Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/111

 and Sentiments. ^% filk, and colder than cryftal." Yet ftill ale and mead continued to be the ufual drinks. The innumerable entries in Domefday Book fliow us how large a proportion of the produftions of the country, in the reign of William the Conqueror, ftill confifted in honey, which was ufed chiefly for the manufadture of mead. The manu- fcript in Trinity College Library, gives us a group of bee-hives (cut No. 64), with pea- fants attending to them 5 and is chiefly curious for the extraordinary forms which the artifl:, evidently no naturalifl, has given to the bees. We have hardly any information on the ^^'^^ Anglo.N.rrr.an Bee-kecpcn cookery during the period we are now defcribing. It is clear that numerous delicacies were ferved to the tables of the noble and wealthy, but their culinary receipts are not preferved. We read in William of Malmelbury, incidentally, that a great prince ate garlick with a goofe, from which we are led to fjppofe that the Normans were fond of highly-feafoned diflies. Neckam tells us that pork, roafted or broiled on red embers, required no other fauce than fait or garlick ; that a capon done in gobbets fliould be well peppered ; that a goofe, roafted on the fpit, required a ftrong garlick-fauce, mixed with wine or " the green juice of grapes or crabs ;" that a hen, if boiled, fliould be cut up and feafoned with cummin, but, if roafted, it fliould be bafted with lard, and might be feafoned with garlick-fauce, though it would be more favoury with Ample fauce ; that fifli fliould be cooked in a fauce compofed of wine and water, and that they fliould afterguards be ferved with a fauce compofed of fage, parfley, coft, ditany, wild thyme, and garlick, with pepper and fait. We learn from other incidental allufions of contemporary, or nearly contemporary, writers, that bread, butter, and cheefe, were the ordinary food of the common people, probably with little elfe befides vegetables. It is interefting to remark that the three articles juft mentioned, have preferved their Anglo-Saxon names to the prefent times, while all kinds of meat, beef, veal, mutton, pork, even bacon, have retained only the names given to them by the Normans, which