Lecture 21: Elizabethan England, Puritans, Country Food
Hess, Martha Washington’s Book of Cookery.
Lehmann, British Housewife.
Markham, English Housewife.
May, The Compleat Cook.
Mennell, All Manners of Food.
Sim, Food and Feast.
Smith, Compleat Housewife.
Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England.Chicken pot pie is a direct descendant of the following recipe, but notice how
much the contents have changed. Also consider how, though it is directed
toward housewives (meaning relatively small households), it still contains
a very large presentation dish. Could you infer from this that housewives
were expected on occasion to entertain large numbers of guests? Or is this
perhaps merely aspirational—much like a person today reading a recipe or
entertaining instructions or even watching it on television but never actually
intending to cook the meal? The historian can only guess, but it is an enticing
pie nonetheless, and it can certainly be made on a smaller scale for your
friends or family, as the opening lines suggest. Don’t be tempted to skimp
on the sugar; it is delectable. This is before sugar was banished from savory
dishes, and it also refl ects the serious Elizabethan sweet tooth.To Make a Chickin Pye
(from Good Hous-wives Treasurie, 1588)
If you will make one so bigge, take nine or ten Chickins of a moneth olde,
trusse them round and breake their bones, take to season them withall a
quarter of cloves and Mace, a litte Pepper and Salte, as much as you think
will season your Pye two or three Orenge peeles small shread, take the
marow of a shorte marow bone cleave it long waies and take out the marowe
as whole as you can, then cut it in foure or fi ve peeces and put it in your pie
take halfe a pounde of Currans, a food hand full of Prunes, eight Dates,
fower cut in halfe and fower shred, a pounde of Suger with that in yourCulinary Activity