It is the 17th Century and you are invited to dine at the home of friends. Dressed in doublet, hose and your best ruff, or ankle length gown and best ruff, behatted and bejewelled you are making your way there on horseback if you are one of the elite, or on foot if a commoner.
You arrive and your servant is sent off to stable the horses and then to the kitchens where he is fed with Umble Pie – this is a pastry case filled with chopped up offal; lungs, kidneys, liver etc. This is where our saying ‘eating humble pie’ originated. He will be given a flagon of small (weak) beer to drink as the water was unsafe and could transmit disease during this era.
Meanwhile you are met and greeted by your hosts and led upstairs to the formal reception rooms.
Menu
- Turkey in Galantine Sauce & Sallet
- Warden Pie
- Spanish Paps
- Marchpane
- Dry Suckets
- Claret and Sack Wine
Seated in the splendid panelled dining room, the first course is brought on. It is Turkey in Galantine Sauce. Turkey is an exciting new bird recently introduced from America. It is served in a sauce of prune juice thickened with blood. This is accompanied by a Sallet of fresh green leaves and edible flowers and washed down with claret.
Warden Pie
The atmosphere is beginning to mellow as the claret takes its effect, and now it is time for the second course. Warden Pie is made from Warden pears named after Warden Abbey in Berkshire where they are grown in profusion. This is accompanied by Sack, a dry, rough Spanish wine.
Spanish Paps & Marchpane
And now comes a dessert - Spanish Paps. These puddings resemble small breasts, being made of a thick, creamy jelly with a fruit ‘nipple’ on the top. This is a rather rude joke, since the word pap means either Pope or breasts. But then this is the time after the Reformation, when Catholicism was banished from England.
Next you remove to the Banqueting Hall, which is a room dedicated especially for the eating of the Marchpane, a thick slab of marzipan covered with crystallised and fresh fruits. Alongside this there would be goat’s cheese curd (to dry the stomach), fresh fruit such as red and black currants and some Dry Suckets - crystallised roots cut into rounds.
Fish Day is Compulsory
If it were a Wednesday, Friday or Saturday you would be expected to eat fish, since this was at the time a legal obligation through Royal Proclamation. The navy doubled as a fishing fleet and needed to be kept in gainful employment between military engagements. Failing to eat fish on the correct days was punishable by a fine.
A typical fish day banquet menu might include Fish Jelly, Carp with Pudding in its Belly, Spatchcocked Eels and Pickled Fish Tart (a sweet dessert) with Almond Milk Custard. Mmmmm!
To read about how the Elizabethan's entertained themselves, please click here.
REFERENCES
Robert May, The Accomplished Cook, or the Art & Mystery of Cooking, 1685
Supersizers go Elizabethan, BBC TV 2008
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