by Ian Mortimer
This does not point to a balanced diet, in any sense of the word. For a start, it is very heavy on the meat side. Chamberlayne lists several sorts of fruit but no vegetables beyond ‘edible roots and herbs’. Indeed, vegetarians will have a tough time because it is widely assumed that everyone wants to eat flesh. Another imbalance is the unsustainability of the animals in question: people consume so many wild birds that some of them soon find themselves on the well-plucked path to extinction. A third imbalance is the level of fat on their plates. Monsieur Misson observes that when the English eat beef in a dish, ‘they will besiege it with five or six heaps of cabbage, carrots, turnips or some other herbs or roots, well-peppered and salted and swimming in butter’.2 People do not hesitate to use cream and eggs in abundance too. One recipe for a tansy (a flavoured egg pudding) reads:
take fifteen egg yolks and six whites, beat them very well, then put in some sugar and a little sack [dry Spanish wine], and about a pint of cream, then put in tansy, spinach and primrose leaves, or the like, chopped as small as possible, and beat them all well together, then put it in a skillet and set it over the fire, stirring it continually till it be pretty stiff, then put it into a pan and fry it with sweet butter, and make sauce for it with rosewater, butter and sugar.3
Such a diet of plentiful meat and lashings of butter and cream will certainly make you put on weight, but you need to be wealthy to afford it. If you are poor, you can rule out almost everything on Chamberlayne’s list. A chicken will set you back at least 1s, which is one-eighth of the weekly wages of a master carpenter. If the value of that chicken were to rise in line with the wages of carpenters, then at the time of writing (2016) you’d have to pay £66.49 for a similar one.4 And that is a minimum. As for fruit, a single pear costs 1d, or 1/96 of a skilled craftsman’s weekly wages: the equivalent of approximately £5.54 in modern money.
This shows you just how precious food is in Restoration England. But don’t forget that these prices are averages: there is far greater fluctuation from year to year than in the modern world. The principal reason is the Little Ice Age – the global cooling of the seventeenth century. Old people in England still remember the famine of 1623 in Cumberland and Westmorland. You don’t have to be that old to recall the food shortages of the 1640s and the sieges of the Civil Wars, when many people were reduced to eating cats, dogs, rats and mice.5 Famine remains a real fear in all ranks of society, for it sends prices skywards and triggers outbreaks of crime and disorder, which in turn affect the urban and wealthy. This is one of the reasons why gentlemen like Pepys and Evelyn are particularly attentive to the weather. The month of June 1661 is so wet that Londoners fear the crops will be destroyed and famine will ensue.6 Across England that year prices do hit near-record heights. If you don’t want to feel hungry, do not visit England in 1660, 1661, 1673, 1674, 1696 or 1697, when the cost of wheat goes well over 125 per cent of the long-term average. Low prices (25 per cent below the average) are recorded in 1685, 1687, 1688, 1689, 1690 and 1694.7
Without doubt, the worst place and time in which to find yourself in Restoration Britain is Scotland between 1693 and 1700, otherwise known as the ‘ill years’. The population of the northern kingdom declines by about 10 per cent overall. In the worst-affected area, the Highlands, one-fifth of the population dies.8 How can this happen? Why does Scotland fare so much worse than England? These are pertinent questions to ask, when the famine of 1696–7 is a Europe-wide phenomenon. There are several reasons. Perhaps the most important is the predominance of subsistence farming in Scotland: people consume what they grow themselves and store or barter any excess. When there are harvest failures, anyone retaining a surplus hoards it; others are forced to eat their seed corn, meaning they have nothing to plant the following year. Successive harvest failures amplify the dangers. Three consecutive years of poor harvests are enough to bring even a well-developed market economy to its knees – as shown by the famine of 1594–7 in England – but the Highlands are not a market economy, food does not change hands in times of dearth, and Scotland suffers seven bad harvests in the 1690s. Obviously the poorest people are left dependent on the relief administered by their parishes; but where there is no relief system in operation, or where the people live too remotely, or where there is no local market at which to buy corn, relief is ineffective. Poorly fed women find it difficult to conceive. New mothers cannot produce milk and their babies die. Men emigrate in search of work – and thereby deprive the land of half its workforce. The reasons why England and Wales get off relatively lightly are that the weather there is better, there are fewer poor harvests and, when they fail, the losses are not as severe as they are in Scotland. Most important of all, the 680 market towns in England and Wales distribute any surpluses so that the poor-relief system can do its work more efficiently.
