360 DAIRY PRODUCE, EGGS AND POULTRY. 



All fats were dear, much dearer than meat, and remained 

 so during the whole of this period. At the beginning of the 

 period too suet is occasionally dearer than butter, and in 

 earlier times constantly is. We shall see presently that 

 candles are occasionally dearer than butter, even in the period 

 before us. They constantly are in the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries. The cause is what I have often commented on, 

 the absence of nourishing winter food. Now the cow might 

 be made to yield milk, and with it butter, in the winter, 

 though in scanty quantity. But the seventeenth century 

 farmer rarely had the wherewithal to put flesh, and still less 

 to put fat, on his stock; and I believe that in later as in 

 earlier times every particle of spare fat, the skimmings of the 

 pan as well as the trimmings of meat, was carefully preserved, 

 the best for the kitchen, the coarser kinds, after having been 

 refined as best they could be, for the home manufacture of 

 the commoner candles. 



Salted butter is not found, or is found very rarely, as in 1615, 

 1633, 1680, and 1689. Indeed the record of the two principal 

 localities from which I have derived my information indicates 

 that the price is of weekly produce. But barrelled butter 

 must have been salted. Such for example are the firkins of 

 1584, 1587, and 1588, the tubs of 1594, the barrels of navy 

 butter in 1601, the firkins of 1602, the barrel butter of 1608, 

 the firkins again of 1627, 1633, 1634, 1635, 1636, 1637, and 

 1638, the kilderkins of 1644, and the large amount purchased 

 for navy stores in the same year, and perhaps the London 

 firkins in Houghton's table. If, as I believe was the case, 

 the principal use of butter was in the better kinds of pastry 

 and in cookery, the merits of the butter for such purposes 

 would not be greatly injured by salting it. 



The average price of the three firkins in the earlier time 

 is i$s. 7l^-, or nearly y. a dozen ; of the seven entries by the 

 same measure between 1627 and 1637 is 195. ioj<, or 4s. $d. 

 the dozen. In both the price is lower than that of the fresh- 

 butter averages, taken on the whole year, but not always at 



