Old cookery books and ancient cuisine / by W. Carew Hazlitt.

  • Hazlitt, William Carew, 1834-1913.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Old cookery books and ancient cuisine / by W. Carew Hazlitt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of to-day shrink into insignificance. But we must always remember that the extravagant luxury and hospitality of the old time were germane and proper to it, component parts of the social framework. It is to be remarked that some of the most disturbed and disastrous epochs in our annals are those to which we have to go for records of the greatest exploits in gastronomy and lavish expenditure of public money on comparatively unprofitable objects. During the period from the accession of Rufus to the death of Henry III., and again under the rule of Richard II., the taste for magnificent parade and sumptuous entertainments almost reached its climax. The notion of improving the condition of the poor had not yet dawned on the mind of the governing class ; to make the artizan and the operative self-supporting and self-respectful was a movement not merely unformulated, but a conception be- yond the parturient faculty of a member of the Jacquerie. The king, prince, bishop, noble, of unawakened England met their ■constituents at dinner in a fashion once or