Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

some in another. We incidentally collect from an ancient tale that the hearts of swine were much prized as dainties. Besides a general notion of the appointments of the cooking department, we are enabled to form some conception of the aspect of the early kitchen itself from extant representations in the "Archaeological Album," the "Penny Magazine" for 1836, and Lacroix [Footnote: "Moeurs, Usages et Costumes au Moyen Age," 1872, pp 166, 170, 177]. The last-named authority furnishes us with two interesting sixteenth century interiors from Jost Amman, and (from the same source) a portraiture of the cook of that period. The costume of the subject is not only exhibited, doubtless with the fidelity characteristic of the artist, but is quite equally applicable to France, if not to our own country, and likewise to a much earlier date. The evidences of the same class supplied by the "Archaeological Album," 1845, are drawn from the MS. in the British Museum, formerly belonging to the Abbey of St. Albans. They consist of two illustrations--one of Master Robert, cook to the abbey, as elsewhere noticed, accompanied by his wife--unique relic of its kind; the other a view of a small apartment with dressers and shelves, and with plates and accessories hung round, in which a cook, perhaps the identical Master Robert aforesaid, is plucking a bird. The fireplace is in the background, and the iron vessel which is to receive the fowl, or whatever it may really be, is suspended over the flame by a long chain. The perspective is rather faulty, and the details are not very copious; but for so early a period as the thirteenth or early part of the following century its value is undeniable. The "Penny Magazine" presents us with a remarkable exterior, that of the venerable kitchen of Stanton-Harcourt, near Oxford, twenty-nine feet square and sixty feet in height. There are two large fireplaces, facing each other, but no chimney, the smoke issuing atthe holes, each about seven inches in diameter, which run round the roof. As Lamb said of his Essays, that they were all Preface, so