Food & Feast in Tudor England, Alison Sim

Food & Feast in Tudor England, Alison SIm, Sutton Publishing, Gloucestershire, 1997

In the late sixteenth century…you would have expected a far greater range of items to be made out of silver. This was owing partly to the greater wealth enjoyed by certain people at the time and partly to the fact that new bullion was pouring into Europe from South America… [But] Even at the end of the sixteenth century silver was beyond the reach of most people. 97

The sixteenth century was certainly no golden age. Certain classes in society did indeed flourish but it was a bad time for those at the bottom who found their standard of living decreasing. One estimate, based on inventories, is that by the middle of the sixteenth century about half of the households in England were using pewter, which meant of course that about half the population could not afford it. 98

…as pewter is softer than silver, hardly any of this tableware survives today. It was also quite usual to take your old, worn pewter back to the pewterer to be melted… 98

Once you had taken stock of your host’s tableware it was time to start looking at the items provided at your own place. The first thing to look out for was the ceremonial salt cellar…little bowls…purely to ensure that all the diners had salt…would stand by the place of the most important diner…The next item to study was your drinking vessel. If your cup had been provided with a cover it was another sign your host saw you as someone worth honouring. 100

William Harrison was somewhat scathing of this fashion for glass: ‘It is a world to see in these our days, wherein gold and silver most aboundeth, how that our gentility, as loathing those metals (because of their plenty), do now generally choose rather the Venice glasses, both for our wine and beer, than any of those metals or stone wherein beforetime we have been accustomed to drink…’ 101

Forks were very rare in England in the sixteenth century. In the inventory of the royal jewel house taken in 1574 there were only thirteen silver forks. They were used for serving sticky items, especially sweetmeats, or for helping to steady meat while it was being carved, rather than for eating. Eating with a fork was an Italian fashion which did not reach England until the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. 102

Though forks were foreign, spoons most definitely were not. They held a special place for the Tudor as prized personal possessions and were made in a bewilderingly wide range of styles. 102-103

Relatively large numbers of spoons survive, partly because they contained only about 4 oz of silver each and so were not really worth much as scrap. They also survived because they had strong sentimental value to the Tudors. As personal items they were valued in much the same way that we value our personal items of jewelry today. They were often left in wills for this reason… 103

Eating knives looked rather like a modern cooking knife, with a leaf-shaped blade. The leaf shape gave the knife a point which was useful for spearing food out of serving dishes. It was, however, the height of bad manners to put y our knife in your mouth, just as it still is today. The food would have been removed from the knife and put into the mouth with your fingers. 103-104.

Grand households did own sets of knives for guests to use but it was more usual to have to bring your own knife…etiquette books remind diners that it is their duty to see that their knife is in a fit condition to bring to a table…clean and sharp. 104

Guests’ hands were washed before and after the meal and also between courses, often in scented water. 104

You were expected to use the napkin, as the courtesy books are full of reminders to keep yourself clean. This was particularly important as you might be sharing your cup with the person sitting next to you, and they would hardly want your grease and crumbs… 107

More good advice was to ‘Lay not thy elbow nor they fist/Upon the table whilst thou eat’st’, as it was usual to eat off trestle tables, which might not be very stable. 107

For most Tudors the correct way to drink was to take the cup in both hands…In very well-to-do circles…drinking vessels would not be left on the table but would be called for only when wanted. 107

Most Tudors ate out of communal dishes…It was only very grand diners who could expect their own serving dishes… 108

You would take meat from the communal dish, dip it into one of the sauces provided…and then put the piece into your mouth. 108

Eating from the common dishes was not a free-for-all…the most important person…would help themselves first, and so on through the group of four. 109

…it was the height of bad manners to have your dog with you at meal times. 109

…some things were allowed which would shock the modern diner. Spitting was certainly permitted, although it had to be done discreetly…You were also advised to wipe your hand on your clothes if you had to blow your nose so that other people did not have to look at the result. 110

The greatest of the feasts celebrated was Christmas. This, of course, covered twelve days, but unlike the modern Christmas the celebrations did not begin until Christmas Day itself. Advent was mostly a time of fasting…The two most celebrated days of Christmas were New Year and the final day of the celebration, Twelfth Night. 114

There were different days when certain sections of society were allowed an unusual degree of freedom. Children, for example, had their day on 6 December, St Nicholas’s day. 115

Christmas, then as now, had a variety of dishes associated with it. The first was the boar’s head, which formed the centerpiece of the Christmas Day meal. It was garnished with rosemary and bay…lower down society…[there was no] centerpiece the way the boar’s head was in grander circles. 115

One important item associated with Twelfth Night was the Twelfth cake. This was a fruitcake into which an object or objects might be baked…whoever found the item in their piece of cake became…host and hostess for the evening’s entertainments…The exact nature of the cake, despite it being such an important part of Twelfth Night, remains something of a mystery. Very likely it contained dried fruit, but the earliest evidence comes from a tract printed in Geneva in 1620 which lists the main ingredients as flour, honey, ginger, and pepper. 116

Another tradition associated with Christmas was that of wassailing. This was the remains of old fertility rights, when a toast would be drunk to fruit trees in the hope of making them produce a good crop in the following year. 116

