SC - Metal drinkware (was With a Curtsey to Their Majesties: An Introduction)

[Huette von Ahrens]

> I don't have time at the moment to go through lots of sources, but 
> reading through the first five meals in Le Menagier I do not find any 
> mention of any salad or salad like dish. My casual impression is that 
> that is typical. Perhaps someone else has done a more careful 
> examination of the data.

Menu XIX calls for 'cress and sorrel with vinegar'
Menu XXIII calls for 'cress and mint'
Menu XXIV calls for 'lettuces'

All of these are fish menus, so we can conjectorure that the little old
man who got married around 1393 and who lived in Paris, felt that greens
should be served with fish, not meat, and probably thought of them as a
Lenten dish. 

A quick look in the OED suggests that at least by the 15th century it was
a known dish if not common. Of course the term 'sallat' may not have come
into the language for a dish of raw (or lightly cooked) greens much before
then. 

  1481-90 Howard Househ. Bks. (Roxb.) 398 Item, for erbes for a selad j.
d. 1533 ELYOT Cast. Helthe (1539) 41 Yonge men..shell
eate..salades of cold herbes. 1578 LYTE Dodoens 125 This herbe..is much
vsed in meates and Salades with egges. 1601 HOLLAND Pliny
II. 37 If you would make a delicate sallad of Cucumbers, boile them first,
then pill from them their rind, serue them vp with oile, vinegre,
and honey. 

c1390 Forme of Cury (1780) 41 Salat. Take persel, sawge, garlec
[etc.]..waische hem clene..and myng hem wel with rawe oile, lay
on vyneger and salt, and serue it forth. 1550 J. COKE Eng. & Fr. Heralds
30 (1877) 64 Oyle olyve whiche was brought out of
Espayne, very good for salettes. 1597 HOOKER Eccl. Pol. V. lxxvi. 8 A
Sallet of greene herbes. 

Perhaps it was a renaissance fashion, to eat fresh greens in spring?

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.

" Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees 
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees, 
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!" -- Kipling