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 1 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. 2 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 V quod he, 
‘ Any hote spices V 
' I have peper and piones,’ 3 quod she, * and a pounde gar like, 
A ferthyngworth of fenel seed, for fastyng dayes.’ ” 
In an old medical MS. 4 it is said of this plant: 
“ Fenel is erbe precyows, 
* * * * 
Good in his sed so is his rote, 
And to many thyngys bote. 5 
* 
1 Havl. MS. 4016, c. 1450, printed Early Eng. Text Soc., ed. by 
T. Austin. 
2 Wardrobe Acc., Edward X., 1281. 3 Peonies. 
4 Fourteenth century MS. preserved in the Royal Library, Stock¬ 
holm. Extracts Archceologia, vol. xxx. 5 Good. 
