Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

between the steele and the stone, she begets a spark, at last the Candle lights on his Match; then upon an old rotten foundation of broaken boards she erects an artificiall fabrick of the black Bowels of New-Castle soyle, to which she sets fire with as much confidence as the Romans to their Funerall Pyles." Under July, in the same work, we hear of "a chafing dish of coals;" and under September, wood and coals are mentioned together. But doubtless the employment of the latter was far less general. In a paper read before the Royal Society, June 9, 1796, there is an account of a saucepan discovered in the bed of the river Withain, near Tattersall Ferry, in Lincolnshire, in 1788. It was of base metal, and was grooved at the bottom, to allow the contents more readily to come within reach of the fire. The writer of this narrative, which is printed in the "Philosophical Transactions," considered that the vessel might be of Roman workman-ship; as he states that on the handle was stamped a name, C. ARAT., which he interprets _Caius Aratus_. "It appears," he adds, "to have been tinned; but almost all the coating had been worn off.... The art of tinning copper was understood and practised by the Romans, although it is commonly supposed to be a modern invention." Neckam mentions the roasting-spit, elsewhere called the roasting-iron; but I fail to detect skewers, though they can hardly have been wanting. Ladles for basting and stirring were familiar. As to the spit itself, it became a showy article of plate, when the fashion arose of serving up the meat upon it in the hall; and the tenure by which Finchingfield in Essex was held _in capite_ in the reign of Edward III.--that of turning the spit at the coronation--demonstrates that the instrument was of sufficient standing to be taken into service as a memorial formality. The fifteenth century vocabulary notices the salt-cellar, the spoon, the trencher, and the table-cloth. The catalogue comprises _morsus, a bit_, which shows that _bit_ and _bite_ are synonymous, or rather, that