recital of some of the articles on sale in a baker's or confectioner's shop in 1563, occurs in Newbery's "Dives Pragmaticus": simnels, buns, cakes, biscuits, comfits, caraways, and cracknels: and this is the first occurrence of the bun that I have hitherto been able to detect. The same tract supplies us with a few other items germane to my subject: figs, almonds, long pepper, dates, prunes, and nutmegs. It is curious to watch how by degrees the kitchen department was furnished with articles which nowadays are viewed as the commonest necessaries of life.

In the 17th century the increased communication with the Continent made us by degrees larger partakers of the discoveries of foreign cooks. Noblemen and gentlemen travelling abroad brought back with them receipts for making the dishes which they had tasted in the course of their tours. In the "Compleat Cook," 1655 and 1662, the beneficial operation of actual experience of this kind, and of the introduction of such books as the "Receipts for Dutch Victual" and "Epulario, or the Italian Banquet," to English readers and students, is manifest enough; for in the latter volume we get such entries as these: "To make a Portugal dish;" "To make a Virginia dish;" "A Persian dish;" "A Spanish olio;" and then there are receipts "To make a Posset the Earl of Arundel's way;" "To make the Lady Abergavenny's Cheese;" "The Jacobin's Pottage;" "To make Mrs. Leeds' Cheesecakes;" "The Lord Conway His Lordship's receipt for the making of Amber Puddings;" "The Countess of Rutland's receipt of making the Rare Banbury Cake, which was so much praised as her daughter's (the Right Honourable Lady Chaworth) Pudding," and "To make Poor Knights"—the last a medley in which bread, cream, and eggs were the leading materials.

Warner, however, in the "Additional Notes and Observations" to his "Antiquitates Culinariae," 1791, expresses himself adversely to the foreign systems of cookery from an English point of view. "Notwithstanding," he remarks, "the partiality of our countrymen to French cookery, yet that mode of disguising meat in this kingdom (except perhaps in the hottest part of the hottest season of the year) is an absurdity. It is here the art of spoiling good meat. The same art, indeed, in the South of France; where the climate is much warmer, and the flesh of the animal lean and insipid, is highly valuable; it is the art of making bad meat eatable." At the same time, he acknowledges the superior thrift and intelligence of the French cooks, and instances the frog and the horse. "The frog is considered in this country as a disgusting animal, altogether unfit for the purposes of the kitchen; whereas, by the efforts of French cookery, the thighs of this little creature are converted into a delicate and estimable dish." So sings, too (save the mark!), our Charles Lamb, so far back as 1822, after his visit to Paris. It seems that in Elizabeth's reign a powdered, or pickled horse was considered a suitable dish by a French general entertaining at dinner some English officers.

It is difficult to avoid an impression that Warner has some reason, when he suggests that the immoderate use of condiments was brought to us by the dwellers under a higher temperature, and was not really demanded in such a climate as that of England, where meat can be kept sweet in ordinary seasons, much longer even than in France or in Italy. But let us bear in mind, too, how different from our own the old English cuisine was, and how many strange beasts calling for lubricants it comprehended within its range.

An edifying insight into the old Scottish cuisine among people of the better sort is afforded by Fynes Morisoh, in his description of a stay at a knight's house in North Britain in 1598.

"Myself," he says, "was at a knight's house, who had many servants to attend him, that brought in his meat with their heads covered with blue caps, the table being more than half furnished with great platters of porridge, each having a little piece of sodden meat; and when the tables were served, the servants did sit down with us; but the upper mess, instead of porridge, had a pullet with some prunes in the broth. And I observed no art of cookery, or furniture of household stuff, but rather rude neglect of both, though myself and my companion, sent by the Governor of Berwick upon bordering affairs, were entertained in the best manner. The Scots ... vulgarly eat hearth-cakes of oats, but in cities have also wheaten bread, which, for the most part, was bought by courtiers, gentlemen, and the best sort of citizens. When I lived at Berwick, the Scots weekly upon the market day obtained leave in writing of the governor to buy peas and beans, whereof, as also of wheat, their merchants to this day (1617) send great quantities from London into Scotland. They drink pure wine, not with sugar, as the English, yet at feasts they put comfits in the wine, after the French manner: but they had not our vintners' fraud to mix their wines."

He proceeds to say that he noticed no regular inns, with signs hanging out, but that private householders would entertain passengers on entreaty, or where acquaintance was claimed. The last statement is interestingly corroborated by the account which Taylor the Water-Poet printed in 1618 of his journey to Scotland, and which he termed his "Penniless Pilgrimage or Moneyless Perambulation," in the course of which he purports to have depended entirely on private hospitality.

A friend says: "The Scotch were long very poor. Only their fish, oatmeal, and whiskey kept them alive. Fish was very cheap." This remark sounds the key-note of a great English want—cheaper fish. Of meat we already eat enough, or too much; but of fish we might eat more, if it could be brought at a low price to our doors. It is a noteworthy collateral fact that in the Lord Mayor of London's Pageant of 1590 there is a representation of the double advantage which would accrue if the unemployed poor were engaged to facilitate and cheapen the supply of fish to the City; and here we are, three centuries forward, with the want still very imperfectly answered.

Besides the bread and oatmeal above named, the bannock played its part. "The Land o' Cakes" was more than a trim and pretty phrase: there was in it a deep eloquence; it marked a wide national demand and supply.

The "Penny Magazine" for 1842 has a good and suggestive paper on "Feasts and Entertainments," with extracts from some of the early dramatists and a woodcut of "a new French cook, to devise fine kickshaws and toys." One curious point is brought out here in the phrase "boiled jiggets of mutton," which shews that the French gigot for a leg of mutton was formerly in use here. Like many other Gallicisms, it lingered in Scotland down to our own time.

The cut of the French cook above mentioned is a modern composition; and indeed some of the excerpts from Ben Jonson and other writers are of an extravagant and hyperbolical cast,—better calculated to amuse an audience than to instruct the student.

Mr. Lucas remarks: "It is probable that we are more dependent upon animal food than we used to be. In their early days, the present generation of dalesmen fed almost exclusively upon oatmeal; either as 'hasty-pudding,'—that is, Scotch oatmeal which had been ground over again, so as to be nearly as fine as flour;... or 'lumpy,'—that is, boiled quickly and not thoroughly stirred; or else in one of the three kinds of cake which they call 'fermented,' viz., 'riddle cake,' 'held-on cake,' or 'turn-down cake,' which is made from oatcake batter poured on the 'bak' ston'' from the ladle, and then spread with the back of the ladle. It does not rise like an oatcake. Or of a fourth kind called 'clap cake.' They also made 'tiffany cakes' of wheaten flour, which was separated from the bran by being worked through a hair-sieve tiffany, or temse:—south of England Tammy,—with a brush called the Brush shank."