FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES 53 



were also used to garnish dishes. In an old recipe for a pudding 

 called " mon amy," the cook is directed to " plant it with 

 flowers of violets, and serve it forth." ^ In another MS. a 

 recipe for a dish called " vyolette " is given. " Take flowrys 

 of vyolet, boyle hem, presse hem, bray hem smal." This is 

 to be mixed with milk, " floure of rys," sugar or honey, and 

 " coloured " with violets. Not only were violets cooked, but 

 hawthorn, primroses, and even roses, shared the same fate, 

 and were treated in the same way. One recipe, called " rede 

 rose," is simply, " Take the same saue a-lye it with the yolkys 

 of eyroun and forther-more as vyolet." The rose hips were 

 also used, and in a dainty dish called " saue saracen," " hippes " 

 were the chief ingredient. It cannot have enhanced the beauty 

 or poetry of such flowers to feel that they were commonly 

 cooked and eaten. 



After this shock to sentiment, it is reassuring to find the 

 rose still valued for its loveliness and perfume. Although 

 a rosery of to-day would astonish the possessors of gardens in 

 the Middle Ages, and the varied forms and colours would 

 bewilder them, yet in some of our finest-looking roses they 

 would miss what to them was the essential characteristic of 

 a rose, its sweet scent ! Nothing more readily than the subtle 

 fragrance of a rose can conjure in our minds a dream of summer, 

 and many a one since the days of Chaucer has experienced 

 what the poet felt when, approaching a rose-garden, he ex- 

 claimed : 



" The savour of the roses swote 

 Me smote right to the herte rote," 



or when crowns of roses and lilies perfume the air, 



" The swete smel, that m myn herte I find 

 Hath changed me al in another kind." 



^ The following is the recipe of this excellent dish : " Take thick 

 creme of cowe-mylke, and boyle hit over the fire and then take hit up 

 and set hit on the side : — and then take swete cowe cruddes and presse 

 out the qway {whey) , and bray horn in a mortar and cast horn into the 

 same creme and boyle altogether — and put thereto sugre and saffron, 

 and May butter — and take yolkes of eyren streyned, and betten, and in 

 the settynge doune of the pot bete in the yolkes thereto, & stere it wel, 

 & make the potage stondynge : and dresse five or seaven leches {slices 

 of bread) in a dish, and plant with floures of violet and serve hit forthe." 



