Mediaeval Cookery 
hid in the batter. As thou casteth the batter thereon, 
hold a vessel underneath for spilling of the batter, 
and when it is well roasted it will seem a hastelet; 
and then take it up from the spit all whole, and cut 
it in fair pieces of a span length, and serve of it a 
piece or two in a dish all hot.” We have given this 
recipe almost verbatim, only modernising the spelling, 
because it is so quaintly worded, and at the same 
time so well expressed, that one longs to experimen¬ 
talise in Roast Train. 
The dish we have ventured to call Mulberry 
fartlets is set down in the menu as “ Pynenade in 
paste,” and from the “Forme of Cury” we learn 
that “pynenade,” spelt in various ways according 
to the fancy of the speller, was so called from 
the pines of which it was made, and pines meant 
mulberries. Pynenade was therefore preserved 
mulberries of some kind, and pynenade in paste 
probably equivalent to mulberry tart or tart¬ 
lets. 
Leche Lumbard was a favourite dish. A “leche” 
was a slice or piece of bread or of anything, and 
Leche Lumbard seems to have allowed the cook 
plenty of choice, for there are several recipes all 
quite different; the result, however, appears to have 
been a sort of sweet cake with a syrup poured 
over it. 
One recipe says, “Take honey and clarify it on 
the fire till it is hot, then take the hard yolks of eggs 
and crumble a good quantity of them thereto till it 
be stiff enough, and then take it up and lay it on a 
board and powder-pepper it. ” We think to “ powder- 
pepper” means to dredge with flour. “Then mould 
it together with your hands till it be so stiff it can be 
sliced, then slice it; then take wine, ground ginger, 
cinnamon, and a little clarified honey, strain this 
through a strainer, and cast this syrup on the slices 
when you serve it. ” 
The last dish, Chesemayne, seems to have puzzled 
the editor, who suggests it meant jasmine, but we 
think we have solved it, and that it was nothing so 
poetical as jasmine, but neither more nor less than 
a sort of Welsh rarebit. “Chese” is clearly cheese, 
and “mayned bread” or “mayned flour,” which we 
constantly meet with, appears to mean sops or 
slices or rounds of bread, so we may safely conclude 
Chesemayne was cheese served on slices of bread, 
either toasted or melted first. 
The courses at most grand dinners in England, in 
the Middle Ages, concluded with that triumph of 
the confectioner’s art then known as a Subtlety 
made of jelly, sugar and pastry. The Subtlety at 
the coronation feast of Henry IV. was very elaborate. 
It represented Our Lady and the Holy Child in the 
centre, and on one side of her knelt St. George and 
on the other St. Denis, the respective patron saints 
of England and France. They are in the act of 
presenting a figure of Henry IV. to the Queen. 
The King holds in his hand a hymn to the Blessed 
Virgin and the two saints. 
The preponderance of patties in these menus is 
probably due to the fact that fingers then supplied, 
to a great extent, the place of knives and forks. 
Spoons were used, but knives were not general till 
about 1563, and forks were not commonly used in 
England till 1611. China dishes and plates were 
only beginning to be known in the reign of Elizabeth; 
till then wooden plates and wooden spoons were 
commonly used. In her reign silver or tin was 
used instead of wood for the spoons, and pewter 
plates slowly began to replace wooden ones.— Gefitle- 
rnan s Magazine. 
Cirain IJoats on the Nile 
235 
