The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened by Sir Kenelm Digby (popular books of all time TXT) 📕

you can say the Miserere Psalm very leisurely" is as easily computed as "while your Pulse beateth 200 stroaks." Quantities are a more difficult affair. How is one to know how much smallage was got for a penny in mid-seventeenth century? The great connoisseur Lord Lumley is very lax, and owns that his are "set down by guess."

It is a curious old world we get glimpses of, at once barbarous, simple, and extravagant, when great ladies were expected to see to the milking of their cows, as closely as Joan Cromwell supervised her milch-kine in St. James's Park, and to the cleanliness of their servants' arms and hands, and when huntsmen rode at the bidding of the cook; for in order that venison be in good condition, "before the deer be killed he ought to be hunted and chased as much as possible." The perusal of the section, "To Feed Chickens," will shock our poultry-breeders. "To make them prodigiously fat in about twelve days," "My Lady Fanshawe gives them strong ale. They will be very drunk and sleep; then eat again. Let a candle stand all night over the coop, and then they will eat much all the night."

"Lord Denbigh's Almond Marchpane," and the 'current wine' of which it is said "You may drink safely long draughts of it," will appeal perhaps only to the schoolboy of our weaker generation. Yet there are receipts, doubtless gathered in Sir Kenelm's later years, that have the cautious invalid in view. Of these are the "Pleasant Cordial Tablets, which are very comforting and strengthen nature much," and the liquor which is called "smoothing." "In health you may dash the Potage with a little juyce of Orange" is in the same low key. The gruels are so many that we must wish Mr. Woodhouse had known of the book. If the admixture of "wood-sorrel and currens" had seemed to him fraught with peril, he could have fallen back on the "Oatmeal Pap of Sir John Colladon."

Where are all the old dishes vanished to? Who has ever known "A smoothening Quiddany of Quinces?" Who can tell the composition of a Tansy? These are tame days when we have forgotten how to make Cock-Ale. They drank 'Sack with Clove-gilly-flowers' at the "Mermaid," I am sure. What is Bragot? What is Stepony? And what Slipp-coat Cheese? Ask the baker for a Manchet. The old names call for a Ballade. Où sont les mets d'antan? And, cooks, with all your exactness about pounds and ounces and minutes of the clock, can you better directions like these? Watch for "a pale colour with an eye of green." "Let it stand till you may see your shadow in it"; or "till it begin to blink." Your liquid may boil "simpringly," or "in a great ebullition, in great galloping waves." "Make a liaison a moment, about an Ave Maria while." And all the significance of the times and seasons we have lost in our neglect to kill male hogs "in the wane of the moon!" For there is a lingering of astrology in all this kitchen lore. The irascible Culpeper, Digby's contemporary, poured scorn on such doctors as knew not the high science, "Physick without astronomy being like a lamp without Oil."

As for the poetry I promised-well, I have been quoting it, have I not? But there is more, and better. Surely it was a romantic folk that kept in its store-rooms the "best Blew raisins of the sun," or "plumpsome raisins of the sun," and made its mead with dew, and eagerly exchanged with each other recipes for "Conserve of Red Roses." And now we come to an essential feature of the whole. It is a cuisine that does not reek of shops and co-operative stores, but of the wood, the garden, the field and meadow. Like Culpeper's pharmacopeia, it is made for the most part of "Such Things only as grow in England, they being most fit for English Bodies." Is it any wonder that the metheglin should be called the "Liquor of Life," which has these among its ingredients: Bugloss, borage, hyssop, organ, sweet-marjoram, rosemary, French cowslip, coltsfoot, thyme, burnet, self-heal, sanicle, betony, blew-button, harts-tongue, meadowsweet, liverwort, bistort, St. John's wort, yellow saunders, balm, bugle, agrimony, tormentilla, comfrey, fennel, clown's allheal, maidenhair, wall-rue, spleen-wort, sweet oak, Paul's betony, and mouse-ear?

The housewife of to-day buys unrecognisable dried herbs in packets or bottles. In those days she gathered them in their season out of doors. The companions to The Closet Opened should be the hasty and entertaining Culpeper, the genial Gerard, and Coles of the delightful Adam in Eden , all the old herbals that were on Digby's bookshelves, so full of absurdities, so full of pretty wisdom. They will tell you how to mix in your liquor eglantine for coolness, borage, rosemary, and sweet-marjoram for vigour, and by which planet each herb or flower is governed. Has our sentiment for the flowers of the field increased now we no longer drink their essence, or use them in our dishes? I doubt it. It is surely a pardonable grossness that we should desire the sweet fresh things to become part of us-like children, who do indeed love flowers, and eat them. In the Appendix I have transcribed a list of the plants referred to. Most cooks would be unable to tell one from another; and even modern herbalists have let many fall out of use, while only a few are on the lists of the English pharmacopeia. To go simpling once more by field and wood and hedgerow would be a pleasant duty for country housewives to impose upon themselves; and as to the herbalists' observations on their virtues, we may say with old Coles, "Most of them I am confident are true, and if there be any that are not so, yet they are pleasant."