As you travel around the island you’ll discover further constraints on what you might eat. Seasonality is obviously a factor, and this can include seafood as well as lamb and fresh fruit. People already repeat the mantra that they should only eat oysters when there is an ‘r’ in the month.9 Prices vary considerably as the year goes by: fresh eggs in winter are scarcer and more expensive than in summer (as chickens respond to the amount of light they enjoy). Cooking processes can also create problems, even in a well-appointed town house. John Evelyn dines one evening at the Portuguese ambassador’s residence and is served fowls ‘roasted to coal’.10 And if this can happen when roasting on a spit – a form of cooking open to inspection – then just imagine how much harder it is to bake things. If you don’t know your oven, how long do you leave things in there? There is no window, no temperature control, and if you open the door you risk losing all the heat. Thus in November 1660 Elizabeth Pepys manages to burn all her tarts and cakes when she and Samuel move into their new house, with its oven built into the side of the kitchen fireplace.11 Two months later she and her husband go to dinner with Mr and Mrs Pierce, where they are presented with ‘a calf’s head carbonadoed [grilled], but it was [so] raw we could not eat it’. Pepys adds that Mrs Pierce ‘is such a slut that I do not love her victuals’, referring of course to her lack of tidiness in the kitchen rather than her morality.12
In case you are wondering, few people actually die of food poisoning, despite the health risks of eating poorly cooked meat. The statistician John Graunt studies the Bills of Mortality for the London area and concludes that your risk of a fatal case of poisoning is just 14 in 229,250, or 1:16,375.13 If it’s any reassurance, you are more likely to cut yourself and bleed to death than be poisoned.
Local and Regional Foods
The ‘ill years’ in Scotland are a reminder that you cannot generalise about food across the whole of Great Britain. Location determines what you can eat more than anything else. If you do travel north of the border, it would help if you are partial to oats, which are served up at almost every meal in every Scottish household. In fact, they make up three-quarters of the entire calorific intake of every man, woman and child there.14 They might be baked into clapp bread or dished up in pottage (or porridge), or served as oatcakes. Even if you are a hardened Scottish patriot, it is likely that the diet of oats will prove a little monotonous.
A local abundance can work in two ways: it can lead to a very boring and imbalanced diet, if there is no alternative, or it can become a regional speciality. Pilchards might be plentiful in Cornwall – a little too plentiful for some – but the plenitude underpins the local economy and, if you do like pilchards, then that is the place to seek out the best. You can say the same for mullet in Sussex and herring on the East Anglian coast. As Celia Fiennes makes her way around the country she frequently finds it difficult to obtain good food, but she praises the crab and lobster of Brownsea Island and the Isle of Purbeck, and the salmon of the River Severn, and she expounds at length on the char from Lake Windermere. In Somerset she enjoys the apples and pears and extols the virtues of the local cider, while in Devon she has clotted cream on an apple tart.15
One writ
er who definitely appreciates regional food is Thomas Baskerville. In Gloucestershire he notes a huge amount of sage cheese being sold at a fair. In Gloucester itself he comes across ‘yelver cakes’ made of eels. He notices extensive liquorice supplies in Pontefract. He sees herring caught, cured and smoked by the boatload at Yarmouth.16 These local specialities cause him to consider how many foods are named after their place of production. He can think of Cheddar cheese, Warfleet oysters, Herefordshire cider, Banbury cakes, Tewkesbury mustard, Scotch collops (see below), Studley carrots (from Studley in Wiltshire), Thames sprats, Besselsleigh turnips, Bartholomew Fair roast pig, Southwark Fair roast pork, and saffron from Saffron Walden. He notes down a few foods that have become the subjects of rhymes: ‘Hampshire honey is current goods for every man’s money’; ‘Dorset ewes for the early lambs / and Warwickshire breeds most excellent rams’; ‘Canary sack and Bristol sherry / will make a sad man’s heart be merry’. He also mentions some foreign foods and drinks that have already gained an international reputation: Westphalia hams, Nantes brandy, Caribbean rum, Turkish coffee, Persian sherbet, East Indian rice, West Indian maize, Brazil sugar, Bermuda oranges, French claret, Russian sturgeon and Jamaican spice.17 Already there is a sense in which the whole world is a larder.
