Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/486

 466 Hijlory of Domejiic Manners water in which the meat has been boiled, mixed with a little oatmeal, with fome leaves of thyme, or fage, or other fuch fmall herbs. The pudding is a thing which it would be difficult to defcribe, on account of the diverfity of forts. Flour, milk, eggs, butter, fugar, fat, marrow, rafins, &:c. &:c., are the more common ingredients of a pudding. It is baked in an oven 5 or boiled with the meat 5 or cooked in fifty other fafliions. And they are grateful for the invention of puddings, for it is a manna to everybody's tafte, and a better manna than that of the deffert, inafmuch as they are never tired of it. Oh ! what an excellent thing is an Englilh pudding ! To come in pudding time, is a proverbial phrafe, meaning, to come at the happiefi; moment in the world. Make a pudding for an Englifliman, and you will regale him be he where he will. Their deifert needs no mention, for it confilis only of a bit of cheefe. Fruit is only found at the houfes of great people, and only among few of them." The phrafe, "to come in pudding time," occurs as early as the beginning of the feventeenth century. The abfence of the deifert at the Englifli table, of which the writer juft quoted complains, arofe from the abandonment in the middle of the feventeenth century of an old cuftom. In the earlier part of that century, and in the century previous, when the company rofe from the dinner- table, they proceeded to what was then called the hanquet, which was held in another apartment, and often in an arbour in the garden, or, as it was called, the garden-houfe. The banquet of an earlier period, the fifteenth century, was, as we have already feen, a meal after fupper. In Maffinger's play of the " City Madam," a fumptuous dinner is defcribed as follows : — The dijhes ivere raifed one upon another. As ivoodmongers do billets, for the jirji. The fecond, and third courfe ; and mofl of the Jhops Of the beji confeElioners in London ranfack'd To furnifh out a banquet. In another of Maffinger's dramas, one of the characters fays : — We'' II dine in the great room, but let the mufick And banquet he prepared here.