This year BSP/BSF joint meeting was held at the Stevenage Novotel for a talk about Tudor Cooking. Don’t worry, no "spit boys" were required and no animals were harmed during the session... Instead we asked J. Marc Meltonville, part of the Experimental Archaeology team of the Royal Palaces and a ceramic archaeologist, to take us back to... his home: Hampton Court (yes, some people still live there!) and to tell us how he and his team managed to bring back to life Henry VIII’s kitchens.
When first appointed at Hampton Court, his role was to restore Henry VIII’s kitchens. In 1991, this was finished and it was thought that they might as well try to use it! This demanded a scrupulous work of research about what, when and how everything was used.
Henry VIII was very good at throwing parties and Hampton Court was all about that: a superb party house on the Thames. Actually one of Henry’s favourites, which means the place was probably lived in for a few weeks a year! But still, with a court averaging 600 souls (who did not feed on love & fresh air!), kitchens had to be prepared for such invasions, and they were. In fact, they were real food factories. With its 55 rooms and 19 departments, all strictly organised and controlled by clerks, Hampton Court kitchens were no exception.
In the reconstruction work, a 1580 Italian written book became a very precious ally it listed and illustrated all utensils that were needed in kitchens with accuracy. This enabled the team of today to copy most utensils and try them out to see what usage they were most fit for. But sometimes, it was not easy. For example, potters made ceramics pots according to tradition and metal ones were found made of solid cast bronze, made by bell founders. Finding some was no easy task... Then, they had to find out that the ceramics pots were used to simmer and that the bronze ones were used to boil food that then needed to be removed from the pot to avoid any metal poising due to copper sulphide. Needless to say none of this was mentioned in recipe books of the time and although this chemical reaction is well known today, it was still be to understand that if they had bronze pots, how did they use them and what did they use them for!
Art (paintings for example, describing scenes of everyday
life) was a very useful tool too. Archaeologists were able to compare a
piece of ceramic with a painting and find out from which pots it was coming
from. Sometimes, it was less straightforward e.g.: a whitish blob on a
saucer was found in Pieter Bruegel’s "Peasant dance". It took them quite
some time to find out to identify that the blob was actually butter and
that it was the way it was served and kept (up side down in cold water)
Now they had all the utensils, they had to fit the recipes
to them! Unfortunately cooks had books that were more like "aide memoir"
than anything else. No amounts were mentioned, neither cooking time, nor
the size of your fire, let alone the pots you should have been using. They
are therefore very open to interpretations.
When all the technical aspects of the running of the kitchen were sorted, they started concentrating on the kitchen boys -only males were to serve the King and his court. They hesitated a long time before deciding to make their clothing too. But, clothing was part of one’s life and had to be taken into account. Again, everything had to be made up as it would have been at the time. A master cook would wear white trousers (hose) with a prominent crotch as the fashion dictated, a saffron dyed jacket and a hat, a simple kitchen boy would have a similar outfit but the trousers would be blue (meaning that they had been dyed with fresh elder berries) and a light yellow jacket, but his was dyed with onions skins, nothing to be very proud of!. So if you were an educated lady of the time, you would rather go out with a white trousered guy (who did not get his hands too dirty while at work, meaning he had quite a few staff to do the job for him) than with one with a blue trousers. Funnily enough this has not changed much: this white/blue dichotomy has kept the same symbolism!
Now, with its staff fully clothed and all utensils ready to be used, the kitchens were only missing... ingredients! Raw materials were brought in and processed as they progressed within each department, to finally be served through hatches. Then it could be paraded or put directly on the tables according to some principles. The food was better and more abundant if you were sitting close to important nobles or better, the King himself. Food was served for a mess, i.e.4 to 6 persons and you would help yourself. At the time, there were no "written menus", everything that the kitchen could produce was done and put on the tables. Then it was down to each guest to pick up what they fancied most among sometimes 120 dishes for one course! Everything was very much a matter of symbol and the main one for the King, when entertaining, was to show his wealth & power. It did not matter that most of the food would not be used; he had to show that he could afford to waste lavishly! That’s why most of the food was roast meats. The amount of energy needed to cook (logs were constantly brought in to keep the huge chimney fires) was a striking life size example of the King’s power. For the very same reason, raw materials were bought in and the ones from the palace never used to provide ingredients to the kitchens... Beer was bought in as well as bread, herbs were disregarded, spices praised: if you could grow it in your garden that was not good enough to be served at the King’s table! Pasta was very much used too; the 1st written pasta recipe (which is merely a mix of flour and water) is dated from 1390 and apparently most societies have "invented" a paste or ‘pasta’ as a part of their staple food.
There was no order of serving between sweet and savoury dishes and everything could be brought together. As a matter of fact, cooks took pride in fooling their hosts. With everything very dark brown or green, very few dishes were different in colours. England had no tomato yet and was not very keen on carrots... they had to make food a bit more exciting by other ways than colours which capture the eyes( which is very much the way we eat now, and I would be tempted to add the way we live too, we are a very eyes greedy civilisation!). On the contrary, they chose to play with palates using flavours. So what was thought to be fresh pears could turn out to be parsley and lamb! No cutlery was used yet, only spoons were provided and guests were supposed to bring their own knife.
Sugar was then very praised because it was so expensive. It came from Persia (Iran) in big blocks that had to be broken down and then sieved. An incredible amount of work was needed just to get the starting raw material and men could be breaking down sugar or sieving it all day long! So, they did not do much with it afterwards! Most of the time, they made boiled and decorated sweets. But of course, some cooks were creating very complicated arrangements for special occasions; they would work really hard and much longer than any other to finish their masterpiece. They would make ships, castles, landscapes and even cutlery and plates that you would use and then eat at the end of your meal! With vegetable gum and icing sugar, they made sugar clay now called royal icing, which was another texture and look to their repertoire. Of course, they could be coloured with red (beetroot), yellow (saffron) or green (cabbage). As a perfumer, I was surprised to hear that sandalwood saw-dust was used as a dye with Brazilian wood to get some different tones of red. Scale insects (cochineals) were used as well, they gave the most vivid red but the colour quickly oxidised and turned into purple. Gold leaves were used to create fascinating eatable shines. Confectionary was definitely showing of the King’s wealth with the most exquisite delicacy!
Surprisingly in most pie recipes, a precious and very expensive perfumery material, musk, was used (in case, you had not been sufficiently impressed by the cohort of roast meats or the golden leaves surrounding sugar castles!). However, as the actual team had not managed to get some real musk yet to try out these recipes, we do not know what flavour it gave... Although the King sometimes had foreign nobles with him, it was not customary to use any of the fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts than they could bring him as presents. However, cooks would use dates, currants, spices and many other ingredients that were traded back from very far away from England, but no-one would admit to be influenced by foreign cultures in the way they cooked... Would that explain why curry is nowadays seen as the English dish "par excellence"?
Anyway, this very lively tour within Henry’s kitchen was
truly amazing I have to say If Hampton Court is in need of kitchen boys:
I promise to drown a pair of white trousers in a bath of onion dye! And
I guess that one more time, JMarc hit his target: to create living History!
Shame we could not taste anything though, because after hearing so much
about all this Pantagruelian food, our Novotel 21st century refreshments
seemed more fitted for a Weight Watchers meeting !
Clio VIDAL
20/01/04