There is an air of flippancy about that reflexion of Coles you will never find in Sir Kenelm. Of the virtues of each plant and flower he used he was fully convinced; and when he tells of their powers, as in his "Aqua Mirabilis," the tale is like a solemn litany, and we are reminded of Clarendon's testimony to "the gravity of his motion." And so, his Closet once more open, he stands at the door, his majesty not greatly lessened; for the book contains a reminiscence of his rolling eloquence, something of his romance, and not a little of his poetry.

ANNE MACDONELL.

Chelsea , 1910.

THE CLOSET Of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie K^{t}. OPENED:

Whereby is DISCOVERED Several ways for making of
Metheglin, Sider, Cherry-Wine, &c.

TOGETHER WITH Excellent Directions FOR COOKERY:

As also for
Preserving, Conserving, Candying, &c.

* * * * *

Published by his Son's Consent.

* * * * *

London , Printed by E.C. for H. Brome , at the Star in Little Britain . 1669.

[ Facsimile of the original title-page. ]


TO THE READER


This Collection full of pleasing variety, and of such usefulness in the Generality of it, to the Publique, coming to my hands, I should, had I forborn the Publication thereof, have trespassed in a very considerable concern upon my Countrey-men, The like having not in every particular appeared in Print in the English tongue. There needs no Rhetoricating Floscules to set it off. The Authour, as is well known, having been a Person of Eminency for his Learning, and of Exquisite Curiosity in his Researches, Even that Incomparable Sir Kenelme Digbie Knight, Fellow of the Royal Society and Chancellour to the Queen Mother, (Et omen in Nomine) His name does sufficiently Auspicate the Work. I shall only therefore add, That there is herein (as by the Table hereunto affix'd will evidently to thee appear) a sufficiency of Solids as well as Liquids for the sating the Curiosities of each or the nicest Palate; and according to that old Saw in the Regiment of Health, Incipe cum Liquido, &c. The Liquids premitted to the Solids. These being so Excellent in their kinde, so beneficial and so well ordered, I think it unhandsome, if not injurious, by the trouble of any further Discourse, to detain thee any longer from falling to; Fall to therefore, and much good may it do thee,

FARE-WELL.


A RECEIPT TO MAKE METHEGLIN AS IT IS MADE AT LIEGE, COMMUNICATED BY MR. MASILLON

Take one Measure of Honey, and three Measures of Water, and let it boil till one measure be boiled away, so that there be left three measures in all; as for Example, take to one Pot of Honey, three Pots of Water, and let it boil so long, till it come to three Pots. During which time you must Skim it very well as soon as any scum riseth; which you are to continue till there rise no scum more. You may, if you please, put to it some spice, to wit, Cloves and Ginger; the quantity of which is to be proportioned according as you will have your Meath, strong or weak. But this you do before it begin to boil. There are some that put either Yeast of Beer, or Leaven of bread into it, to make it work. But this is not necessary at all; and much less to set it into the Sun. Mr. Masillon doth neither the one nor the other. Afterwards for to Tun it, you must let it grow Luke-warm, for to advance it. And if you do intend to keep your Meathe a long time, you may put into it some hopps on this fashion. Take to every Barrel of Meathe a Pound of Hops without leaves, that is, of Ordinary Hops used for Beer, but well cleansed, taking only the Flowers, without the Green-leaves and stalks. Boil this pound of Hops in a Pot and half of fair water, till it come to one Pot, and this quantity is sufficient for a Barrel of Meathe. A Barrel at Liege holdeth ninety Pots, and a Pot is as much as a Wine quart in England. (I have since been informed from Liege, that a Pot of that Countrey holdeth 48 Ounces of Apothecary's measure; which I judge to be a Pottle according to London measure, or two Wine-quarts.) When you Tun your Meath, you must not fill your Barrel by half a foot, that so it may have room to work. Then let it stand six weeks slightly stopped; which being expired, if the Meath do not work, stop it up very close. Yet must you not fill up the Barrel to the very brim. After six Months you draw off the clear into another Barrel, or strong Bottles, leaving the dregs, and filling up your new Barrel, or Bottels, and stopping it or them very close.

The Meath that is made this way, ( Viz. In the Spring, in the Month of April or May, which is the proper time for making of it,) will keep many a year.


WHITE METHEGLIN OF MY LADY HUNGERFORD: WHICH IS