All the King's Cooks Read Online Free Page A

from members of the Poulterers’ Company of London, paying the agreed prices. The Company was also obliged to buy back at the same rates any supplies that the palace purveyors found they didn’t need. In return for these impositions, it was agreed that the purveyors would not take any poultry from within seven miles of London, and that they would not purchase any birds offered to them by nobles or gentlemen. 20 Most of the poultry was probably unloaded in the poultry yard so as to be ready for preparation before five in the morning. 21 The sergeant then checked it for quality and quantity. 22 If it contained any bad stuff, he rejected it and reported the purveyor to the clerks of the greencloth for punishment, while if it was of overall poor quality he could call in the clerks comptroller, who would reduce the price accordingly. As soon as it was accepted, the poultry was carried into the scalding house, where great pans of water would already be boiling over the fires. If the birds were dipped in for half a minute, the feathers could easily be plucked out by pulling them against the grain. 23 Since this process heated the carcases, it could make them go off within a day. Long experiencehad made this common knowledge, so the birds were plucked immediately before being cooked; those for late-morning dinner were delivered fresh to the larder by 8 a.m., and those for early-evening supper by 3 p.m. They were probably delivered drawn, but with their heads and feet in place to make it easier to tie them on to the spit, and with their major organs still inside for use by the cooks in specific recipes.

    To the east of the Poultry, in the centre of the outer offices, lay the bakehouse. 24 At Hampton Court at this time the sergeant of the bakehouse was John Heath. He it was who had provided all the ‘hard tack’ biscuits for the King’s siege of Boulogne in July 1544, and personally served there as a standard-bearer in the army, for which he earned an additional two shillings a day. Assisted by his clerk, he supervised the provision of all the bread required for the court. 25 The supplies of wheat were either purchased from outside or brought in from the royal estates by two yeomen purveyors, each load being delivered by cart or by barge and then measured by the bushel (64 pints, 36 litres); the sergeant or his clerk would always ensure that all of it was sweet and good for baking. 26 Some of the six ‘conducts’ (labourers) would carry it up the two broad staircases from the yard into the granaries, where the yeoman garnetor cleaned it and turned it, as necessary, to prevent it being spoiled by mildew or pests. This officer was also responsible for sending the wheat to be ground at the mills; he would make sure to check that the same weight that went out as grain returned as meal, for the King never surrendered a percentage of the meal as toll, but paid for the miller’s services in cash.
    On its return, the meal was boulted, or sieved, by the labourers. A coarse sieve first removed the bran, which the sergeant sold to the avener for feeding the King’s horses. The remaining meal was either used to make ‘cheat’, or wheatmeal bread, or put through a very fine sieve to produce an almost white ‘mayne’ flour for making small loaves of the highest quality, called manchets. For general use the yeoman fernour (a baker in charge of the ovens or furnaces) would season the flour, prepare the leaven or yeast, make sure the dough was not too wet, check itsweight in his balance both before and after baking, and heat the ovens in the great bakehouse. John Wynkell, the yeoman baker for the King’s mouth, made the ‘mayne, chete and payne de [bread of] mayne’ for the royal table quite separately in the privy bakehouse. In 1546 the King had granted him the additional office of bailiff and collector of revenues for the lands of dissolved Leicester Abbey, in both Leicestershire and Derbyshire. 27
    The bulk of the Bakehouse’s