing a candy that looked much like valuable jewellery. Gold leaf was also used to decorate other deserts, such as cookies, lozenges and marzipan. It is interesting to note that gold and pearls were once thought of as a ‘restorative’ and not uncommonly added to food and drink.   

     The diametric opposite of the Italians, were the Germans. In the south their eating habits were considered course. Course or not, one thing is certain: their stomachs were imperturbable. Looking over what they ate, we can only come to the conclusion that they were veritable superheroes of digestion. They ate eagles, nightingales, swallows, herons, starlings, ptarmigans and woodpeckers. Horses were common fare, as were aurochs, bears, marmots, seals, beavers, porcupines, hedgehogs and virtually any other living thing that was remotely edible.

     The forests of Europe were at one time extremely rich with wildlife. It is little wonder that they no longer are.

     England, like Germany, has never been known as a land dedicated to culinary excellence. When reading over books of old English recipes, one is struck with a certain hesitancy. The very names of the dishes might very well send shivers through a person with weak digestion. Boiled cony with pudding in his belly, sparrows stew, liverings of a swine – These are not the foods most of us want to have sitting on our dinner table.

     Yet, it must be said, that the English food of long ago was probably not half bad, especially for those who liked piquant cooking. They used, with a free hand, cloves, cinnamon, pepper, saffron and numerous other spices. Ale and wine were used in the kitchen constantly. Toasted or stale bread was used as a thickener.

     English chefs were heavily influenced by the French, and for that reason we can today trace many of our words for food preparation back to that language. When reading a cookbook from the thirteenth of fourteenth century, we find it full of strange French corruptions. We read of King Henry IV eating ‘Braun fryez‘ (fried pork) and ‘Egretez‘ (egret).

     Sometimes the language is so terse as to leave one scratching one’s head. As an example of how obscure some of the old recipes could be, we only need to look at the following for Lampreys in Bruet, which was written by one of King Richard II’s master chefs. The recipe is set forth in its entirety:

They schulle be schaldyd and ysode and brulyd upon a greder and grynd peper and safron and do ther’to and boyle it and do the Lamprey there’yn and serve yt forth.

     Of course, it must be remember that King Henry I died from eating ‘too plentifully of lampreys’, so the previous recipe, though undoubtedly tasty and surely adored by Richard, cannot in good conscious be recommended.

     Some of what we come across in the cookbooks of is quite ambiguous, such as the following recipe for ‘apples of love,’ a fruit which I have been unable to place:

Take away the pilling, they cut them in slices boyle them in water, and after frie them in the flower of meale and butter or oyle and then cast upon them pepper and salt: this kind of meat is good for such men as are inclined to dallie with common dames, and short heeld huswiues.

     The chefs of old had a certain cool brevity to their methods. There was no preheating the oven to 350 degrees. No bothering with weights and measures. No pinches of this or teaspoons of that. Occasionally they might refer to an ana or an ‘assay,’ an obscure measurement equal to 4 drams plus 24 grains (if you know what those are). Generally however it seems they measured their ingredients more by intuition than anything else.

     Though they lacked our modern precision, there is no reason to think that they suffered thereby. Samuel Pepys, in his diary entry for the 26^th of January 1660, says his wife prepared a very fine dinner of “a dish of marrow bones, a leg of mutton, a loin of veal, a dish of fowl, three pullets, two dozen larks all in a dish, a neat’s tongue, a dish of anchovies, a dish of prawns and cheese.” To drink he mentions liking, amongst other things, ‘sack-posset,’ which consists of hot sweetened milk, spiced and then curdled with a strong Spanish wine.

     Aside from imported wines, ale and mead were drunk in abundance, it even being the custom of the men to have a ‘morning draft’ before work. The ales were often seasoned with such things as marjoram, thyme, rosemary, mint, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon. Hippocras was another popular beverage and consisted of wine heavily dosed with sugar and spices. Caudell was wine mixed with eggs and, for children and teetotallers, there was furmenty, a drink which I believe is the ancestor of our present day egg nog. It was made by boiling together milk, sugar and eggs, and sometimes adding raisins or, for those in need of extra protein, venison.

     When it came to feasting, no one could outdo the nobility, particularly for oddness and extravagance. Queen Elizabeth I dined almost always alone, and never on less than twenty four dishes, though she would take but a taste from each. For the coronation of the Henry V’s wife Catherine, they ate porpoise and whale. It was a fish day. King Richard II, at the age of twelve, was entertained by the Bishop of Durham. He was served fourteen oxen lying in salt, two fresh oxen, six score sheep, twelve boars, fourteen calves, one hundred and forty pigs, three hundred marrowbones and six deer. For poultry, the good bishop did not stint. He produced fifty swans, two hundred and ten geese, fifty eight dozen capons, sixty dozen hens. Additionally, there were four pheasants, five bitterns, two hundred conies, six kids, seventeen dozen pullets, one hundred dozen pigeons, twelve dozen partridges, eight dozen rabbits, ten dozen curlews, twelve dozen brewes, twelve cranes, six dozen gallons of milk, twelve gallons of crème, eleven gallons of curds, three bushels of apples and six thousand eggs.

