House and Garden 
effect on the inhabitants. We dare not speak 
condescendingly of the degradation of the lower 
classes of the people so long as we permit them 
to live in houses which seem to hear the stamp of 
prisons. 
The author realizes the host of protests which 
such a statement will call forth, even from people 
otherwise of a benevolent disposition. Am I 
then of the opinion that the workman must be 
reared in elegant houses, even surrounded with 
works of art ? All that would only be a question 
of money. Schultze-Naumburg says he knows 
the whole phraseology by heart and it makes him 
weary. What he wants to bring about is only a 
change in the form, and urges that it has nothing to 
do with art in the sense of luxury. With the same 
material, be it ever so cheap, he contends that 
brighter, more cheerful and pleasant dwellings can 
be constructed. It is an error to suppose that the 
farmhouse is uncomfortable, unpractical or even 
unhealthy. On the contrary, the type of the 
peasant farmhouses all over Germany exhibits 
the most comfortable interior, spacious, roomy 
arrangements, the large rooms being lighted by 
small but numerous windows placed in the right 
places. In some of the modern red-brick build¬ 
ings, it is possible to vegetate but not to live. It 
is the style of architecture that is found fault with. 
Drainage and water-supply can be installed in both 
types of dwelling equally well. As far as the ap¬ 
pearance of the whole goes, it is quite an art, for 
instance, to place the right tree in the right spot. 
Arheiter-Kolonien have to be erected away out of 
the city, half in the country where the land is still 
cheap. The farther from the hot city—which seems 
to singe everything for miles around—the better. 
The admirable dwellings constructed by Borsig 
and by Schwarzkopp for their workmen, have 
been built in the vicinity of meadows, fields and 
the stately pine-forests of North Germany. Spind- 
ler’s workmen’s cottages are located en the lovely 
river Spree. Krupp’s latest colonies on picturesque 
slopes, but this is all only like a drop in the ocean 
when we consider the lot of the laboring millions. 
MEDIAEVAL COOKERY 
{Continued from October House and Garden') 
T TP to the end of the fifteenth century, English 
people lived much more after the French fashion 
than they did in the following ages,when the influence 
of the Normans ceased to be felt, as a comparison of 
English with French cookery books of the period 
shows. 
French people then, when they lived more in the 
open air and partook of only two full meals a day, 
had more substantial fare than now. Both English 
and French people liked their food very highly 
spiced and seasoned with strong and piquant herbs, 
such as would be very distasteful to our modern 
palates. Besides the spices and herbs still used, 
both nations then mixed cardamoms, of which they 
were very fond, saffron, garlic, galingale, sedwale, 
marjoram, and several species of clary or sage with 
their food. Galingale was a very popular spice; 
and has a strong and bitter flavour, something 
between pepper -and ginger. Sedwale or setewale 
is an East Indian root; it has an aromatic flavour, 
and was supposed to help digestion, and was excellent 
preserved in sugar. 
Peacocks, cranes, herons, swans, curlews, bitterns, 
and cormorants were eaten in both countries; the 
French also ate bustards, and then, as now, many 
small birds that we despise. Sturgeon, conger, and 
porpoises were eaten in France as well as in England; 
but we do not appear to have ventured on dog-fish. 
several species of which were popular among the 
poorer classes in France. Whale is mentioned in 
several English cookery books; in France it was 
eaten salted in Fent by the poor of Paris, and with 
herring and cuttle-fish was called the Lard de Car- 
eme. It was sold outside the Paris markets by 
a thousand poor fishmongers who were forbidden to 
stand under cover of the market, and it formed the 
Fenten food of forty thousand poor people. A 
French recipe says this whale was cut in slices and 
boiled in water and served with peas, which were 
probably the best part of the dish. 
Cuttle-fish seems to have been a dish peculiar to 
France. It was pickled in some sour sauce to 
render it more easy to eat and digest, then put in a 
pan with some salt over the fire, and stirred fre¬ 
quently, then dried on a cloth, sprinkled well with 
flour, and fried in oil, with or without onions, accord¬ 
ing to taste. 
The similarity of the style of living in the two 
countries will be seen at a glance by comparing two 
menus, one taken from a very celebrated and valua¬ 
ble old French cookery book called Le Menager 
d’Paris written at the end of the fourteenth century, 
and the other taken from “Two Fifteenth-Century 
Cookery Books,” before referred to. The English 
menu is the more elaborate, but it is one used at a 
royal feast given by the Bishop of Winchester, 
232 