Fasting
In the Middle Ages good Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays, Saturdays and Wednesdays or on any day in Lent and Advent. In England this tradition outlasted the Reformation and only started to decline in the 1590s. Now few people except Catholics forgo meat on any day of the week. This goes for eating meat in public as well as in private: you can enjoy a shoulder of mutton in a London tavern on a Friday and no one will bat an eyelid.
The idea of fasting has not quite gone away, however. There is a general feeling that Lent is still a time when you should prioritise spiritual matters and not eat meat or eggs. In 1661 the king emphasises this by ordering that everyone should keep the Lenten fast. Men like Lord Bedford dutifully observe this royal request and eschew all flesh. Others ignore it. Pepys doesn’t think it realistic because the alternative is to eat fish, which the poor generally cannot afford. But Pepys himself illustrates a more significant problem: lack of self-control. On 27 February 1661 he conscientiously resolves to observe the forty days’ fast. He manages just one day before giving in and eating meat. On 10 March he dines on ‘a poor Lenten dinner of coleworts and bacon’. Which bit of bacon does he think doesn’t count as meat? A week after the bacon, he and his wife tuck into a joint of beef, and on 26 March he is delighted to declare at dinner to Mrs Turner and everyone else at the table that they might have eaten no meat that Lent, but that he has ‘had a good deal of good flesh’. In 1663 he forgoes meat on just one day in the whole of Lent.18 Having said these things, even much later in the century many people continue to believe in the virtues of fasting. In 1682 Hannah Woolley lists a selection of dishes that you might consume during Lent and on other fasting days, including a very novel thing for the English table: baked potatoes.19
There are other reasons why people fast. Charles II orders that 30 January be kept as a fast day in memory of his father, as that was the day of his execution. Pepys finds a one-day fast much easier to observe than the full forty days of Lent. Then there’s the belief that a religious fast can alleviate poor weather. It is ordered that Wednesday, 12 June 1661 be kept as a fast day due to the recent rain, to avert the sickness and diseases that might be expected to follow. The following year, 15 January is similarly decreed to be a fast day, so that people might pray for more seasonable weather, to avert the danger of plague.20 Bearing in mind the extraordinarily high prices of corn in 1660 and 1661, and the approaching onslaught of the plague of 1665, we can perhaps understand this precaution. At the height of the plague, several days are set aside as ‘solemn fast days’. As the century nears its conclusion, after the religious crises of the 1680s, the links between fasting and fruition become most unfashionable, in the eyes of good Anglicans. Natural philosophy also helps break the superstitions surrounding fasting, so fewer people entertain the idea of forgoing food as a sacrifice during the reign of William III.
Mealtimes and Manners
The three-meal ritual of breakfast, lunch and supper has not always been with us. Few people in Britain ate breakfast before the mid-sixteenth century. Travellers and harvest workers did, and so did those with long working days ahead of them. But most people ate two meals a day: a late-morning dinner (the main meal of the day) and a late-afternoon supper. However, as more and more individuals work for others rather than themselves, and are accordingly obliged to observe what we might call ‘office hours’, they cannot get away with a late-morning mealtime as well as an afternoon one. In most places it has become usual to have one break for lunch, rather than a late-morning dinner, and to leave supper until after the day’s work is done. This has now become normal even among country people. Thus you will find people eating their main meal at noon and their supper at various times in the evening. But breakfast retains its ambivalent character: is it a meal or not?
