Early English Meals and Manners

Some few paragraphs from the Book,


Russell’s Boke of Nurture

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, God keep me! I am an Usher to a Prince, and delight in teaching the inexperienced.

It is charitable to teach ignorant youths.

If any such won’t learn, give them a toy.

One May I went to a forest, and by the Forester’s leave walked in the woodland, where I saw three herds of deer in the sunshine.

A young man with a bow was going to stalk them, but I asked him to walk with me, and inquired whom he served.

‘No one but myself, and I wish I was out of this world.’

‘Good son, despair is sin; tell me what the matter is. When the pain is greatest the cure is nearest!’

‘Sir, I’ve tried everywhere for a master; but because I know nothing, no one will take me.’ ‘Will you learn if I’ll teach you? What do you want to be?’

‘A Butler, Sir, Panter, Chamberlain, and Carver. Teach me the duties of these.’

‘I will, if you’ll love God and be true to your master.’

A Panter or Butler must have three knives:

1 to chop loaves, 1 to pare them, 1 to smooth the trenchers.

Give your Sovereign new bread, others one-day-old bread; for the house, three-day bread; for trenchers four-day bread; Have your salt white, and your salt-planer of ivory, two inches broad, three long.

Have your table linen sweet and clean, your knives bright, spoons well washed, two wine- augers some box taps, a broaching gimlet, a pipe and bung.

To broach a pipe, pierce it with an auger or gimlet, four fingers- breadth over the lower rim, so that the dregs may not rise.

Serve Fruit according to the season, figs, dates, quince-marmalade, ginger, &c.

Before dinner, plums and grapes after, pears, nuts, and hard cheese.

After supper, roast apples, &c.

In the evening don’t take cream, strawberries, or junket, unless you eat hard cheese with them.

Hard cheese keeps your bowels open.

Butter is wholesome in youth and old age, anti-poisonous, and aperient. Milk, Junket, Posset, &c., are binding.

Eat hard cheese after them.

Beware of green meat; it weakens your belly.

For food that sets your teeth on edge, eat almonds and cheese, but not more than half an ounce.

If drinks have given you indigestion, eat a raw apple.

Moderation is best sometimes, at others abstinence.

Look every night that your wines don’t ferment or leak Always carry a gimlet, adze, and linen cloths; and wash the heads of the pipes with cold water.

If the wine boil over, put to it the lees of red wine, and that will cure it.

Romney will bring round sick sweet wine.

The names of Sweet Wines.

Recipe for making Ypocras.

Take spices thus, Cinnamon, &c., long Pepper.

Have three basins and three straining-bags to them; hang ’em on a perch.

Let your ginger be well pared, hard, not worm-eaten, (Colombyne is better than Valadyne or Maydelyne); your sticks of Cinnamon thin, hot and sweet; Canel is not so good.

Cinnamon is hot and dry, Cardamons are hot and moist.

Take sugar or sugar candy, red wine, graines, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, spice, and turnesole, and put each powder in a bladder by itself.

Hang your straining-bags so that they mayn’t touch,--first bag a gallon, others a pottle.

Put the powders in two or three gallons of red wine; then into the runner, the second bag, (tasting and trying it now and then), and the third vessel.

If it’s not right, add cinnamon, ginger, or sugar, as wanted.

If it’s not right, add cinnamon, ginger, or sugar, as wanted.

Mind you keep tasting it.

Strain it through bags of fine cloth, hooped at the mouth, the first holding a gallon, the others a pottle, and each with a basin under it.

The Ypocras is made.

Use the dregs in the kitchen.

Put the Ypocras in a tight clean vessel, and serve it with wafers.