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Elizabethan England
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General SummaryThe Description of England, by William Harrison, is a most valuable survey, political, social, and religious, of Elizabethan England. The work, which was published in 1577, contains an extended account of the food, dress, houses, and furniture of the people, besides notices of laws and punishments, treatment of the poor, fairs and markets, churches, universities, the army and navy, and a great variety of other topics. Harrison was a learned, kind-hearted, truth-seeking man, not afraid to expose what he regarded as the shams and follies of his day, but a lover of his country and proud of the achievements of Englishmen. He lived during a great age, and this is mirrored in the pages of his often amusing and always informing book.
Chapter XLVII
England in the Age of Elizabeth1
238. Food and Diet2
In number of dishes and change of meat the nobility of England (whose cooks are for the most part musical-headed Frenchmen and strangers) do most exceed, since there is no day that passeth over their heads wherein they have not only beef, mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, cony, capon, pig, or so many of these as the season yieldeth, but also some portion of the red or fallow deer, besides great variety of fish, wild fowl, and sundry other delicacies. For a man to dine with one of them and to taste of every dish that standeth before him . . . is rather to yield unto a conspiracy with a great deal of meat for
the speedy suppression of natural health than to satisfy himself with a sufficient repast to sustain his body. But, as this large feeding is not seen in their guests, no more is it in their own persons; for, since they have daily much resort unto their tables (and many times unlooked for), and thereto retain great numbers of servants, it is very requisite and expedient for them to provide somewhat plentifully. . . .
The gentlemen and merchants have much the same custom. Each of them contenteth himself with four, five, or six dishes, when they have but small resort, or peradventure with one, or two, or three at the most, when they have no strangers to accompany them at their tables. . . . To be short, at such times as the merchants make their ordinary or voluntary feasts, it is wonderful to see what provision is made of all manner of delicate meats, from every quarter of the country, wherein, beside that they are often comparable herein to the nobility of the land, they will seldom regard anything that the butcher usually killeth, but reject the same as not worthy to come in place. In such cases, also, jellies of all colors, tarts, preserves of old fruits, foreign and home-bred, marmalades, sugarbread, gingerbread, wild fowls, venison of all sorts, and outlandish confections, altogether seasoned with sugar (a device not common nor greatly used in old time at the table, but only in medicine), do generally bear the sway, besides infinite devices of our own not possible for me to remember. Of the potato, and such roots as are brought out of Spain, Portugal, and the Indies to furnish up our banquets, I speak not. . . .
But among all these, the kind of meat which is obtained with most difficulty and cost is commonly taken for the most delicate, and thereupon each guest will soonest desire to feed.
1 William Harrison’s , edited by Lothrop Withington. London, 1889. Walter Scott Publishing Co.
2 Harrison, Elizabethan England, pp. 88–93.
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Chicago: Lothrop Withington, ed., "Food and Diet," Elizabethan England in Readings in Early European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1926), 506. Original Sources, accessed November 24, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=3BT955H3ZT666GT.
MLA: . "Food and Diet." Elizabethan England, edited by Lothrop Withington, in Readings in Early European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, Ginn and Company, 1926, page 506. Original Sources. 24 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=3BT955H3ZT666GT.
Harvard: (ed.), 'Food and Diet' in Elizabethan England. cited in 1926, Readings in Early European History, ed. , Ginn and Company, Boston, pp.506. Original Sources, retrieved 24 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=3BT955H3ZT666GT.
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