Omniana/Volume 2/Triumphs and Trophies of Cookery, to be used at Festival Times, as Twelfth Day, &c.
"Make the likeness of a ship in paste-board with flags and streamers, the guns belonging to it of kickses, bind them about with pack-thread and cover them with paste porportionable to the fashion of a cannon with carriages; lay them in places convenient, as you see them in ships of war, with such holes and trains of powder that they may all take fire. Place your ships firm in a great charger; then make a salt round about it, and stick therein egg-shells full of sweet water; you may by a great pin take out all the meat out of the egg by blowing, and then fill it with rose-water. Then in another charger have the proportion of a stag made of coarse paste, with a broad arrow in the side of him, and his body filled up with claret wine. In another charger at the end of the stag have the proportion of a castle with battlements, percullices, gates, and drawbridges, made of pasteboard, the guns of kickses, and covered with coarse paste as the former; place it at a distance from the ship to fire at each other. The stag being placed betwixt them, with egg-shells full of sweet water (as before) placed in salt. At each side of the charger wherein is the stag, place a pie made of coarse paste, in one of which let there be some live frogs, in the other live birds; make these pies of coarse paste, filled with bran, and yellowed over with saffron, or yolks of eggs: gild them over in spots, as also the stag, the ship and castle; bake them, and place them with gilt bay leaves on the turrets and tunnels of the castle and pies; being baked make a hole in the bottom of your pies, take out the bran, put in your frogs and birds, and close up the holes with the same coarse paste; then cut the lids neatly up to be taken off by the tunnels. Being all placed in order upon the table, before you fire the trains of powder order it so that some of the ladies may be persuaded to pluck the arrow out of the stag; then will the claret wine follow, as blood running out of a wound. This being done with admiration to the beholders, after some short pause; fire the train of the castle, that the pieces all of one side may go off; then fire the trains of one side of the ship as in a battle; next turn the chargers, and by degrees fire the trains of each other side, as before. This done, to sweeten the stink of the powder, the ladies take the egg shells full of sweet waters, and throw them at each other, all dangers being seemed over, and by this time you may suppose they will desire to see what is in the pies; when lifting first the lid off one pie, out skips some frogs, which makes the ladies to skip and shriek; next after the other pie, whence comes out the birds; who by a natural instinct flying at the light, will put out the candles; so that what with the flying birds and skipping frogs, the one above, the other beneath, will cause much delight and pleasure to the whole company: at length the candles are lighted and a banquet brought in, the music sounds, and every one with much de- fight and content rehearses their actions in the former passages. These were formerly the delights of the nobility, before good house-keeping had left England, and the sword really acted that which was only counterfeited in such honest and laudable exercises as these."
The book from which this account of the Triumphs and Trophies in Cookery has been extracted, bears the following title.
The Accomplisht Cook, or the Art and Mystery of Cookery, wherein the whole Art is revealed in a more easie and perfect method, than hath been publisht in any Language. Expert and ready wayes for the dressing of all sorts of Flesh, Fowl and Fish; the raising of Pastes; the best directions for all manner of Kickshaws, and the most Poinant Sauces; with the Tearms of Carving and Sewing. An exact Account of all Dishes for the Season, with other A la mode cariosities. Together with the lively illustrations of such necessary Figures as are referred to practice. Approved by the fifty years experience and industry of Robert May, in his attendance on several Persons of Honour, London, 1660.
The terms of carving and sewing form a far more ample list than that with which Sir John Hill has favoured us in the character of Mrs. Glass. "Break that deer, leech that brawn, rear that goose, lift that swan, sauce that capon, spoil that hen, frust that chicken, unbrace that mallard, unlace that coney, dismember that hern, display that crane, disfigure that peacock, unjoint that bittern, untack that curlew, allay that pheasant, wing that partridge, wing that quail, mince that plover, thigh that woodcock, thigh all manner of small birds.
"Timber the fire, tire that egg, chine that salmon, string that lamprey, splat that pike, sauce that plaice, sauce that tench, splay that bream, side that haddock, tusk that barbel, culpon that trout, fin that chevin, transon that eel, tranch that sturgeon, undertranch that porpus, tame that crab, and barb that lobster."
Robert May, the author of this book, was apprenticed to Mr. Arthur Hollingsworth in Newgate Market, one of the ablest workmen in London, Cook to the Grocer's Hall and Star Chamber. His prenticeship being out, the Lady Dormer sent for him to be her cook under his "father, (who then served that honourable lady) where were four cooks more, such noble houses were then kept, the glory of that, and shame of this present age: then were those golden days, wherein were practised the Triumphs and Trophies of Cookery; then was hospitality esteemed, neighbourhood preserved, the poor cherished, and God honoured; then was religion less talked on and more practised; then was atheism and schism less in fashion; and then did men strive to be good, rather than to seem so."
