The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain

by Ian Mortimer

  The transition from fingers to forks is also reflected in the plates in use in gentlemen’s houses. You have to be very rich to afford to eat off silver: in 1670 it costs about 5s 8d an ounce, so a single 18oz silver plate is likely to cost £5 or more, and a full dinner service will set you back more than £300. Pewter is employed much more frequently because, being predominantly made of tin, it is much cheaper (about 1d per ounce) and can be polished to look like silver.28 But cutting your food with a knife will score a pewter plate and so, as people increasingly use a fork to steady their meat and cut more decisively, the surface gets damaged. China thus starts to take the place of pewter, as it resists knife cuts. Plates made by Staffordshire potters soon become the fashionable thing to have, many of which are slip-ware decorated with royal portraits or emblems of Restoration loyalty.

  Ordinary people do not experience these same changes. You need to have a substantial income to care about how you eat, rather than what you eat. Most craftsmen and country workers still do not use forks in 1700. They might obtain pewter plates, in order to show off to their neighbours, but not china. Most of them eat off wooden platters: these tend to be round and with a depression in the middle, and not square like old-fashioned trenchers. Similarly the common people drink their ale and beer out of earthenware pots rather than glasses, which are habitually used for wine. The eating and drinking habits of the rich and poor have probably never varied as much as they do in the 1690s.

  Food in a Wealthy Household

  The real cost of food – roughly fourteen times greater than in the modern world – indicates that the meals enjoyed by the wealthy are bound to be different from those consumed by the poor. But the comparison by which we established this involved chickens and pears: two ordinary types of food. When it comes to delicacies, there are some things that even well-off townsmen never get to taste. A single carp, for example, can cost as much as 20s – two and a half times a skilled workman’s weekly wages.29 Just consider how much you earn in a week: would you spend more than twice that much money on a single fish?

  For this reason, even noblemen economise on food. Lords with extensive lands usually maintain a home farm, which provides meat, poultry, vegetables, herbs, dairy, corn and fruit for their daily use. They also draw their game from their own parks: deer fend for themselves through the winter months and, unlike cattle, do not require the investment of large amounts of fodder and shelter. Landowners similarly draw on their own ponds and rivers to provide them with fish. Yet despite such economies, feeding a household of dozens of people is still expensive. The earl of Bedford does not operate a home farm at Woburn – only the deer park, gardens and ponds contribute to his table – so his kitchen clerk has to obtain a considerable proportion of his lordship’s food from grocers, private suppliers and the marketplace.

  The above sums do not reflect the true level of consumption at the Abbey. The week in question is in late March, which is Lent, a lean time of year even if you are not fasting. There are only a few references to the fish caught and the fruit consumed. In the 1690s, the earl regularly pays 10–15s each for large pike, one of his favourite foods. Looking ahead to his kitchen clerk’s bill for one week in late July, and bearing in mind that apples, pears, quinces and many other fruit are supplied by his own orchards, you can see that even things that grow on trees are pricey.

  One week’s fruit bill at Woburn Abbey

  5 baskets of red raspberries 5s 10d

  3 baskets of strawberries 4s 6d

  8½ dozen pears 8s 6d

  10 dozen white plums 10s

  6 dozen red plums 6s

  4 dozen Morocco plums 8s

  10 dozen Newington peaches £1

  4 dozen great apricots £1 4s

  4lbs carnation cherries 8s

  Lemons and oranges 5s 6d

  6lbs cherries 1s 9d

  Pears 1s 3d

  Currants 10d

  Codlins and gooseberries 1s 10d

  Plums 2s 3d

  Total £5 8s 3d

  These bills don’t include the spices used, which are bought in bulk from grocers in town and kept in store until consumed. These too can be expensive: 8s for 1lb of cloves; 1s 9d for 1lb of ginger; and 4d for 1lb of rice. Sugar costs between 6d and 8¼d per pound for ordinary, 1s 4d per pound for smooth and anything from 1s 3d to 2s per pound for double-refined.30 Overall, if you think in terms of a gentleman’s table costing him £10–15 per week, or between thirty and forty-five times the weekly wages of a skilled worker, you will begin to understand the scale of expense. In 1663 and 1664 the earl’s kitchen clerk’s total expenditure amounts to £735 and £758.31

