All the King's Cooks (10 page)

The Saucery’s most important product by far was mustard, which was ‘bruised and ground with vinegar [as] a wholesome sauce, meet to be eaten with hard, gross meats, either flesh or fish’.
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Henry Buttes, in his
Dyets Dry Dinner
of 1599, described it as ‘Good sauce for sundrie meates, both flesh and fish; English Mustard; that is, much tart’.
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First, the mustard seed was crushed, using either a pestle and mortar or perhaps a stone or iron ball in a bowl; then it was mixed with strong wine vinegar,
strained into a pot, and tied down beneath a parchment cover until required for use. Next in importance came greensauce, which was sometimes made with sorrel or gooseberries as in later periods, but also with herbs such as parsley and mint. It was especially recommended to accompany fresh fish such as halibut and turbot, for which it might be eaten along with mustard, since they went well together.

Across the landing from the saucery lay the confectionary – just a single room, but the one responsible for producing the most elaborate and expensive of all the foods prepared in the kitchen. At this period sugar was still a most expensive luxury food. Columbus had carried sugar-cane from the Canaries to the New World on his second voyage in 1493, the Spanish first cultivating it in San Domingo, using the labour of imported African slaves, and bringing their first shipments back to Europe around 1516. They then went on to expand its production in their colonies in the Caribbean, Mexico and Paraguay, and along the Pacific coast of South America. The Portuguese carried out a similar programme in Brazil, and were shipping sugar back to Lisbon by 1526. Although the sugar was refined to some extent in its country of origin, it was still too impure for high-quality use and so was further refined in northern Europe. Antwerp being the leading centre for this activity.

In early sixteenth century England sugar cost around 3d or 4d a pound (450g), but its growing popularity and scarcity saw it rise to 9d or 10d by 1544, when its price had to be checked by royal proclamation.
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In the same year London established its first refinery. Here the sugar was dissolved and boiled in a lye of ashes or lime, the scum was skimmed off, and the syrup clarified with white of eggs. It was then placed in cone-shaped pottery moulds covered with a layer of wet clay, from which the water slowly dripped through the sugar, removing the remaining molasses. When this process was finished, the sugar cones were knocked out of their moulds and left in a warm room to dry out. The finished cones weighed anything from three to fourteen pounds (1.3–6.3kg) and were almost as hard and white as crystalline marble. It was not until 1551 that Captain Thomas
Wyndham returned to England from Agudin, Morocco, with the first-ever cargo of sugar to be brought into this country by an English ship direct from its country of origin. The Tudor taste for sugar intensified so that the trade rapidly expanded, and by 1585 London had replaced Antwerp as the leading refinery centre in Europe.

Although the Spicery could acquire its sugar in good condition, it was very difficult to keep it that way because sugar readily absorbs moisture from the atmosphere and soon turns into an unpleasant sticky syrup. My own experience of Hampton Court’s kitchens has brought this home to me: on one occasion, sugar-work that had dried to rock-hardness over some months began to dissolve and to weep syrup after only a day’s exposure to the kitchens’ damp winter air. Exhibiting great good sense and practicality, the architect who designed the kitchen offices placed the confectionary in the warmest and driest place in the whole palace – directly over the pastry ovens, a mass of some 80 cubic yards (61 cubic metres) of masonry that would have been continually fired up whenever the court was in residence. This constant source of dry underfloor heating made the confectionary ideal for sugarwork.

Most of the sugar, spices and dried fruits used in the Confectionary, along with some of the finished confectionery, was bought from one of the two Venetian galleys that used to arrive in Southampton each year, where one of them would unload and the other would keep its cargo intact for trading with Flanders on the return journey. The use of corporate hospitality to promote business was already a well established practice in the sixteenth century, and on one of these occasions the captain of the Venetian flag-galley provided the King and his court with a sumptuous entertainment. A large platform on the deck had been decorated with tapestry and silk, and on either side were four tables, each bearing dishes of every sort of confection for the three hundred guests. Henry passed down the centre and up to the poop deck, where he tasted sponge cakes and other sweetmeats, and the remainder was distributed among the nobles. Meanwhile, those at the tables below enjoyed their share of the confectionery and wine, their hosts giving them the glass vessels they had used, all of fine Venetian workmanship, as leaving presents.
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Since sugar was so expensive, the confectionary was one of the few kitchen offices that produced food especially for the King. It was supervised by the sergeant of the confectionary, who received his sugar and spices from the Spicery. With these ingredients he made ‘confections, garquinces [quince marmalade], plaatess [sugar plate], sedes [comfits] and all other spycery nedefull; dates, figges, raisonnes, greate and smalle for the Kinge’s mouthe, and for his household in Lente seasone; wardens [cooking pears], pearys, apples, quinces, cherryes, and all other fruytes after their seasonne’.
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These fruits were all supplied at no charge from the King’s orchards, in particular the moated Privy Orchard just to the north of the kitchens and the Great Orchard beyond, while ‘blaunderelles (white apples), pippins and other fruits were bought in by the sergeant; it was also his responsibility to prepare any fruit given to the King as presents. Some are mentioned in the Privy Purse expenses:
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The sergeant was assisted by a yeoman, who made confectionery for the King, the Great Chamber and the Great Hall, and so had to be ‘well learned in the makeinge of confections, plates, gard-equinces, and others, safely and cleanly to keepe, and honestly to minister it forthe at all tymes of the King’s worship, and make trewe answere therof by weyghtes inward and outward’.
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There was also a groom who helped to make and serve the confections,
cleaned the confectionary and undertook general fetching and carrying, as well as a pack-horse man who transported fruit, spices and confectionery as required.

