All the King's Cooks (4 page)

As all this clearly shows, much thought and organisational experience went into the management of the royal household, every opportunity being taken to ensure that it functioned as efficiently as possible.

Before moving on into the kitchens themselves, it is worth taking a close look at the food they had to produce. For a start, the bulk of it consisted of meat, poultry and game from Sundays to Thursdays, and fish on Fridays and Saturdays as well as during Lent and for other specified feasts. Bread was eaten with every meal, and ale and wine were the main drinks.

Unlike today, when we tend to think of communal meals in terms of so many individual settings, portions, or ‘covers’, Tudor cooks worked in terms of ‘messes’, meaning a whole menu for a small group of people, all eating together (and not a reflection of the messy state of the food!). Usually a mess was intended for four, but its size and quality could vary enormously. The King’s dinner was exceptional in that it comprised a single mess of thirteen dishes costing a total of 8s 8d, while that of the servants, for example, had just two dishes and cost 8d.
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More specifically, the word ‘mess’ was also used to describe each single dish, so that the ‘mess’ in the sense of ‘menu’ was made up of a number of individual messes of beef, mutton, veal, tarts, fruit and so on, each being sufficient for the whole ‘mess’ of four or more people dining together.

This was a very practical arrangement, for a variety of reasons. To begin with, once the number of people expected for a meal had been determined, it was a simple matter to divide it by four to work out the number of messes. The clerks could then issue
this number of joints to the cooks, and later count them out at the dresser after they had been cooked. Similarly, the number needed of every other dish could be quickly calculated, so that the required number of serving dishes could be made ready. Meanwhile, those setting up the tables and arranging the tableware knew precisely how many tables, cloths, napkins, spoons, bowls and so on had to be set out.

In some cases, the content of a specific mess is given in the household ordinances. Those served to the senior members of the household staff reflect their differing statuses and the number of people they were expected to entertain at their table:
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Another way of calculating the size of the messes is to compare their costs as recorded in the household ordinances with the cost of their raw materials. In 1549, for example, the Court of Aldermen of the City of London enforced the following price lists both in their ‘shambles’ or butcher’s shops, and in their markets:
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Using these figures as a guide, messes of beef for the majority of the household, recorded as costing 6d or 8d in the ordinances, would weigh around 2lb (900g) raw and therefore some 1lb 8oz (700g) cooked, giving each person around 6oz (175g) of cooked
beef to every meal. Priced at 3d, the messes of mutton would also weigh around 2lb, while the veal priced at 4d (assuming a 60lb (27kg) dressed carcase) would weigh around 3lb (1350g).
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Although approximate, these estimates show that most officers, yeomen and grooms – the bulk of the household staff – would be eating over 2lb 7oz (1100g) of meat every day:

Similar quantities were prepared for the senior officers, the courtiers and the King, but, as already mentioned, for them the range of dishes and quality were far superior, as were their methods of preparation.

Food and drink have always been very important status symbols: not only can they demonstrate the power, wealth and taste of the host, but they also give him a unique opportunity to define the social standing of everyone eating at his tables. In the Tudor court, the place where people took their meals, the number and content of their dishes, and the design and materials of their tableware, were all aimed at maintaining a rigid hierarchy. So, at Hampton Court as at other royal palaces, there was no attempt to disguise the differences between the various levels of importance; on the contrary, they were made as obvious as possible to everyone dining there.

One of the best descriptions of this practice is given by Alexander Barkeley (1475–1552), poet and scholar, who appears to have come to court and dined in the Great Hall as a very observant stranger. He was the same ‘Maister Barkleye, the black monke and poete’ whom Wolsey was asked to despatch to the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, to devise verses to decorate the great temporary banqueting house for the enter tainment of Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon and Francis I, King of France. Writing in the early years of Henry’s reign, Barkeley first noted that:
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… though white and brown [bread] be both at one price

With brown shalt thou feed, lest white make thee nice [refined].

The Lords will alway that people note and see

Between them and servants some diversity;

Though it to them turn to no profit at all,

If they have pleasure, the servant shall have small.

The inferiority of the food served to him personally became particularly obvious when the waiters walked through the Hall, bearing the finest dishes, and took them up to the great ones seated on the raised dais at its upper end, and probably to those in the Great Watching Chamber beyond, too:

For this unto courtiers most commonly doth hap,

That while they have brown bread and cheese in their lap,

On it fast gnawing as hounds ravenous,

Anon by them passes of meat delicious,

And costly dishes a score may they tell;

Their greedy gorges are wrapt with the smell;

The daintious dishes which pass through the hall

It were a great labour for me to name them all …

[And] when these courtiers sit on benches idle,

Smelling those dishes, they bite upon the bridle,

And then is their pain and anger fell as gall,

When all passeth by, and they have none at all.

What fish is of savour sweet and delicious

When thou sore hungerest, thy prince hath plenteous;

Roasted or sodden [boiled] in sweet herbs or wine,

Or fried in oil most saperous and fine.

Such fish to behold, and none thereof to taste,

Pure envy causeth, thy heart near to burst;

Then seeing his dishes of flesh new again,

Thy mind hath torment, yet with much great pain,

Well mayest thou smell the pasties of a hart

And diverse dainties, but nought shall be thy part.

The crane, the pheasant, the peacock and curlew,

The partridge, plover, bittern and heronshew [small heron].

Each bird of the air and beast of the ground

At prince’s pleasure shalt thou behold abound,

Seasoned so well in liquor redolent

That the hall is full of pleasant smell and scent;

To see such dishes and smell the sweet odour,

And nothing to taste, is utter displeasure.

Sometimes the senior courtiers, to demonstrate their patronage but also to make sure their inferiors fully appreciated what they were missing, sent tasty delicacies down to those dining in the body of the Hall:

To thy next fellow some morsel may be sent

To thy displeasure, great anguish and torment

Whereby in thy mind thou mayest suspect and trow [believe]

Him more in favour, and in contempt then thou,

And sometimes to thee is sent a little [s]crap

With savour thereof to take thee in the trap,

Not to allay thy hunger and desire,

But by the sweetness to set thee more on fire.

The contemporary dietaries show that Barkeley’s observations had more to do with fact than with mere poetic conceit.

At the bottom of the scale came the servants, porters, scourers and turn-broaches (spit-turners), and the children of the various domestic officers. They took their meals of bread, beef, mutton, veal (or ling and other sea-fish for fish days) and ale on the shop floor, so to speak, where they worked.
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Next came the officers, sergeants, clerks, yeomen, porters and grooms, most of whom dined in the Great Hall, the ‘works canteen’, on a similar menu,
but with the addition of the more delicate lamb, goose and coney, or cod, plaice and whiting on fish days. The senior members of the household dined at the upper end of the hall, in the King’s Great Chamber or Watching Chamber, and in the King’s Council Chamber, the ‘executive staff restaurant’ of the palace.
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For them there was far better food, including:
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All of this was cooked in the main household kitchens, but in addition there were the Privy Kitchens, which prepared all the food for the King’s and his Queen’s personal tables. Henry VIII’s lay just below his Long Gallery, close to his Privy Chamber, or ‘director’s dining-room’. The royal diet included everything in the list above, but with the addition of these luxuries:
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