The Well-Kept Kitchen

by Gervase Markham

In 1615 the poet and writer Gervase Markham published an extraordinary handbook for housewives, containing advice on everything from planting herbs to brewing beer, feeding animals to distilling perfume, with recipes for a variety of dishes such as trifle, pancakes and salads (not to mention some amusingly tart words on how the ideal wife should behave). Aimed at middle-class women who share in household tasks with their servants in the kitchen, this companionable and opinionated book offers a richly enjoyable glimpse of the way we lived, worked and ate 400 years ago.

This edition is part of the Great Food series designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith.

Genres: Food, Cookbooks, Nonfiction, History, Cooking, Food and Drink, Historical

160 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2011

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

An invaluable historical resource, although (like many older texts) a bit difficult to follow in places.

It's entertaining to see what has changed and what has stayed the same over time. The explanation for how to make puff pastry is pretty much exactly what I would personally do in 2013. A few pages later is an explanation of how to roast a cow's udder--not only would I not roast a cow's udder, if I did, I would certainly flavor it with a large quantity of vinegar, sugar, and cinnamon. Actually, apparently everything should be flavored with sugar and cinnamon, including mutton, oysters, and pike.

There are a fair number of things listed here that I would not even particularly think of as food, like violet leaves (I didn't realize those were even edible), primroses and cowslips; things I know are edible but we really wouldn't eat now, like crabapple juice, acorns, and iris root; and enough uses for heads and trotters to keep Manhattan's gastropub staff busy for weeks. There are quite a few dubious uses for herbs and very suspicious medicine recipes, but a cheerful distribution of pennyroyal through recipes without a seeming awareness of its properties as a poison/abortificant.

Also, the author likes oats. Really. There is an entire chapter on the virtues of oats, which you should basically eat all the time and feed to every kind of livestock imaginable.

If you're looking for insight into housewives' duties (including baking, brewing, and herbal remedies), Renaissance cookery, or the ordering of a massive feast, this is the book for you. If you want to actually make any of these foods, well--they didn't include proportions in those days, so good luck to you. But you know your roast pig is done when the eyes fall out.

[Michelle]

This is a ridiculous and charming book. I have so many questions. Did Gervase actually talk like this? Did middle-class housewives really have access to this much sugar and nutmeg? What did they do with the cream that was not "the sweetest and best"? Did every meal have simple and compound sallats, "some only to furnish out the table, and some both for use and adornation," (p. 9) or just banquets (p. 80)? This really is making me question my definition of middle class.

Some things to which Gervase adds sugar: compound and boiled sallats, veal toasts, calf's mugget (intestines), stewed mutton breast, stewed neat's foot, roast venison, roast cow's udder, olive pie (which is actually "olives" of veal), chicken pie, herring pie, ling pie, and oyster pie. Also sauces for veal and turkey but not pheasant, quail, pigeon, or pig.

While I probably won't use most of the recipes in here, I have been inspired to use my violet and strawberry leaves as potherbs, and to incorporate "sippet" into my vocabulary. Who knew we had an equivalent of the Italian scarpetta or French saucer?

I am also interested in the beer-brewing method, which is different from modern-day instructions. He grinds the malt, then gradually adds boiling water and "mashes" it, then adds more malt and lets it stand an hour before pouring off the first liquor. He boils this with hops for an hour, strains it into a cooler, mixes some wort with barm in a vat, and lets the cooled wort run from the cooler into the vat overnight. In the morning, he beats the wort and the barm together and puts it into scalded barrels to "purge" (of the fermentation gases?). He keeps the bung holes open for a day or two, then seals them up with clay. (p.117-118) To get small beer, he resteeps the same malt. This ordinary beer is ready in a fortnight, but March beer, which has peas, wheat, and oats, should ripen for a year. Strong ale, according to Gervase, does not last as long as "beer" so should be made in smaller quantities (in spite of being "blinked" with oak boughs and a pewter dish). The difference seems to be that ale was not brewed with hops, though Gervase does like to add some to his. https://zythophile.co.uk/2009/12/14/t...

"Also she must know that the choice of seeds are twofold, of which some grow best being new, as cucumbers and leeks, and some being old, as coriander, parsley, savory, beets, origanum, cresses, spinach and poppy." (p. 7)

To make the best tansy (p. 14): eggs and cream with green wheat blades, violet leaves, strawberry leaves, spinach, and succory, walnut tree buds (instead of tansy)

His trifle (p. 57) is an earning (rennet) pudding. His Norfolk fool (p. 56) sounds more like a modern trifle, with stovetop custard poured over "thin shives" of manchet (white bread) and strewn with caraway and cinnamon comfits.

To make biscuit bread. . . . Strew in your flour and sugar as you are beating of it, by a little at once; it will take very near an hour's beating." (p. 70) EXCUSE ME??? AN HOUR?

