All the King's Cooks (13 page)

19.
 
Larder fees
The ox and sheep heads, together with the tongue, as shown in this woodcut from Lobera de Avila’s
Banket der Hofe und Edelleut
of 1556, would all have been cut off and taken as fees by the officers of the larder, leaving only the main carcases for the kitchens.

As for the other carcases:

The meat was cut in the evening so as to be ready for cooking at any time after five the next morning, in time for the ten o’clock dinner. The poultry and rabbits that had been plucked or skinned in the scalding house in the Outer Court arrived in the larder before eight, so that the officers could distribute them to the various master cooks, as needed for that particular day’s dinner and supper.

20.
 
Freshwater fish
Many of these varieties, illustrated in Hannah Woolley’s
The Accomplish’t Lady’s Delight
, would have been brought into the larders shortly before being cooked on the Friday and Saturday fish-days.

Just to the west of the larder lay the wet larder (no. 32), where the fresh fish was probably kept for almost immediate use. Most of the sea-fish was provided by Thomas Hewyt of Hythe in Kent, to whom a contract had been awarded by the officers of the green-cloth.
⁷
He would send the fish up from the coast in panniers slung from the sides of pack-horses, led by a servant who also carried a note of its prices. The most expensive fish were bought individually, a halibut costing 2d, a John Dory 12d, and porpoises, not above one horseload, 13s 4d; the prices of larger ones were agreed with the clerks comptroller. The other fish were bought by the ‘seam’, a very practical measure since it represented a single horse-load:

Freshwater fish was brought to the palace by purveyors such as Robert Parker and George Hill, who provided the following at these agreed rates:
⁸

In addition, fish were kept in ponds extending from the front of the King’s apartments at Hampton Court, across towards the Thames. These are now drained, but the site is still called the Pond Gardens.

Having been checked and recorded by the sergeant and clerk of the larder, the clerk of the kitchen and the clerk comptroller would presumably supervise the cutting of the ‘fees’ of the fish – for the master cooks had all the salmons’ tails, the heads of turbot, halibut, purpoise and so forth.
⁹
The fish would then be given to the cooks so that they could prepare them for that day’s meals.

Next to the larder lay the boiling house (no. 26), staffed by four yeomen and two junior servants and supervised by the sergeant of the larder, who was charged to ensure that ‘the Beef be put to the lead every morning in due time, soe that it may be thorough boyled when it shall be served’.
¹⁰

At Hampton Court a lead, or copper boiler, was installed in the boiling house in September 1531.
¹¹
It was probably coated with tin inside, like the boiling vessels listed in the inventory of all equipment in the palace’s kitchens drawn up for the Commonwealth in 1659, and like the copper pans used in any modern restaurant kitchen. (Without this tinning, the copper is attacked by the acids in the food, dissolving into it, spoiling the taste and eventually causing poisoning.) Early in the morning the lead would be filled with water – it probably had its own supply on tap from a cistern full of spring water in the rooms above. Faggots or similar fast-burning timber would then be lit and fed into the long firebox underneath, which had raised firebars to ensure that the fuel burned as fiercely as possible. From here the flames played directly on to the base of the copper and then were drawn up flues at the back of it and forwards around the upper parts of both sides, to ensure that they made maximum contact with the huge cauldron before being carried away up the chimney.

Although Hampton Court’s original copper does not survive, the dimen sions of the surrounding masonry and furnace arch show that it must have held around 80 gallons (364 litres), which would have given it the capacity to boil batches of around two hundred messes – enough to serve eight hundred people at a time. On the other hand, given that the household regulations state that its primary purpose was to boil all the beef, it would have been barely large enough to meet the demands placed upon it unless the better-quality beef for the nobles etc. was boiled in the Lord’s side kitchen – as may have been the case.
¹²

21.
 
The Boiling House
This large built-in copper boiler was supplied with spring water from a tank in the rooms above, and was heated by a typical flue system which conducted the flames first underneath and then around its upper parts.

From its position, it looks as though the boiling house was used as a preparation facility for the pastry and main kitchens too. There would certainly have been time to receive the raw meats from the larder each night or early morning, parboil some of them between, say, 5 and 7.30 a.m. for transfer to the pastry for pie- and pasty-making, or to the kitchens for roasting, and still boil a batch of 200 two-pound (900g) beef joints ready for dinner at 10 a.m. Needless to say, the boiling house would have been constantly bustling, the staff busy non-stop with trimming and trussing the joints, putting them into the copper, stoking the
fire, baling out the boiled meats into kettles and pans for transfer to the pastry, the other kitchens or the serving hatches. Then, once dinner had been served, they would start all over again so as to be ready for the four o’clock supper. For all this, in addition to their wages, the boiling house staff received the strippings from the brisket joints, the grease produced from the transfer of the meat from the boiler into the kettles and pans, and the dripping from the roasts in the kitchen.
¹³

The major by-product of the boiling house was pottage. As the ever-informative Andrew Boorde recorded, ‘Pottage is not so much used in al Crystendom as it is used in Englande. Potage is made of the lyquor in which flesshe is sodden [boiled] in, with puttyng-to chopped herbes and oatmeal and salt.’
¹⁴
It formed an excellent broth, with which to start any meal.

All manner of herbs good for pottage
¹⁵

Take the crop of red brier,

Red nettle crop and avens [herb bennet,
Geum urbanum
] also

Primrose and violet together mostly go,

Lettuce, beets and borrage good,

22.
 
Boiling utensils
The flesh hook was used to lift the hot meat out of the boiling water – this example was found in the cellar of a house in Norwich which burned down on 25 March 1507. The large broth ladle is based on one in Bartolommeo Scappi’s famous cookery book of 1570, while the skimmer, for removing the scum, was used by William Coke, cook to William Cannynge of Bristol. When Coke was buried in his master’s great church, St Mary Redcliffe, in 1467, the mason simply placed it on his gravestone and carved its outline, which remains there today.

Town cress, cress that speweth in flood,

Clary, savory, thyme good won,

Parsley worth other herbs many a one.

All other herbs thou not forsake,

But best of primrose thou shalt take,

Red cole [cabbage] half part pottage is,

From June to St James tide [25 July] I wis,

Then winter his course shall hold.