46 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
In fifteenth-century cookery-books recipes are found for 
cabbages, both in “ potage ” or dressed with marrow, gruel, 
and saffron. In the lists of great banquets which have been 
preserved, such dressed vegetables rarely, if ever, occur. At 
the third course of a banquet on the occasion of Henry IV.’s 
marriage, “ pescodde ” and “ strawberry ” were among the 
dishes, but this is almost a solitary instance among bills of fare 
of that date. 1 Cabbages were, from the earliest times, grown 
in this country, but it may be some improved variety which 
is referred to in the following passage : 2 “ Sir Anthony Ashley, 
of Wimborne St. Giles, Dorset, first planted cabbages in this 
country, and a cabbage at his feet appears on his monument/' 
The tomb is to be seen in the church to this day, dated 1627. 3 
There was both a good variety and a fair supply of fruit in 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Several new kinds of 
apple and pear are mentioned by the poets of the day, and 
must have been well known. Lydgate speaks of the Pome- 
water, 4 * Ricardon, Blaundrelle, and Queening apples. Gower 
of another kind, the Bitter-sweet : 
“For all such time of love is lore 
And like unto the bitter-swete 
For though it think a man fyrst swete 
He shall well felen at faste 
That it is sower.” 6 
Confessio A mantis. 
In the Miller's Tale, Chaucer incidentally alludes to the old 
custom of storing apples : 
“ Hire mouthe was swete as . . . 
. . . hord of applies, laid in hay or hethe.” 
1 Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books , by T. Austin, E. E. Text Soc. 
2 Isaac DTsraeli, Curiosities of Literature. 
3 A serious fire which took place in 1908 has, unfortunately, greatly 
damaged the tomb and monument. The cabbage, being removable, 
washable to be carried out of the burning church, and hopes are enter¬ 
tained that the greater portion of the monument can be restored, and 
the cabbage replaced as before. 
4 Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost : “ Ripe as a Pomewater, who 
hangeth now like a jewel in the ear of coelo —the sky, the welkin, the 
heaven.” 
6 Romeo and Juliet : “ Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting, it is a most 
sharp sauce.” 
