Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/46

 26 Hijiory of Domejiic Manners firms the opinion I have adopted as to the purpofe of the bucket found in the graves. The food of the Anglo-Saxons appears to have been in general rather fimple in charafter^ although we hear now and then of great feafts, probably confifting more in the quantity of provifions than in any great variety or refinement in gaftronomy. Bread formed the ftaple, which the Anglo-Saxons appear to have eaten in great quantities, with milk, and butter, and cheefe. A domeftic was termed a man's hlaf-cetan, or loaf-eater. There is a curious patTage in one of Alfric's homilies, that on the life of St. Benedi6t, where, fpeaking of the ufe of oil in Italy, the Anglo-Saxon writer obferves, " they eat oil in that country with their food as we do butter." Vegetables {wyrtan) formed a confiderable portion of the food of our forefathers at this period ; beans (beano) are mentioned as articles of food, but I remember no mention of the eating of peas (pifan) in Anglo-Saxon writers. A variety of circumfiances fhow that there was a great confumption of filli, as well as of poultry. Of flefli meat, bacon (fpic) was the mofl: abundant, for the extenfive oak forefts nourithed innumerable droves of fwine. Much of their other meat was falted, and the place in which the fait meat was kept was called, on account of the great preponderance of the bacon, afpic-hus, or bacon-houfe ; in latter times, for the same reafon, named the larder. The practice of eating fo much fait meat explains why boiling feems to have been the prevailing mode of cooking it. In the manufcript of Alfric's tranflation of Genefis, already mentioned, we have a figure of a boiling veffel (No. 17), which is placed over the fire on a tripod. This veflel was called a pan {panna — one Saxon writer mentions ifen panna, an iron pan) or a kettle (cytel). It is very curious to obferve how many of our trivial expreffions at the prefent day are derived from very ancient cuftoms ; thus, for example, we fpeak of " a kettle of fifli," though what we now term a kettle would hardly ferve for this branch of cookery. In another pifture (No. 1 8) we have a fimilar boiling vefTel, placed fimilarly on a tripod, while the cook is ufing a very fingulnr utenfil to fiir the contents. Bede fpeaks of a goofe being taken down from a wall to be lolled. It feems probable that in earlier times among the Anglo-Saxons, and perhaj^s at a later