CORONATION FEASTS THROUGH THE AGES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20782, 17 July 1937, Page 11 (Supplement)

CORONATION FEASTS THROUGH THE AGES

If there is one thing common to all I past coronations of England, it is the magnificence of the banquets, says Alan Jenkins in the 'Sunday Express.’ The English tradition has always been. "Good plain food, and plenty of it." The Danes and Saxons hacked raw meat with blunt knives, threw the bones to the dogs, then drank themselves senseless with mead and ale. With the Norman Conquest came refinement, and Tudor and Stuart feasts, though fantastic in quantity, were almost as attractive as ours to-day. One of the earliest historians of England. Fabyan, concentrated almost exclusively on recording the food served at great banquets of former ages. This, he tells us. was the order for the coronation banquet of Edward I.: Three hundred and eighty oxen, 430 sheep. 450 pigs, 18 wild boars, 275 filches of bacon, and 20,000 fowls. Two thousand cooks dealt with this vast quantity of food. The King's purveyors undertook the catering, aided by sheriffs of 12 counties. Henry V.’s banquet was held during Lent. Course after cource of fish was served. The only meat allowed was brawn, with mustard. These were the courses: — First: Dead eels (stewed), pike trout, plaice, crabs, codlings, and lampreys. Second: Conger, halibut. salmon, lobsters, smelts, barbel, roach, seabream, chub, and gurnard. Third: Sturgeon (the roe in form of caviare was not yet in vogue), porpoise. turbot, carp, tench, and perch, Fourth: Prawns, shrimps, and whelks. Curiously, oysters are not mentioned. Tire taste for them was probably a much later acquisition. There were all sorts of new ideas in the food line at Henry Vl.'s coronation. Almost every edible animal and bird was served. Boar's head, roast pork, venisonall old-established English culinary favourites —were high on the menu with such ever-popular game as grouse, partridges, and quails. There were also the more medieval delicacies—plovers, snipe, and stewed larks. Other dishes, stranger still to us, included boiled herons, cranes, bitterns, and egrets. The meal began with “red soup,” the ingredients of which we can only guess. In it floated little models of lions, made of paste. These were known as subtleties, and edible models of political and scriptural figures were an important feature of such feasts. On the haunches of the venison the words "Te Deum Laudamus” were inscribed. The cold pork was “gilded” —presumably like gingerbread. Charles IL’S coronation banquet was sumptuous, but the general public did not get much to eat. There were so many gate-crashers after that, after the main feast, they had to stand about or squat on the ground, cheerfully picnicking on what they could grab. Some idea of the cuisine can be gleaned from Pepys, who managed to secure four rabbits, a pullet, and a hunk of bread for his wife and friends. King James 11. was a very economical monarch, but he had a most expensive and elaborate banquet at his coronation. Frenchmen of the day must have been horrified at the lack of discrimination shown by the English royal palate. The King's master cook, Patrick

Lamb, specialised in "cold meats, both flesh and fish, ordered in all manner of ways.” He devised 99 different cold dishes. A contemporary account says:— "In three very great chargers and 14 large basins, dried sweetmeats, and plates of all sorts of jellies, blancmange, etc., with salads of all kinds were likewise brought up . . . with plates and glasses to fill up every little vacancy between the dishes . . . and all so equally varied that it made an extraordinary good appearance.” Filling up vacancies seems to have been more important than the quality of the food. Nor was this all. Altogether there were 1,245 items on the menu. In addition to the 99 cold meats (that was only the first course, by the way), there was a second course of 30 more, including eight pheasants, 24 partridges, and eight wild ducks. Then there were King James’s special favourites—Bologna sausages, hogs' and stags' tongues, cold puffins, trotter pie, cabbage pudding, spinach tart, cold egg pies (almost everything at this feast seems to have been cold), and. lastly, cockles and winkles. James 11. was a man of homely appetite, and picked a pretty winkle. An odd, but very important, tradition was the "mess of dillgrout” which was ceremonially’ presented to the King. As the name implies, it was a sort of medicinal gruel to soothe indigestion. Another memorable banquet was that of George IV. A total of £243,000 was spent on his coronation, of which no less than £25,200 went to buy food and drink. Incidentally, this was the last banquet served in Westminster Hall. The nineteenth century was gradually learning refinement, but the old tradition of hearty eating survived —17,0001 bof beef, mutton, and veal; 2000 fowls; 8.400 eggs; and so on. were ordered. There were also "daubed geese.” presumably a kind of “potted meat.” The only shortage was of sauce —480 small jugs. French wines have always been consumed at English coronations. Edward ll.’s chief butler imported 1,000 pipes of the best Bordeaux. The homelier malmsey, sack, and claret were traditionally popular, with, occasionally, burgundy. There was also hippocras, a tonic digestive wine served at the end of a feast It was not until the seventeenth century that we began to enjoy the costly luxury of champagne at our coronations. At George IV's banquet an amazing quantity of it was drunk. When the King himself had left the table his guests not only polished off the remaining liquor, but raided the royal cellars and practically emptied I them, cramming bottles in their : pockets as well as “consuming on the i premises.”