     The French were even more extravagant. At one royal banquet we read a menu more or less like the one mentioned above, with the addition of numerous varieties of fish and cheese and three thousand two hundred litres of wine. Kings and nobles drained their treasuries in feasting, spending millions and competing with each other in gluttony.

     At the great banquets, there would be fountains spurting rose water and lawns adorned with rabbits, deer and birds all moulded from minced meat. Subtleties, or sculptures made of sugar, paste and sometimes jelly, were extremely popular and often reached epic proportions. There were hunting scenes, fully armed ships, and even grand castles. Extravagant recipes were imported from Italy to France, where the great lords would make wealthy any man with skill enough to properly prepare them.

     The royal chefs were considered to be almost magicians, and some of the extents they would go to to impress their lords are almost disturbing. Peacocks would be cautiously killed and stripped of their skins, then cooked and reclothed so that they would appear to be alive. Camphor soaked in aquavita was then cast in their mouths and set alight, so the poor creatures breathed fire.

     The alchemy of food preparation was taken incredibly seriously and extravagance was always applauded. A ‘rainbow of roast chickens’ was made by dying each one a different colour. For white egg yolks and flour, for yellow egg yolk and saffron, for green parsley pressed through a cloth with egg. Cockatrice was made by cooking the front part of a capon and the back part of a small pig and sewing them together. A fish could be cooked three ways: The tail fried, the middle steamed, and the head roasted. Each part was then dressed with a different coloured sauce, in a manner similar to that of the chickens just mentioned.

     The most awful recipe was certainly that enjoyed by the King of Arragon: A goose roasted alive and served not dead. I refrain from describing the recipe.

     For the unwelcome guest, there was a recipe so that ‘flesh may look bloody and full of worms, and so be rejected.’ Rabbit’s blood was dried and cast on the meat, to make it look uncooked. Then ‘cut harp strings small, and strew them on the hot flesh, the heat will twist them, and they will move like worms.’

     So, do you feel adventurous? Would you like to sink your teeth into a well garnished taste of the past? Well, for those spirited individuals who are handy in the kitchen, I have composed the following short and relatively simple Renaissance menu, along with recipes:

The First Course

Garbage

The Second Course

Whyte Mortrewys of Porke

The Third Course

Caboges

Dessert

Peris in Syrippe

Garbage

Ingredients:

chicken gizzards, livers etc. (heads and feet optional)

bread (dark bread is best, preferably toasted)

black pepper

cinnamon

cloves

mace,

fresh parsley

fresh sage

ginger

lemon juice

salt

saffron

Take faire garbage, chickens heads, feet, livers, gizzards and wash them clean. Caste them into a faire pot of fresh broth of beef. Add powder of pepper, cinnamon, cloves, mace, parsley and sage minced small. Then take bread, steep it in the same broth and then draw the broth through a strainer. Let this broth boil now. Cast therein powdered ginger, lemon juice, salt, and a little saffron, and serve it forth.

Whyte Mortrewys of Porke

Ingredients:

lean pork

almonds

rice flower

oil or lard

sugar

salt

ginger

almonds

Take lean pork and boil it. Remove it when done. Blanche almonds and grind them and mix them up with the broth of the pork and stir in flower of rice and let boil together. Grind the pork small now and mix in minced almonds fried in fresh grease. Then lay this up all flat in a dish. Throw thereto now sugar and salt. Pour on the dressing (the broth) and then strew thereon powdered ginger and almonds.

Caboges

Ingredients

cabbage

broth

marrowbones

bread (toasted or dried)

saffron

salt

Take faire cabbages and cut them, and wash them clean. Parboil them in faire water, and then press them on a faire board. Chop them, and caste them in a faire pot with good fresh broth, and with marrowbones, and let it boil. Then grate faire bread and caste thereto, and caste thereto saffron and salt. And when thou servest it, knock the marrow out of the bones, and lay two or three gobbets of the marrow in each dish, as seemeth best, and serve it forth.

Peris in Syrippe

Ingredients:

pears

cinnamon

red wine

sugar

powdered ginger

saffron

Take pears and cast them in a faire pot of water. Boil them till they be tender and then take them up and pare them in two or in three. Then take powder of cinnamon, a good quantity, and cast it in good red wine, and cast sugar thereto, and put it in an earthen pot and let it boil. Then cast the pears thereto, and let them boil together awhile. Take powder of ginger, and a little saffron to colour it with.