those
of their forefathers, which they themselves had criticized in their own
youth."

[Illustration: Fig. 71.--Purse or Leather Bag, with Knife or Dagger of the
Fifteenth Century.]

Food and Cookery.

History of Bread.--Vegetables and Plants used in
Cooking.--Fruits.--Butchers' Meat.--Poultry, Game.--Milk, Butter,
Cheese, and Eggs.--Fish and Shellfish.--Beverages, Beer, Cider, Wine,
Sweet Wine, Refreshing Drinks, Brandy.--Cookery.--Soups, Boiled Food,
Pies, Stews, Salads, Roasts, Grills.--Seasoning, Truffles, Sugar,
Verjuice.--Sweets, Desserts, Pastry.--Meals and Feasts.--Rules of
Serving at Table from the Fifteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries.

"The private life of a people," says Legrand d'Aussy, who had studied that
of the French from a gastronomic point of view only, "from the foundation
of monarchy down to the eighteenth century, must, like that of mankind
generally, commence with obtaining the first and most pressing of its
requirements. Not satisfied with providing food for his support, man has
endeavoured to add to his food something which pleased his taste. He does
not wait to be hungry, but he anticipates that feeling, and aggravates it
by condiments and seasonings. In a word his greediness has created on this
score a very complicated and wide-spread science, which, amongst nations
which are considered civilised, has become most important, and is
designated the culinary art."

At all times the people of every country have strained the nature of the
soil on which they lived by forcing it to produce that which it seemed
destined ever to refuse them. Such food as human industry was unable to
obtain from any particular soil or from any particular climate, commerce
undertook to bring from the country which produced it. This caused
Rabelais to say that the stomach was the father and master of industry.

We will rapidly glance over the alimentary matters which our forefathers
obtained from the animal and vegetable kingdom, and then trace the
progress of culinary art, and examine the rules of feasts and such matters
as belong to the epicurean customs of the Middle Ages.

Aliments.

Bread.--The Gauls, who principally inhabited deep and thick forests, fed
on herbs and fruits, and particularly on acorns. It is even possible that
the veneration in which they held the oak had no other origin. This
primitive food continued in use, at least in times of famine, up to the
eighth centur