LINES ON DRESSING A SALAD. "The herbal savour gave his sense delight."-QUARLES. "Two large potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve, Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown, Let onions' atoms lurk within the bowl, Oh, great and glorious! oh, herbaceous treat! To dry apples like Norfolk biffins.-Take small apples-the true biflius, or orange or lemon pippins, are the best choose the clearest riads and without blemishes, lay them on clean straw on a baking wire, cover them with more straw, set them into a slow oven, let them remain for four or five hours; draw them out and rub them in your hands, and press them gently, otherwise you will burst the skins; return them into the oven for about one hour, and press them again when cold; if they look dry, rub them over with a little clarified sugar; by being put into the oven four or five times, and pressed properly every time, they will resemble Norfolk biffins, and keep for a considerable time. To bake pears.-Take twelve large baking pears, pare and cut them into halves, take out the core with the point of a knife, and place them close together in a block tin saucepan, the cover to fit tight; put to them the rind of a lemon cut fine, with half its juice, a small stick of cinnamon, and twenty grains of alspice, cover them with spring water, and allow one pound of loaf sugar to a pint of water; cover them up close, and bake them for six hours in a very slow oven; they will be quite tender, and of a bright colour. Prepared cochineal is generally used for colouring them; but, if the above is strictly attended to, no preparation is required. *The Italians say, "In a salad well salted, put little vinegar, much oil." 131 DRINKING AND RECIPES. "While the Englishmen (he said) drank only ale, they were strong, brawny, able men, and could draw an arrow an ell long, (forty-five inches;) but when they fell to wine and beer, they are found to be much impaired in their strength and age; so the ale bore away the bell among the doctors."-HOWELL. Ar page 76 I alluded to English hospitality; here will be a proper place to give an instance, and in that instance show what it really was. In the year 1136 the Bishop of Winchester founded an hospital, called Holy Cross, near that city, for thirteen poor men who could not maintain themselves: their daily allowance was three and a quarter pounds of bread, and a gallon and a half of beer; in addition to this, they had a flesh or fish dinner, as the calendar allowed, and a pittance or dessert; also a dish of some sort of animal food for supper: they had also a mortrel, a sort of egg flip, made with milk and wastel-bread, or dainty cake, to help them through their beer. This was for those poor men who could not maintain themselves: it is, therefore, right to presume these men were all of them past the meridian of life, except they might be maimed or otherwise bodily afflicted; and, being founded by a bishop, and for charitable purposes, it may be supposed he would not allow them too much, because he could have added to their number, and that would have been more kind than afflicting each with the daily task of eating and drinking too much. It may, therefore, be taken as what in those days was considered a temperate allowance for men who did not labour: this allowance for these thirteen poor men, I have no doubt, is much more than the average of any twenty hard working men at this time, even if in constant employ.* He also provided a noble hall in the same establishment, *The English have always been famous for good cheer. Hollingshed notices the comments of the Spaniards in Queen Mary's time, when they eaw "what large diet was used in their homelie cottages," and repeats what one of the Spaniards said: "Although these English have their houses of sticks and dirt, yet they fare commonlie as well as a king." That the style of living did not disagree, may be inferred from the following instances, which include both rich and poor, and are the oldest on record of any period. Thomas Parre, of Shropshire, died November 8th, 1635, aged 152. The Countess of Desmond, aged 140, and the Countess of Eccleston, aged 143, both in Ireland, died about 1691. From Sir John Sinclair's work on "Health and Longevity," the only routine of life which the aged have pursued, and in which the majority agree, is in early rising. called the Hundred Men's Hall, in which one hundred more poor men of the city might go and dine daily gratis: their fare was a loaf of bread and three quarts of beer; and what they could not eat, they could take away with them. This establishment is not quite perverted, but is much abridged; and in whatever way the funds may be now applied, it is as Dr. Milner says, "the only vestige left of old English hospitality." In this hospital there is still an old leather jack, in which the beer has been drawn for many centuries. The general drink was ale; but, nevertheless, they had wine of their own produce, for in "The Museum Rusticum " we are informed that the country round Arundel, in Sussex, was covered with vineyards. In 1763 there were sixty pipes of wine in the cellars of that beautiful castle, made from the produce of that district, which resembled Burgundy." There are hundreds of places in England named after the vine, such as Vineyard-fields, Vineyard-lanes, &c. The writer has drank, within the last twenty years, in the county of Kent, wine from the grape-vine grown round a paper-mill. He