Ordering of great feasts and proportion of expense. "She shall first marshal her sallats, delivering the grand sallat first, which is evermore compound; then green sallats, then boiled sallats, then some smaller compound sallats. Next unto sallats she shall deliver forth all her fricassees, the simple first, as collops, rashers, and such like; then compound fricassees; after them all her boiled meats in their degrees, as simple broths, stewed broth, and boilegs of sundry folws. Next them all sorts of roast meats . . . then baked meats . . . then cold baked meats . . . then lastly, carbonadoes both simple and compound." (p. 81-82)

His recommendation "for a more humble feast, or an ordinary proportion which any goodman may keep in his family for the entertainment of his true and worthy friends" has 32 dishes, 15 of which are meat, including a whole pig and a whole kid: "first, a shield of brawn with mustard; secondly, a boiled capon; thirdly, a boiled piece of beef; fourthly, a chine of beef roasted; fifthly, a neat's tongue roasted; sixthly, a pig roasted; seventhly, chewets baked; eighthly, a goose roasted; ninthly, a swan roasted; tenthly, a turkey roasted; the eleventh, a haunch of venison roasted; the twelfth, a pasty of venison; the thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly; the fourteenth, an olive pie; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a custard or doucets. Now to these full dishes may be added in sallats, fricassees, quelquechoses, and devised paste, as many dishes more, which make the full service no less than two and thirty dishes." (p. 84)

I really hope they were eating a lot of bean pottage and wholemeal bread the rest of the time to make up for this.

[Kaye · Rating 2 out of 5]

Usually I like books like this, old cookery/housewifery instructions. But I never got caught up in this one.

[Ape · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't take to Markham. This is just an excerpt book, and it was more than enough for me. I found his voice rather patronising, little-mr-know-it-all and holier than thou. This writer/poet/soldier wrote a book in the 1600s advising women on how to be good housewives and how to go about all their business.

There aren't any full bodied recipes here so I don't know if you could use it for any cooking inspiration, and there weren't any ideas or hints that made me think, wow, I've got to try that. As you'd expect, there's a lot of meat in here, including things we don't really eat these days - various wild birds for example; and all kinds of offal. I was also surprised by how much spice and herbs appear and are used. I suppose we have this reputation as English food being really bland and nothing to get excited about until recently. But perhaps things weren't so bad in the good old days. With historical insights like this into the past, I am always sobered up by just how much time anything takes, when you're reading the descriptions. There were no mod cons or shops to buy anything. The good English housewife (who did all this and more whilst being a good Christian, always in good humour etc so as not to annoy her husband) was making her own food, beer, bread, cheese, distillations for medicinal purposes, gardening, growing everything from scratch. Couple that with that which isn't in the book - children, laundry (which would have taken days), it's a wonder she ever got a couple of hours sleep every day. Laundry doesn't come up in this little book, but I'm still very thankful for my washing machine.

[Ria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A charming book written in 1615 full of quaint advice for the then "modern" housewife.
Chock full with seriously delivered information on how to cut, prepare herbs and at what time to plant them, how to cook and prepare meat, bread, the making of beer, keeping of wine, distilling water, the virtues of oats and even how a housewife of the time should at all times dress modestly and please the master of the house.
Archaic by our standards now but a fascinating glimpse into the lives of women then and how they were expected to behave and feed their families.
A wonderful and important historical record of how the author believed the average middle class housewife should accomplish her kitchen tasks with the help of the kitchen servants.
This is in no way an account that would have been applicable to the lower classes for the simple fact of the rich variety of the food involved.
Hilarious at times when you consider the modern audience that is now reading this but the author has a tone of solemnity and seriousness in his style of writing that for the time period this is aimed at is perfectly acceptable.
A great read for any foodie but also people interested in a slice of domestic history.

[NoBeatenPath · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in the 17th century, this is an insight into a time when it was expected wives would be seen (in the kitchen) and (their opinions) not heard. Starting with a section on how housewives have to be chaste in thought, dress and demeanour, the book moves on the recipes. None of this is going to be of much use to the modern cook, as many of the ingredients discussed are quite foreign, and there are references to objects and techniques we just don't have or use now (there is a glossary to help you out if you really want to give it a try) but as a historical document this is quite interesting.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

a fascinating look into housewifery in the 17th century, but a little repetitive. would be fun to try and recreate these recipes, but with so many strange ingredients, it would be quite a challenge. the book is definitely great for beefing up your food vocabulary.

[Mary-Ellen Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having studied this book to death some years ago during my PhD in Renaissance literature, I cannot bring myself to review it in depth...

Admittedly, though, I still laugh at the idea of baking dishes being called 'coffins'.

[Katherine Simmons · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating insight into the 1615s, both socially and food wise. I am amazed at the sheer amount of sugar used in each recipe and for decoration. Some of the recipes are very similar to ones today and then others have been (thankfully) consigned to the depths of history.