FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES 43 



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, betayh, 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 garlick 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 Canter- 

 bury 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. ^ 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 Plow- 

 man, a priest asks a poor woman : 



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

 ' Any hote spices ?' 



' I have peper and piones,'^ 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 

 T. Austin. 



^ Wardrobe Ace, Edward I., 1281. ^ Peonies. 



* Fourteenth century MS. preserved in the Royal Library, Stock- 

 holm. Extracts Archczologia, vol. xxx. ^ Good. 



