All the King's Cooks Read Online Free
Author: Peter Brears
gulls), gulls and puffins may surprise us, but in fact they had all been eaten for centuries. The puffin’s flesh tasted so fishy that one writer in 1530 described it as ‘a fysshe lyke a teele’, and the Church actually classed them as fishes which could be eaten in Lent. 9 In Cornwall puffins were chased out of their holes near the cliffs using ferrets and then, being ‘exceeding fat, [they were] kept salted, and reputed for fish, as coming neerest thereto in taste’. 10 Prepared in this way, they were considered something ofa delicacy. Gulls, meanwhile, were caught in nets and fattened during the winter in poultry yards, where they were ‘crammed with salt beef ready for the table’. 11
Of the wild land birds, the most impressive was the great bustard, the largest wild bird in Europe. Before it became extinct in this country around 1860, it was remembered as having particularly delicious flesh, weighing some fifteen pounds or more, with a six-foot wing span. 12 The much smaller quail, plover and dotterel were equally desirable, especially the first of the three – fat and tender, it was lured into nets using a whistle called a quailpipe. 13 In contrast, the delicate yet nourishing larks were taken either by a small hawk called a hobby, or by using a mirror and a piece of red cloth to distract them until they were netted. In Shakespeare’s King Henry the Eighth the Earl of Surrey alludes to this practice when taunting Cardinal Wolsey about his red cardinal’s hat: 14
If we live thus tamely,
To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet,
Farewell nobility! Let his grace go forward
And dare us with his cap like larks.
The lark was considered to be ‘of all smale byrdes the beste’, whereas sparrows were ‘harde to digest, and are very hot, and stirreth up Venus, and specially the brains of them’, Sir Thomas Elyot tells us. 15 Presumably this is why they were a luxury at the palace, while remaining a poor man’s food, netted and caught beneath sieves from the earliest times through to the middle of the twentieth century. 16
Of the tame birds, many of the geese, hens and pheasants, for instance, were fed in the poultry yards attached to some of the palaces, as well as being purchased in vast numbers. Peacocks and peachicks made very impressive dishes at table, but had to be eaten when still quite young. Dr Andrew Boorde, physician and traveller, states in his Dyetary of Helth (1542) that ‘yonge peechyken of half a yere of age be praysed, olde pecockes be harde of dygestyon’, while Henry Buttes complained of their ‘very harde meate, of bad temperature, & as evil juyce. Wonderously increaseth melancholy, & casteth, as it were, a clowd upon theminde’. 17 However, when a year-old bird was recently roasted at Hampton Court, it was found to be very toothsome – somewhere between a chicken and a pheasant in flavour and texture. To prepare it for the kitchen, the Tudor cooks first cut its throat and hung it with a weight tied to its heels for two weeks in a cool place. 18 Turkeys were also available at this period: they were brought into Europe from Mexico and Central America about 1523–4, and into England at about the same time by the Strickland family of Boynton near Bridlington in the East Riding. The crest adopted by the Stricklands for their coat of arms showed a white turkey cock with a black beak and red wattles – probably representing the colouring of those early birds. Listed as one of the greater fowls by Archbishop Cranmer in 1541, the turkey soon gained an excellent reputation, being ‘very good nourishment; restoreth bodily forces; passing good for such as are in recovery; maketh store of seede; enflameth Venus’. For preparation, they were simply hung overnight and cooked quite fresh. 19
Using money advanced to them by the clerk for the coming month, the Hampton Court purveyors would purchase their poultry as required. In the case of shortages, they could compulsorily requisition supplies
Of the wild land birds, the most impressive was the great bustard, the largest wild bird in Europe. Before it became extinct in this country around 1860, it was remembered as having particularly delicious flesh, weighing some fifteen pounds or more, with a six-foot wing span. 12 The much smaller quail, plover and dotterel were equally desirable, especially the first of the three – fat and tender, it was lured into nets using a whistle called a quailpipe. 13 In contrast, the delicate yet nourishing larks were taken either by a small hawk called a hobby, or by using a mirror and a piece of red cloth to distract them until they were netted. In Shakespeare’s King Henry the Eighth the Earl of Surrey alludes to this practice when taunting Cardinal Wolsey about his red cardinal’s hat: 14
If we live thus tamely,
To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet,
Farewell nobility! Let his grace go forward
And dare us with his cap like larks.
The lark was considered to be ‘of all smale byrdes the beste’, whereas sparrows were ‘harde to digest, and are very hot, and stirreth up Venus, and specially the brains of them’, Sir Thomas Elyot tells us. 15 Presumably this is why they were a luxury at the palace, while remaining a poor man’s food, netted and caught beneath sieves from the earliest times through to the middle of the twentieth century. 16
Of the tame birds, many of the geese, hens and pheasants, for instance, were fed in the poultry yards attached to some of the palaces, as well as being purchased in vast numbers. Peacocks and peachicks made very impressive dishes at table, but had to be eaten when still quite young. Dr Andrew Boorde, physician and traveller, states in his Dyetary of Helth (1542) that ‘yonge peechyken of half a yere of age be praysed, olde pecockes be harde of dygestyon’, while Henry Buttes complained of their ‘very harde meate, of bad temperature, & as evil juyce. Wonderously increaseth melancholy, & casteth, as it were, a clowd upon theminde’. 17 However, when a year-old bird was recently roasted at Hampton Court, it was found to be very toothsome – somewhere between a chicken and a pheasant in flavour and texture. To prepare it for the kitchen, the Tudor cooks first cut its throat and hung it with a weight tied to its heels for two weeks in a cool place. 18 Turkeys were also available at this period: they were brought into Europe from Mexico and Central America about 1523–4, and into England at about the same time by the Strickland family of Boynton near Bridlington in the East Riding. The crest adopted by the Stricklands for their coat of arms showed a white turkey cock with a black beak and red wattles – probably representing the colouring of those early birds. Listed as one of the greater fowls by Archbishop Cranmer in 1541, the turkey soon gained an excellent reputation, being ‘very good nourishment; restoreth bodily forces; passing good for such as are in recovery; maketh store of seede; enflameth Venus’. For preparation, they were simply hung overnight and cooked quite fresh. 19
Using money advanced to them by the clerk for the coming month, the Hampton Court purveyors would purchase their poultry as required. In the case of shortages, they could compulsorily requisition supplies
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