also once drank some strong and pleasant wine made from the wild hedge fruit, sweetened with the honey from a cottage garden in Warwickshire. And there is a very potent wine for very cold weather, commonly made of the elderberries. Birch wine is made from the trees at Belper, in Derbyshire, in a similar manner as it may be made from the sap of the maple. Hollingshed mentions "that they drank in his time fifty-six sorts of French wines, and thirty-six sorts of Spanish and Italian, and mostly drank it spiced." Sack was eight pence a quart in Shakspeare's time. I find the English people scarcely drank anything nett; there was often some sort of mixture; even wine was mixed, as the following couplet will exemplify: "To allay the hardness of the wine, Let with old Bacchus new metheglin join." DRYDEN. Metheglin or mead was much drank: Wales was celebrated for it. Queen Elizabeth had a quantity made there, expressly for her own drinking. In Scotland the Scots did not sweeten the wine like the English, but with comfits, like the French. They drank more than the English, and preferred malmsey. They also drank much ale. The following is an extract from a letter from the Earl of Shrewsbury, dated 1569, to the Marquis of Winchester, about wine-drinking while he had the custody of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots • "It may please you to understand that I have had a certain allowance for wine in my household without imposte. The charges that I do now sustain, and have done this yere, by reason of keeping the Queen of Scots, is so great, that I am compelled to be a suter unto you, that ye will have a friendly consideration. Truly, two tonnes a monthe have not hitherto sustained my ordinary." This will show there was some pretty heavy drinking of the wine, because the greater part of the household would have ale. I should think there must be many daily "wine wise;" that was the pretty saying they made use of when any one had had too much. The drinking of healths I believe to be a Danish custom. If the company consisted of twenty or thirty, it was expected that each should drink healths in rotation; and if an absent or favourite lady or patron, their healths were to be drank on the knees. In those exciting times toasts could not but be often offensive to some, which led to angry discussions and duels. Drunkenness was the prevailing vice all over the country. Breton, a writer of this time, quaintly observes: "A drunken man is a noun adjective, for he cannot stand alone by himself." The nation must, then, be in a pretty rolling condition; for it appears all the verbs were sots, and could lend them but a staggering support. But ale was the principal beverage; and the Dutch have raised the following quaint query upon the subject of drinking too much: As dat beer is in de man, or, When the beer is in the man, The solving of this question I shall leave to some ingenious casuist-one who has a mind of that cast that can A hair 'twixt north and north-west side." HUDIBRAS. The intemperate should recollect the following French maxim: "Two things a drunkard doth disclose A crimson phiz and pimpled nose." In the town of Nottingham there was a publican of the name of Littlejohn, who put up over his door the sign of Robin Hood and the following four witty lines: "All ye that relish ale that's good, Come in and drink with Robin Hood; If Robin Hood is not at home, Come in and drink with Littlejohn." But Mr. Littlejohn, in the due course of time, like all other men, paid the debt of nature. His successor thought it a pity to lose so good a sign and such good tap-room poetry; so, with a little ingenious poetic alteration, he substituted his own name, as follows: "All ye that relish ale that's good, Come in and drink with Robin Hood; If Robin Hood is not at home, Come in and drink with Samuel Johnson." Goldsmith had such a house as this upon his mind when he wrote "Where village statesmen talk'd with looks profound, amid murky clouds of best Virginia. In some districts, as is now the case, cider was a common beverage. Drayton thus mentions it: "Spiced syllabubs, and cider of the best, And to the same down solemnly they sat." The renowned city of Oxford is famous for a drink called an Oxford night-cap, which one of that learned body of men in the olden time has thus given his reasons for drinking: "Three cups of this a prudent man may take The first of them for constitution sake; The third, and last, to lull him to his rest." I hope, therefore, it will not be imprudent in me to give the recipe for making it. The above orthodox authority must be undeniable. Make several incisions in the rind of a lemon, stick cloves in them, and roast by a slow fire; put equal quantities of cinnamon, mace, and alspice, with a race of ginger, into a saucepan, with half a pint of water; simmer till reduced half the quantity. Boil one bottle of port wine, burn a portion of the spirit out by applying a lighted piece of paper to the saucepan; put the roasted lemon and spice into the wine, stir it up, and let it stand near the fire ten minutes; rub a few nobs of white sugar on the rind of a lemon, put the sugar into a jug with the juice of a raw lemon, pour the wine upon it, grate some nutmeg into it, and sweeten to your taste: serve it up with the lemon floating at top. Some use Burgundy wine mulled, and call it bishop or a comforter. If with old Rhenish port, it is called cardinal; but if with Tokay, it is called pope. |