[Addenda: after _heretofore_ add, 'we have some good families in
England of the name of _Cook_ or _Coke_. I know not what they may
think; but we may depend upon it, they all originally sprang from
real and professional cooks; and they need not be ashamed of their
extraction, any more than the _Butlers_, _Parkers_, _Spencers_, &c.']

My next observation is, that the messes both in the roll and the
Editor's MS, are chiefly soups, potages, ragouts, hashes, and the
like hotche-potches; entire joints of meat being never _served_, and
animals, whether fish or fowl, seldom brought to table whole, but
hacked and hewed, and cut in pieces or gobbets [77]; the mortar also
was in great request, some messes being actually denominated from it,
as _mortrews_, or _morterelys_ as in the Editor's MS. Now in this
state of things, the general mode of eating must either have been
with the spoon or the fingers; and this perhaps may have been the
reason that spoons became an usual present from gossips to their
god-children at christenings [78]; nnd that the bason and ewer, for
washing before and after dinner, was introduced, whence the _ewerer_
was a great officer [79], and the _ewery_ is retained at Court to
this day [80]; we meet with _damaske water_ after dinner [81], I
presume, perfumed; and the words _ewer_ &c. plainly come from the
Saxon eþe or French eau, _water_.

Thus, to return, in that little anecdote relative to the Conqueror
and William Fitz-Osbern, mentioned above, not the crane, but _the
flesh of the crane_ is said to have been under-roasted. Table, or
case-knives, would be of little use at this time [82], and the art of
carving so perfectly useless, as to be almost unknown. In about a
century afterwards, however, as appears from archbishop Neville's
entertainment, many articles were served whole, and lord Wylloughby