The two Dedications with which he ushers in the results of his "fifty years experience," are curious as well for the information they give concerning the Gourmands of that age, as for the humorous importance which he ascribes to the science of the kitchen. The first displays his gratitude
"To the Right Honourable my Lord Lumley, and my Lord Lovelace, and to the Right Worshipful Sir William Paston, Sir Kenelme Digby, and Sir Frederick Cornwallis, so well known to the Nation for their admired hospitalities.
"Right Honourable and Right Worshipful, He is an alien, a meer stranger to England that hath not been acquainted with your generous house-keepings: for my own part, my more particular tyes of service to you, my honoured Lords, have built me up to the height of this experience, for which this book now at last dares appear to the world: those times which I attended upon your Honours were those golden days of peace and hospitality, when you enjoyed your own so as to entertain and relieve others.
"Right Honourable and Right Worshipful, I have not only been an eye witness, but interested by my attendance, so as that I may justly acknowlege those Triumphs and magnificent Trophies of Cookery that have adorned your tables; nor can I but confess to the world, except I should be guilty of the highest ingratitude, that the only structure of this my art and knowledge I owed to your costs, generous and inimitable expences; thus not only I have derived my experience, but your country hath reapt the plenty of your humanity and charitable bounties.
"Right Honourable and Right Worshipful, Hospitality, which was once a relique of gentry, and a known cognizance to all ancient houses, hath lost her title through the unhappy and cruel disturbances of these times; she is now reposing of her lately so alarumed head on your beds of honour. In the mean space, that our English world may know the Mæcenases and Patrons of this generous art, I have exposed this volume to the Publique under the tuition of your names, at whose feet I prostrate these endeavours, and shall for ever remain
Robert May.
From Sholeby in
Leicestershire, Jan. 24th, 1659."
The second displays a dignified sense of the value of his own acquirements, and a proper feeling of duty towards his followers in the savoury science.
"To you first, most worthy Artists, I acknowledge one of the chief motives that made me to adventure this volume to your censures, hath been to testify my gratitude to your experienced society nor could I omit to direct it to you, as It hath been my ambition that you should be sensible of my proficiency of endeavours in this art. To all honest well-intending men of our profession, or other, this book cannot but be acceptable, as it plainly and profitably discovers the mystery of the whole art; for which, though I may be envied by some that only value their private interests above Posterity and the publick good, yet God and my own conscience would not permit me to bury these my experiences with my silver hairs in the grave: and that more especially as the advantages of my education hath raised me above the ambitions of others, in the converse I have had with other nations, who in this art fall short of what I have known experimented by you, my worthy countrymen. Howsoever the French by their insinuations, not without enough of ignorance, have bewitcht some of the Gallants of our Nation with epigram dishes, smoakt rather than drest, so strangely to captivate the gusto, their mushroom'd experiences for sauce rather than diet, for the generality, howsoever called a la mode, not being worthy of taking notice on. As I lived in France and had the language, and have been an eye-witness of their Cookeries, as well as a peruser of their manuscripts and printed authors, whatsoever I have found good in them I have inserted in this volume. I do acknowledge myself not to be a little beholding to the Italian and Spanish Treatises, though without my fosterage and bringing up under the generosities and bounties of my noble patrons and masters, I could never have arrived to this experience. To be confined and limited to the narrownes of a Price, is to want the materials from which the Artist must gain his knowledge. Those Honourable Persons my Lord Lumley and my Lord Lovelace, and others with whom I have spent a part of my time, were such whose generous costs never weighed the expence, so that they might arrive to that right and high esteem they had of their gustos. Whosoever peruses this volume shall find it amply exemplified in dishes of such high prices, which only their Noblesses hospitalities did reach to: I should have sinned against their to-be-perpetuated bounties, if I had not set down their several varieties, that the Reader might be as well acquainted with what is extraordinary as what is ordinary in this Art; as I am truly sensible that some of those things that I have set down will amaze a not-thorow-paced Reader in the Art of Cookery, as they are delicates, never till this time made known to the World.
"As those already extant authors have traced but one common beaten road, repeating for the main what others have in the same homely manner done before them; it hath been my task to denote some new Faculty or Science that others have not yet discovered; this the Reader will quickly discern by those new terms of art which he shall meet withal throughout this whole volume. Some things I have inserted of Carving and Sewing, that I might demonstrate the whole Art. In the contrivance of these my labours, I have so managed them for the general good, that those whose purses cannot reach to the cost of rich dishes, I have descended to their meaner expences, that they may give, though upon a sudden treetment, to their kindred, friends, allies, and acquaintance, a handsome and relishing entertainment in all seasons of the year, though at some distance from towns or villages.
"As for those who make it their business to hide their candle under a bushel, to do only good to themselves, and not to others, such as will curse me for revealing the secrets of this art, I value the discharge of mine own conscience in doing good, above all their malice; protesting to the whole world that I have not concealed any material secret of above my fifty year's experience; my father being a Cook, under whom in my childhood I was bred up in this art. To conclude, the diligent peruser of this volume gains that in a small time as to the theory which an apprenticeship with some masters could never have taught them. I have no more to do, but to desire of God a blessing upon these my endeavours, and remain
Robert May."