SEVENTEENTH CENTURY l6l 



good bread, cakes, paste, and pyes . . . increase of themselves 

 in a very plentiful manner, with very little labour ; they will 

 likewise grow and thrive very well, being cut in slices, and so 

 put into the earth." 



Vegetable pies and tarts seem not to have been unusual. 

 Markham, in The English Housewife, 1637, gives several recipes, 

 one for " spinage tart " flavoured with cinnamon, rose-water 

 and sugar ; another of spinach, sorell, parsley, and eggs. He 

 gives also long lists of varieties of salads, " Cookery sallats," 

 such as " boyled carrets," radishes or skirrets ; " simple 

 sallats, onions, lettuce, samphire, Beanecods, sparagus or cu- 

 cumbers," served with oil, vinegar, and sugar ; and " com- 

 pound sallats," which " are usuall at great feasts and upon 

 Princes' tables ;" these consist of, " first the young Buds and 

 knots of herbs," such as " Red sage, mints, lettice, violets, mari- 

 golds, spinage " . . . also "cabbage done with cucumber, currants, 

 orange, lemons, olives, figs, and almonds." Carrots were used 

 for adorning dishes, cut into " scutchions, arms, birds, or 

 beasts." Lamb and mutton should be garnished, he says, with 

 prunes or currants, and fish with barberries.^ 



From among the multitudinous varieties of fruits, of which 

 some examples have been given in a former chapter, Austen, 

 who was the greatest authority on fruit-trees in his day,^ makes 

 a selection of the best. He commends, among apples, the 

 summer and winter Pearmain, the small pippin, the Harvey, 

 the Queene, and the Gilloflour. Out of the four to five hundred 

 sorts of pears, he selects the " Winsor " and " Sommer Berga- 

 mot." " But for a constant bearing kind 1 know none better 

 than the Catherine peare " ; " Greenefield excellent . . . will 

 last indifferent well, a great bearer " ; " Choke peare, accounted 

 a speciall kind, for Perry, although the peare to eat is stark 

 naught." " Flanders cherries, most generally planted here in 

 England. The Black Hart cherry is a very special fruit." 

 " The best nectarine is the Roman red. But it is very hard to 



^ The price paid for one pound of barberries in 1618 was 3s. (Le 

 Strange, Household Accounts). 



^ A good treatise on fruit in MS., in the possession of Miss Willmott, 

 probably written by Joshua Chandler about 165 1, is entirely founded on 

 Austen, and parts of it are transcribed from Austen's work, with the 

 omission of his references to Scripture. 



II 