May Day...citizens of London ‘going into the Woods and Meadows to divert themselves’. It was a day associated with fertility rights so the games in the woods were not necessarily innocent, although more blameless community sports and dancing were also usual. In any case, the revellers would be welcomed home with cakes and cream. Cream was a great luxury for ordinary people… 118

Plough Monday, the first Monday after Twelfth Night…start of the agricultural year. Shrovetide, or Shrove Tuesday, when fritters and pancakes were the order of the day. 119

The Lent fast in particular was really born of necessity. Late spring was the time when the last year’s store of food would have been running low…For the wealthy, Lent was a time for fasting but in relative terms. Meat, milk and eggs might be forbidden but…recipe books of the time are full of ways of providing luxurious meals despite the restrictions. Milk could be replaced with almond milk, made from ground almonds mixed with anything from white wine to fish broth. A variety of luxurious fish dishes replaced the meat dishes. 120

All Fridays and Saturdays were also fast days, although restrictions were more relaxed than they were during Lent. On ordinary Fridays outside Lent it seems to have been only meat that was not allowed…The people who must have enjoyed fish days least would have been those who had to eat stockfish. This was dried fish which was rock hard and had to be beaten with a wooden hammer and soaked in warm water for two hours before it could be eaten. 120

…potato, as it is the most famous of the vegetables introduced into England at the time. In the 1622 edition of Herball two types of potato are included…’potatoes’, which is a sweet potato and is referred to by John Parkinson as a Spanish potato…The other variety is the ‘Virginia potato, which is the one familiar to us today…Potatoes were not to become the ordinary food of the common people until the eighteenth century…Wealthier people’s meals in the Middle Ages often ended with a compost, which was a dish of root vegetables and fruit, such as pears, mixed up in a kind of sweet and sour sauce. So the idea of putting root vegetables in sugar was a very old one. 125-6

The tomato was another famous new introduction of the time, though again it was not commonly eaten until much later, probably the nineteenth century. 126

Easter was the time to eat veal and bacon, and Michaelmas (29 December), the time to eat fresh herrings and also ‘fatted crones’, the old female sheep who were past their prime and ready for the pot. Christmas was the only time when it was right to ‘play and make good cheere’ with a good conscience and enjoy the best food that you had. The rest of the year you always had to make the most of what was in season. 127

Since the Middle Ages kings had lived on the move, not only to check up on what was happening in the various regions of their realm but also to show themselves off. They were well aware of how much a personal visit from the king could boost their popularity—or at least bring home the fact that the sovereign was a force to be reckoned with. 129

Naturally a tournament formed part of the entertainments. By the sixteenth century tournaments were basically an occasion for a very elaborate display of wealth. They also gave the aristocracy the chance to show off their military skills, but the aim was most definitely not to kill the opponent. 131

In the sixteenth century the word ‘banquet’ had two meanings. The first was the one we use today…The second…meant a dessert course consisting of various luxury foods, often eaten in a specially constructed banqueting house. The idea of the dessert course banquet had developed from feasts held by the wealthy and important in the Middle Ages. Often the top table at a feast was served with spiced wine, wafers and various spices at the end of a meal to aid digestion, and so as to finish on a suitably luxurious note. At this stage the hall would be in the process of being cleared of the trestle tables used for dining, so it made sense to go into another, more comfortable room for this course. Thus began the tradition of eating what later became the dessert course in a different room, together with the tradition that it was only served to a small selection of the grander guests, rather than to everyone who had been invited to a feast. 135

Renaissance gardens were supposed to delight the senses, challenge the intellect and refresh the spirit…Sixteenth century Italian gardens were very elaborate and the garden doubtless owed a great deal more to art than nature. 141-2

According to sixteenth-century medical opinion, the whole menu at a banquet was designed to inflame lust…In addition to wine, ‘strong waters’, or spirits, were served. These were spirits of wine distilled over various fruits, flowers and so on…aniseed, pine kernels and candied eringo roots (sea-holly)…Also considered aphrodisiacs were the various marmalades…figs… ‘Kissing comfits’ made of sugarpaste appear in several recipe books of the time, while ‘spannish paps’, made of sweetened cream, might also appear at the table. ‘Paps’ was the sixteenth-century word for breasts. The paps were served in the shape of little mounds, hence their name…This kind of banquet usually happened after the guests had already eaten a large meal. Therefore it was not intended that the guests should come to the table hungry. The banquet was supposed to tempt what was already a rather jaded palette, and people would pick at it in the way we might pick at chocolates or mints offered to us after a large meal at a dinner party…One reason why the fashion for this type of banquet food faded by the eighteenth century was that large-scale sugar plantations had brought the price down to such an extent that it was no longer an exclusive item. 146-151

A whole range of fancy biscuits and breads was also associated with banquets. These included gingerbreads, which were rather different from the type we are familiar with today. Tudor gingerbread was much heavier than modern ginger sponge cake. It was far more like a biscuit…Some of the biscuits and biscuit breads which were served were spiced, but others were deliberately left quite bland so that they would compliment all the other rich food. The blander biscuits were also useful for dipping into the flavoured creams and butters. 160-161