  What does the food look like when it arrives on the dinner table? Much depends on the ways in which it is stored. Keeping fish and meat fresh, in the absence of refrigerators, is quite a struggle and the various methods devised by kitchen staff over the centuries tend to curtail its suitability for certain forms of cooking. One popular method is to pickle it. Valuable fish such as salmon, sturgeon and pike are regularly pickled, as are anchovies. Newcastle salmon, which is boiled in strong beer and salt before being pickled, can keep for a whole year.32 Cooked beef can also be pickled in vinegar or boiled in brine and hung to dry by the fire. The head and foreparts of a pig are made into brawn, which, being soused in its own liquid, lasts a long time. Hares are often minced, beaten with marrow or suet and encased in pastry, sealed with butter, sometimes with the ears protruding from the pastry. Lobsters are boiled and buried in brine-soaked bags in sea-sand, so they last up to three months. Eels and lampreys are regularly ‘potted’ – baked in butter, drained and then sealed under more butter (to a depth of three fingers) – in which condition they can last many months. Salmon, smelts, mackerel, lobsters and shrimps are also preserved in this way. Potted fish soon becomes fashionable, displacing cold fish pies from the tables of the wealthy. Meat too is potted, especially beef, ham, hare and tongue, being minced and beaten with butter, then pressed to remove the air, and covered with more butter.33

  Fresh meat is normally roasted on a spit in front of the fire, which is turned by hand, by a small dog trained to walk within a wheel, or by gravity (which requires a driving weight to be wound up, turning the spit as it slowly descends). Frequently the meat is stuffed before it is roasted. Fresh fish too might be roasted: oysters are cooked on wooden spikes attached to the spit; pieces of sturgeon are spitted, pike roasted whole and eels skewered on a spit in an S shape. Meat and smaller fish might also be ‘broiled’ (grilled) on a gridiron; steaks cooked in this way are called ‘carbonadoes’. Most meats can be fried or baked in pastry – although the skill required to do either of these things should not be underestimated. The cautious cook might therefore prefer to follow recipes that call for the meat to be stewed or boiled in broth.

  Just as the British in this period become international in their fashion sense, so they do in their cuisine. Many forms of French cooking are adopted, such as casseroles, fricassees (meat chopped small and fried in butter with white wine, salt and ginger) and hashes (sliced meat stewed in a strong broth of herbs, spices and wine, served on sops of bread or toast).34 Spanish recipes also influence the diet of the wealthy in the form of ‘olios’: cooked pieces of meat, fowl, poultry and sweet-breads piled high on a bowl, with the juices in which they have been cooked poured over them. Italian pasta appears regularly on the English dinner table, in the form of macaroni and vermicelli. Even Scotland has a dish to offer, in Scotch collops: pieces of lamb or beef cut into medallions and fried with claret, vinegar, onions, nutmeg, lemon peel, anchovies, horseradish and oysters.35 Not all these recipes appeal to everyone: John Evelyn declares that Portuguese olios are ‘not at all fit for an English stomach, which is for solid meat’.36 And it is true to say that the real joy for an Englishman is to eat whole joints of meat, or roasted birds and fish. A whole fish is either served on sops of bread or toast with butter melted over it or in a sauce made from berries: gooseberry sauce for mackerel, barberry sauce for boiled pike. Wh
ite fish is often served in a parsley sauce (melted butter strewn with chopped parsley and thickened with flour). You will also come across fish baked in breadcrumbs and served with the traditional melted butter on top.37

  So, sitting down with Samuel Pepys one lunchtime in January 1663, at his new dining table (which cost the princely sum of £2 10s) in his handsome dining room, you might not yet have a place setting with a fork, but you may expect a first course of three dishes – ‘oysters, a hash of rabbit and lamb and a chine of beef’– and then a second course of ‘a great dish of roasted fowl, which cost 30s, and a tart’, followed by a third course of fruit and cheese. All this fills him, his wife and his six guests, but not so much that they cannot manage a supper a few hours later. Both meals add up to the princely sum of £5.38 Pepys’s finest feasts are those he provides to friends on 4 April each year – the anniversary of his operation for the bladder stone. In 1663 he has eight guests to celebrate with him and his wife, and together they consume ‘a fricassee of rabbits and chicken, a leg of boiled mutton, three carp, a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie, a dish of anchovies and good wine of several sorts’.39 Note that, in 1663, 4 April falls in Lent. This is not a great year for abstinence in the Pepys household.