The most common foodstuff for breakfast is beer. The old tradition of travellers beginning the day with a pint or two before they set out is still observed by some gentlemen – Thomas Baskerville, for example. Townsmen too might begin the day with a ‘morning draught’ of beer. Bread and butter is seen as a good countryman’s breakfast, and Baskerville himself doesn’t always insist on a pint but will opt for bread, cheese and cold tongue if they are available.21 The range of foods that Pepys has for breakfast is quite extraordinary. Sometimes he has a morning draught of cakes and ale; on other occasions he heads to a tavern and has ‘turkey pie and goose’ or ‘good wine, anchovies and pickled oysters’. One of his breakfasts consists of ‘mince pie, brawn and wine’.22 Then again, frequently he goes without breakfast altogether.
Dinner – the main meal of the day – varies with the degree of formality attached to it. A quick lunchtime meal at a tavern may amount to nothing more than a single course consisting of one dish. At the other extreme, a properly laid-out meal in a nobleman’s dining room will consist of three courses: two meat courses and a sweet course, each one consisting of up to a dozen different dishes. Note that, at such a dinner, you are not expected to consume everything in front of you: you should pick what you want from each dish, as you would from a modern buffet. At least, that is what you are supposed to do. Some people do try to consume everything in sight. Monsieur Misson remarks that ‘the English eat a great deal at dinner; they rest a while, and [go] to it again until they have quite stuffed their paunch. Their supper is moderate: gluttons at noon and abstinence at night.’23 Supper is a single course in a nobleman’s house but, despite Misson’s comment about abstinence, this too might include several dishes. On top of that, you might be offered a late-evening meal of cold meat or a ‘sack posset’. Sack is a dry wine, typically from Spain; in a ‘sack posset’ it is mixed with cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, egg yolks and cream, and served warm. The purpose is either to fortify you for your journey home or to knock you out so that you don’t notice the chill of your bedchamber.24
When it comes to the mechanics of eating, you need to be prepared for all eventualities. In the 1660s, when you sit down at a dinner table, you will probably not see a knife or a fork in front of you. You will be expected to provide your own eating knife, which you will wipe on your napkin at the end of the meal and take home with you. As for forks, these are an Italian innovation and rarely encountered in Britain, except when eating fruit in syrup in a gentleman’s house. If places are formally laid at a table, the arrangement is a knife and napkin, not a knife and fork. This includes some quite prestigious events: if you dine with the lord mayor of London at the Guildhall, you will see napkins and knives are laid out, but not forks.25 The reason napkins are essential is that you need to hold a piece of meat in order to cut it, and you will lift it to your mouth using your fingers, thus covering yourself in juices and sauce at both stages of the operation. Lorenzo Magalott
i is somewhat perturbed to find that English people don’t generally use forks in 1669; one of the few times he encounters them is at a dinner in the king’s presence.26 By the 1690s, however, you can sit down in a country-house dining room with a knife, fork and spoon ready at your place setting.27 The transition to modern eating practices is practically complete – at least amongst the well-to-do.
To understand why this transition comes about, it is necessary to look at the implements more closely. At the start of the period, the eating knife that you carry around with you will have a pointed end as well as a sharp blade. This end is for spearing the meat and lifting it from the dish on to your plate. When forks are introduced, people use them to do the spearing, so the knives no longer need to have sharp points. Forks also serve the purpose of steadying the meat on your plate while you cut it, so initially they have just two tines. But soon it becomes apparent that, if you can use a fork to put meat on your plate, you may as well use it to lift the food to your mouth, keeping your fingers clean. Very soon people start using forks with three or four tines, to help with that process. Four-tined forks are also more popular as they hurt less if you accidentally jab your lip with one. People start to carry around their own knife and fork in a case, in the way they used to carry their own knife on a belt, but soon genteel hosts provide sets of cutlery for their guests, and the practice falls out of fashion.