At the end of their meals, after their table had been cleared, or ‘voided’, the King and Queen would stand up to take sugar-coated spices and a spiced wine called hippocras to warm their stomachs and aid digestion. Even on ordinary days, the spice plates used were of silver, silver gilt or gilded glass, which the sergeant drew from either the Counting House of the Jewel House, filled with spices and passed to the usher of the King’s Chamber for service to the King, the groom later collecting the plates and bringing them back to the confectionary. If less important people were to be served, the spice plates were of pewter, drawn from the sergeant of the scullery. For state occasions, the royal spice plates were of the greatest magnificence – here is a description of one listed in Henry VIII’s inventory:
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Item one spice plate of greystone the fote and brymme garnysshed with silver gilt standing upon four antique heddes with homes and a cover of silver and gilt garnyshed with three heddes videlicet [namely] an Agathe a pursleyne [porcelain] and of mother of Emerrauld and garnished with Roses and flower deluces [fleur-de-lis] of counterfete stones … with a man in the toppe thereof with a staff and a Sheilde weyieng togethers 68oz [1.9kg].

On important ‘days of estate’, when the court displayed its grandest ceremonies, the royal spice plates were filled with a pound and a half (700g) of spices – a pound (450g) was normal on ordinary days or for the service of dukes, earls and bishops. The royal confectioners had been making aniseed, coriander, fennel and ginger comfits for centuries, using the ‘pannys, basyns, and ladylles that he maketh his confections with dayly’.
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Most of the smaller, dry spices served at the ‘void’ were coated in sugar as comfits; pippins eaten with caraway comfits being especially recommended.

Sugar was also used to preserve fruits, very much as it is today. The fruit was lightly cooked in syrup and then sealed with the syrup in ceramic jars. The peels of oranges and lemons, meanwhile, were treated in a similar way to form ‘succade’, more
usually known as sucket in Tudor England. As Andrew Boorde advised, ‘Oranges doth make a man to have good appetite, and so do the rinds if they be in succade.’
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Other fruits were preserved in the form of very stiff, sticky pastes which could be served cut up into small slices. These were first brought to England from Portugal, where quinces,
marmelos
in Portuguese, were mixed with sugar and scented substances such as rosewater, musk and ambergris, and then cooked until their natural pectin made the mixture thicken into semi-solid
marmelada
. This was poured into shallow wooden boxes – the most convenient means of packing it for preservation, sale and transport. In 1560, Lord Robert Dudley bought a ‘brick of marmelade 2s 4d’ for a banquet at Eltham.
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In England, the Portuguese marmalades were soon being reproduced, using either home-grown quinces or a variety of other fruits such as warden pears, damsons, apricots, peaches, oranges and lemons.

10.
 
Comfit-making
Spices such as caraway, coriander and chopped ginger were given a smooth, hard sugar coating by being repeatedly hand-stirred in a swinging copper pan set over a chafing dish of glowing charcoal. Sugar syrup was added little by little, until it had built up the required thickness around each seed or piece.

Another very popular Tudor sweetmeat was made by pounding blanched almonds with rosewater and sugar to form a smooth, stiff off-white paste called marchpane – the early word for our modern ‘marzipan’. The recipe produced flat, glazed discs with raised rims, their broad surfaces being ideal for decoration such as gilding or ornate sculptures made of marchpane paste, sugar plate and cast sugar figures. In their most extravagant forms these were served as ‘subtleties’ – wonderfully impressive sculptural models that would be brought in with great pomp at the start of each course.

Some ‘subtleties’ were made of wax. The one that preceded the first course at the Sergeant’s Feast given to Philip II of Spain and Queen Mary on 16 October 1555 in Inner Temple Hall was ‘A Standing Dish of wax, representing the Court of Common Pleas, artificially made, the charge therof £4.’ Preceding the second course, there was ‘A standing Dish of Wax, to each mess one, £4.’
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And Anne Boleyn’s coronation feast held in Westminster Hall on 1 June 1533 had included’ subtleties and shippes made of waxe, marvylous, gorgeous to behold.
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Other subtleties were probably made of sugar, the confectionary making ‘A George on Horseback’, a suitably magnificent theme to introduce the first course at Henry VIII’s Garter dinners.
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This must have been cast from a set of moulds about a hundred years old – ‘a soteltee Seint-Jorge on horseback and sleyng the dragun’ had been served at the first course of a royal feast recorded about 1440, the third course continuing the legend with a subtlety of ‘a castel that the King and the Qwhene comen in for to see how Seint Jorge flogh [flew?].
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Some of the other moulds used in the confectionary had probably been inherited from Cardinal Wolsey’s kitchens. In 1527 he had served a subtlety of the great medieval St Paul’s Cathedral, with its soaring spire; and in 1562 Queen Elizabeth received a similar marchpane bearing a model of St Paul’s as a New Year’s gift from her surveyor of the works, along with ‘a very faire marshpaine made like a tower with men and artillery in it’ from her yeoman of the chamber, and a ‘faire marchpane being a chessboarde’ – another Wolsey speciality – from her master cook.
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