  It has to be said that the wealthy do not always eat in a lavish fashion. Indeed, some of their dishes are most unappetising. Calf’s head is unlikely to appeal to the majority of modern British diners. Snail porridge is to be found on Restoration dining tables, having been imported from France along with stewed, fried and hashed snails and snail pie. Pepys invites his wife’s tailor – a Mr Unthank – to dine with them one evening and their repast consists of ‘nothing but a dish of sheep’s trotters’.40 Pepys is similarly known to share ‘a good udder’ with a friend and to serve up his favourite offal to his guests, such as ‘a most excellent dish of tripe of my own directing, covered with mustard’.41 With such things on the menu at his house, you might think twice before accepting an invitation to dinner.

  Inns, Cookshops and Taverns

  When the coach in which Ned Ward is travelling stops late one evening at an inn called the English Champion, in Ware, Hertfordshire, he and his companions ask the landlord what they might have for dinner. ‘Eels,’ the man replies. It soon transpires that eel is the only thing available. On the positive side, Ned and his companions all like eels. Moreover, they can have them boiled, fried, baked, stewed, roasted, toasted, coddled, parboiled, soused or doused, as they desire. Everything is fine – until they receive the bill: 2s 6d per head is a lot to pay for eels, however they are cooked.42

  When you turn up at an inn you won’t be able to peruse a menu. Often you will have no choice as to what to eat. However, it is not unheard of for clients to buy something in the market and take it to an inn and ask for it to be cooked for them. Willem Schellinks fancies goose one day, so buys a fat bird for 16d and has the cook at his inn roast it for him.43 This bring-your-own-ingredients service can also apply to non-residents. Pepys is rather fond of lobster, so he takes one to a local alehouse for lunch, where it is cooked for him.44 So, while in some respects the fare in an inn is extremely restricted, in others it is remarkably flexible. In certain roadside establishments the landlord will bring wine, beer or food out to serve to people in a hurry as they wait in their coaches. In some town taverns, private rooms are available for men to drop by and conduct business; they are free to send the potboy out for food from a cookshop.

  The quality of the meal you will enjoy varies considerably, according to where you choose to dine. The cheapest fare is obtained from hawkers selling hot pies in the street and marketplace, if you don’t mind the gristle inside the pastry and the flies on the outside. A step up from these are the cookshops in large towns and cities. Normally they will have several joints of meat roasting over a spit: the best have four spits working at once, cooking several pieces of meat simultaneously: beef, mutton, veal, pork or lamb. You can have whatever meat you want, and you can direct it to be sliced with fat on, or lean, well done or rare. You’ll be given a bread roll with your meat and you can add salt and mustard at the counter. Some cookshops also serve pies and will cook portions of poultry for you.45 Don’t expect the highest standards of hygiene, however. At a cookshop in Bartholomew Fair, Ned Ward watches as

  A swinging fat fellow, the overseer of the roast to keep the pigs from blistering, who was standing by the spit in his shirt, rubbed his ears, breast, neck and armpits with the same wet cloth which he applied to his pigs … so scouring out again through an army of flies encamped at the door in order to attack the pig-sauce, we deferred our eating till a cleaner opportunity.46

