FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES. 47 



they did not care for vegetables served separately, in any 

 quantities, except on fast days. Gardens had chiefly to supply 

 herbs for stuffing and flavouring, and these were freely used. 

 For example, the first recipe in one book* is for cooking a " hare 

 in Wortes." It begins, " Take colys, and stripe hem faire from 

 the stalkes, take Betus and Borage, auens, Violette, Malvis, 

 parsele, betayn, pacience, the white of the lekes and the croppe 

 of the netle ; parboile, presse out the water, hew hem small. 

 And do thereto mele," and so on. Onions, leeks, and garhck 

 were very largely used. Such mixtures as meat or fish cooked 

 with pears or apples, spices and sugar, and to which, leeks 

 ground small, porrettes minced, whole onions or garlick sauce 

 is added, are by no means uncommon. The Sompnour, among 

 Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, is a type of the class among 

 whom this taste prevailed, 



" Wei lovede he garleek oynouns, and ek leekes." 

 All strongly flavoured herbs were popular in cooking, and every 

 garden contained a good assortment. Fennel was one in very 

 general use, and both the green leaves and also the seeds were 

 eaten. As much as eight and a-half pounds of fennel seed were 

 bought for the king's household for one month's supply.t And 

 the poor folk used it to relieve the pangs of hunger or to give 

 a relish to unpalatable food on fasting days. In Piers Ploughman, 

 a priest asks a poor woman, 



" Hast thou ought in thy purs? " quod he, 



" Any hote spices ? " 



" I have peper and piones," X quod she, " and a pounde garlike, 

 A ferthyngworth of fenel seed, for fastyng dayes." 



In an old medical MS.,§ it is said of this plant, 



" Fenel is erbe precyows, 



* * * 



Good in his sed so is his rote, 

 And to many thyngys bote.|| 



* Harl. MS. 4016, c. 1450. Printed Early Eng. Text Soc. Ed. by 

 "r. Austin. 



f Wardrobe Ace, Edward I., 1281. t Peonies. 



§ Fourteenth century MS. preserved in the Royal Library, Stockholm. 

 Extracts ArchcEologia, Vol. XXX. 



11 Good. 



