Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/48

 28 Hijiory of Domejik Manners vegetables green, and your flelh-meat raw, nor can you have any fat broth." "We care not," is the reply, "for we can ourfelves cook our provifions, and fpread them on the table." Inftead of grounding his defence on the difficulties of his profeffion, the cook reprefents that in this cafe, inftead of having anybody to wait upon them, they would be obliged to be their own fervants. It may be obferved, as indicating the general prevalence of boiling food, that in the above account of the cook, the Latin word coqiiere is rendered by the Anglo- S axon yeo^Aaw, to boil.* Our words cook and kitchen are the Anglo-Saxon coc and cycene, and have no connexion with the French cui/ine. We may form fome idea of the proportions in the confumption of different kinds of provifions among our Saxon forefathers, by the quan- tities given on certain occafions to the monafteries. Thus, according to the Saxon Chronicle, the occupier of an eftate belonging to the abbey of Medelliamftede (Peterborough) in 852, was to furnilli yearly fixty loads No. 19. Anglo-Saxons, at Table. of wood for firing, twelve of coal {grcefa), fix of fagots, two tuns of pure ale, two beafts fit for flaughter, fix hundred loaves, and ten meafures of Welfh ale. It will be obferved in the dinner fcenes given above, that the guefts the Saxons as cooking their meat in kbetc, evidently meaning the sort of vessel figured in the foregoing cuts. The Latin kbcs, a cauldron or kettle, is interpreted in the early glossaries by the Anglo-Saxon hivo; or liucr, from which we derive the English word nucr ; Inoctr-boll or Invar-cytcl are interpreted in the Anglo-Saxon dictionaries as meaning a frying-pan, which is evidently not correct.
 * William of Malmesbury, de Gest. Pontif. printed in Gale, p. 249, describes