Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine by William Carew Hazlitt
page 21 of 177 (11%)
page 21 of 177 (11%)
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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 |
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