  A notch up from cookshops are the ‘ordinaries’ – modest eating houses where you can have a set two-course meal for 1s, each course consisting of a single dish (one of which will be beef ).47 Higher up the food chain again is a city tavern: a typical dish of the day is a meat chop (of lamb or veal) with bread, cheese and beer, at a total cost of 1s.48 Note that this is a minimum; a fashionable location may well charge you twice as much: the King’s Head in Charing Cross costs 2s 6d a head. The top-quality French eating houses in London (the word ‘restaurant’ is not yet in use) can cost much more. A meal at Chatelin’s in Covent Garden will set you back 8s 6d per head in the 1660s, and Pontac’s Head in Abchurch Lane in the city of London in the 1690s might cost more than a guinea (£1 1s).49 But the most expensive places of all to eat are the inns that cater to the aristocracy. The English Champion in Ware might not be able to offer anything other than eel but the Red Lion in Cambridge can serve almost anything you want – as long as you can afford it. This is the earl of Bedford’s bill for one meal at the inn, in 1689.

  The earl of Bedford’s dinner at the Red Lion, Cambridge, 16 October 168950

  This meal is not a special occasion – it is only marginally more expensive than the one the earl and his family consume the previous day (£15 3s 6d). But the thing to note is the range of foodstuffs that can be provided at such a hostelry. If you are travelling in Restoration Britain and have money, and stay at the right place, then you will want for nothing.

  Food in Ordinary Households

  If there is one economic law that is historically true in all times and places, it is that the less wealthy a household is, the greater the proportion of its income is spent on food. The earl of Bedford’s kitchen expenditure amounts to less than 10 per cent of his total income. A gentleman with one-twentieth as much will spend a much larger proportion on feeding his household, and a prosperous yeoman with an annual income of £50 will spend a greater proportion still. But as the figures in chapter 3 make clear, about two-thirds of the households in England have an income below the average of £32 per year, and in Scotland the average is even lower. Working people spend far more than half their income on food and drink. Even if you rule out spending 1s a day on a dinner at an inn or alehouse, and stick to an allowance of 6d per day for all three meals, that still adds up to more than £9 per year. This is what Edward Barlow’s father has, in order to feed his whole family, consisting of his wife and six children – and that’s without any deduction for rent, firewood, clothing or parish dues. If your income amounts to less than a penny a head per day for each member of your household, almost all of it has to be spent on food.

  Lack of money to buy ingredients is one obvious reason why eating with Restoration husbandmen and cottagers is so different from dining with their social superiors. Another is a limited range of cooking utensils: they cannot afford a range of skillets and trivets, frying pans and saucepans. A third is the lack of fuel. In Cornwall, Celia Fiennes discovers to her horror that firewood is in such short supply that her hosts cannot roast meat for her: they have to boil it in a cauldron over a fire of furze.51 A fourth limiting factor is the law. You can’t just take fish from a river: they are the property of the landowner. In addition, Parliament passes an Act in 1671 prohibiting ordinary people from hunting or trapping game, even when it is
on their own land. Things aren’t quite as extreme as in the next century, when the law allows gamekeepers to shoot poachers on sight, but nevertheless the legislation adds to the poor man’s misery.

  How do people manage? The answer, in a nutshell, is thrift. Everything that can possibly be consumed from an animal is saved: bones, intestines, fat, brains, tongue, heart, kidneys, liver and hooves. No child in a hungry family is likely to turn down food on the grounds that he or she ‘doesn’t like it’, so every part of any animal is used. Obviously, if you are lucky enough to own a few hens, you don’t eat them but rather keep them for their eggs, and you only eat the bird when she has ceased to lay. But thrift has its creative side too, in making the most of the few assets available. You don’t grow flowers or grass in your garden (if you have one) but a variety of herbs, onions, peas, beans, cabbages, kale, parsnips, turnips, beetroot, and so forth, which may well be the difference between life and death in a year of high prices. Apples, if stored carefully in the right conditions, can be kept for a year, and other fruit can be dried or made into preserves. If you own a cow, you don’t kill it for its beef, but aim to benefit from the blood as well as the milk and the calves, by drawing off limited amounts of blood from cuts in its legs and mixing it with herbs and oats to produce blood puddings. You can cautiously try out new crops too. It is at this point that workers in the north-west of England start to plant potatoes as a staple crop: they find that not only are potatoes good for breaking up the soil and excellent insurance against a harvest failure, but they are also more nutritious per acre than wheat.52