[Sca-cooks] Breakfast references - long

[Christine Seelye-King]

For my Period Breakfasts class, I compiled several quotes regarding
breakfasting.  I have included some below to add to the conversation.
Christianna

‘The 14th century romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight notes that the
poet Bercilak, up before daybreak for a hunt, “ete a sop hastyly” only “when
he hade herde masse.”... a sop being a sliver of bread dipped in wine or
some other liquid.’
		“Fast and Feast” B.A. Henisch


“The Northumberland Household Book”, contains the household records of an
English noble establishment from 1512. It details what various members of
the household were given for breakfast on fish and flesh days. Here are a
few details, paraphrased.

“Breakfasts in Lent:
My Lord and My Lady -- a loaf of bread in trenchers, 2 manchets, a quart of
beer, a quart of wine, 2 pieces of saltfish, 6 "baconn'd" herrings, 4 white
herrings or a dish of sproits [sprats?]
My Lord Percy and Master Thomas Percy -- half a loaf of household bread, a
manchet, a potell of beer, a dish of butter, a piece of saltfish, a dish of
sproits or white herring
My Lord's clerks -- a loaf of bread, a potell of beer, 2 pieces of saltfish

Breakfasts on flesh days:
My Lord and My Lady -- a loaf of bread in trenchers, 2 manchets, a quart of
beer, a quart of wine, half a "chyne" of mutton or a "chyne" of boiled beef
My Lord Percy and Master Thomas Percy -- half a loaf of household bread, a
manchet, a potell of beer, a chicken or 3 boiled mutton bones
My Lord's clerks -- a loaf of bread, a potell of beer, a piece of boiled
beef”


Thomas Tusser's poem “The Good Housewife”  reads:
'Call servants to breakfast, by day star appear/
a snatch to wake fellows, but tarry not here./
Let huswife be carver, let pottage be eat,/
a dishful each one with a morsel of meat.'
"FIVE HUNDRED POINTS OF GOOD HUSBANDRY",  Tusser, Thomas, (1580)

Thomas Cogan, too talks of brown bread and butter as
being a good breakfast for a countryman, although fine white manchet
bread, the most expensive form of bread, was usually that recommended for
more gently-bred stomachs. 32."
32. Thomas Cogan. _The House of Health_, London 1584.

Quote taken from the _Liber Niger_ of Edward IV (in Bibl. Harl. No. 642,
fol. 1-196) as found in _A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the
Government of the Royal Household, Made in Divers Reigns, From King Edward
III. to King William and Queen Mary; Also Recepts in Ancient Cookery._
London (Society of Antiquaries), 1790.
(Commonly referred to as _Household Ordinances_) on page 27:

“...THE KYNG for his brekefast, two looves made into four manchetts, and ii
payne demayne, one messe of kychyn grosse, dim' gallon of ale. Item, at none
for his bourde sitting allone, viii loves, with the trenchers; his servyce
of the kychyn cannot be expresses at certeyn but the noble Edward the Third,
in comune dayes seryall, beying no prees of lordes or straungers at his
bourde, was served with viii diverse
dissches; and his lordes in hall and chamber with v, his gentylmen in court
with iii dissches, besides porage; and groomes and others with ii disshes
diverse. Then the Kinges meate, two pitchers and dim' wine, ii gallons ale.
Item, for his souper by hymeslf, viii loves, with the trenchers...,ii
pitchers wyne, ii gallons ale, besides the fruter and the waferer.  ~1550

A Book of Cookrye (1591) or Epulario (or The Italian Banquet) (1598)
contains a recipe for a chicken pottage good for the morning.

>From “Fast and Feast”  by Bridget Ann Henisch:
	“The ideal number of meals was considered to be two, dinner and supper.  An
everyday supper was a much lighter affair than dinner, and eaten at sunset.
In his sixth-century Rule for monks, St. Benedict stressed the point: ‘At
all times, they must so manage the hour of the meal ... that it is in
daylight.’
	“It is hard to decide how widely accepted breakfast became in the period.
In theory it had no existence: grown men held out until the proper time.  In
practice it was not unknown:  grown men were human.  As a result, breakfast
leads a slightly furtive existence in the records.  To compound confusion,
until the meal had been established, the word could be applied with perfect
propriety to dinner.  ... (the writer) Caxton, in his English and French
Dialogues begins a specimen menu with the ominous words ‘We shall breke our
fast with trippes [tripe],’ goes on to list as the other features of the
meal an ox foot, a pig’s foot, and a head of garlic, and ends with evident
satisfaction ‘So shall we breke our faste.’  ... Caxton’s bill of fare seems
dauntingly substantial for anyone to face fresh from his bed, and we may
assume that here too the “break fast” intended is dinner.
	“Breakfast may perhaps be described, by the later Middle Ages, as an
optional extra.  Those who did hard, heavy work could expect to have a bite
to eat before the midday meal, though Tusser briskly reminds employers that
this is to be regarded as a privilege, not a right:
		‘No breakefast of custome provide for to save,
		but onely for such as deserveth to have.’
	Other groups of people sometimes indulged with breakfast were the old, the
sick, and the very young.  Even in monasteries the invalids and the young
novices were allowed to eat something before none.
	Perhaps because of ... associations with childhood and infirmity, there
lingered on for a long time a certain feeling of apology and embarrassment
when a grown man admitted to eating breakfast.  It was often regarded as a
weakness, to be disguised if possible as something quite different: ‘This is
no brekefast: but a morsell to drynke with.’ (William Horman, Vulgaria
1519)  A businessman in fourteenth-century Prato carefully explained that
the only reason he ate some roasted chestnuts every morning before going out
was to please his wife: ‘she pampers me, as I do her.’
	Not only did workmen usually eat breakfast; they were also fortified in the
course of the day with ‘nuncheons.’  These little snacks had become accepted
fringe benefits by the 15th century, and they were noted down on wage sheets
as a matter of course.  In 1423, the Company of Brewers in London listed two
kinds of payment, in money and in food, for the casual laborers it employed:
‘Robert, dawber, for his dawbyng’  received four pence ‘with his noonnchyns’
; two carpenters making a gutter got eightpence each ‘with here Nonsenches.’
(The Brewer’s First Book - 1423)”