LOST ART OF EATING

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 400434, 28 December 1929, Page 1

LOST ART OF EATING

Our ancestors needed no cocktails to whet their appetites. The menu of a duke’s. Christmas dinner in the sixteenth century included oysters , (the cost of 200 was 4d!), salt sturgeons, swans,' peacocks, herons, dogfish, and conger. Here is a description of a “moderate” Christmas dinner in the seventeenth century: “The first course should consist of sixteen full dishes; that is, dishes of meat that are of substance, and not empty, or for show —as thus, for example: First, a shield of brawn, with mustard; secondly, a boyl’d capon; third, a boyl’d piece of beef; fourthly, a chine of beef roasted; fifthly, a neat’s- tongue, rosted; sixthly, a pig, rosted; seventhly, chewets, baked; eighthly, a goose, rosted; ninethly, a swan, rosfed; tenthly, a turkey, rosted; the eleventh, a haunch of venison rosted; the twelfth, a pasty of venison; the thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly; the fourteenth, an olivepye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a custard, or dowsets. Now, Ho these full dishes may be added sallets, fricassees, quelqueseheses and devised paste, as many dishes more, which make the full service, no less than two and thirty in one mess, which is as much as can conveniently stand on one table in one mess. And after this manner you may proportion both lyoar second andj third courses, holding fulness on one half of the dishes and show in the other; which will be both frugal in the splendour, contentment to the guest, and much pleasure and delight to the beholder.”