The butler is nlso to have an ivory planer wherewith
to smooth the top of the salt. He must
have for his wine-pipes two augurs, a gimlet,
and a tap of boxwood; and he is told how to
tap the wine, so that the lees do not rise. He
is to serve fruits according to their season—
plums, damsons, cherries, and grapes to be
eaten fasting before dinner; but after dinner
pears, nuts, strawberries, currants, pippins,
caraway comfits, hard cheese, and preserves.
After supper, roasted apples, pears, and blanch
powder, which is a powder of sugar and spice;
nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger—these are good for
the stomach. Cream in the evening, and
strawberries and whortleberries, and cold junket
(which is a spoonmeat of cream, rosewater, and
sugar) are hurtful, unless one take after them
hard cheese, wafers, and hypocras. For the
making of hypocras, a compound of sundry
spices with red wine and sugar-candy, which
should always be served with wafers, John
Russell gives a long and particular receipt in
verse. Beware, he says, of salads and green-meats.
It is proper to eat almonds and hard
cheese; but not more than half an ounce of it,
after food that sets the teeth on edge; and a
raw apple is the cure for the "fumosity"
produced by divers drinks. The butler should
look at his wines every night with a candle to
see that they are not fermenting or leaking, and
should wash the heads of the pipes every night
with cold water.

There were as many wines drunk in the days
of Agincourt as now, and the strongest were in
most repute; the best being called in the old
time Theologicum, because, when really good
wine was desired, the monks were the men most
likely to have it, and of them it was obtained.
The theologic wine might be of any of the sorts
then in repute: Vernage, a bright red wine,
sweetish and rough, from Tuscany; Romney,
which Russell calls Rompney, of Modene, so
that it may have been grown near the Romagna,
and not have been the Greek wine of Romania;
Greek Malvoisie, or Malmsey, named from a
town in the Bay of Epidaurus, and much grown
in Candia; Claret, a white or red wine mixed
with honey and spiced, somewhat in the manner
of the hypocras; French Muscadels, or
Bastards, made of wine blended with honey; Osay,
of Portugal, if not of Alsace. There were these
and many more, but the decided tendency to
the blending of wines with sugar and spice
perhaps indicates that they were not very well
made, or in themselves too palatable. The
butler was not to serve his ale till it was five
days old, and not to give flat ale to any one: "it
might bring many a man in disease during many
a year." The ale of olden time was made
with malt and water; beer being made with
malt and hop and water, which little concoction
John Taylor, the water poet, described as the
natural drink of a Dutchman and the cause
of his being fat, but used in England to the
detriment of Englishmen, while by the use of
ale they were made strong. In some parts of
the west of England the old distinction is
retained: the costlier brew of malt and hop goes
by the name of beer, and ale is the name of
a cheaper drink which has no hops in it.
Steward John Russell now proceeds in detail
to tell his pupil how to lay a cloth and wait at
table, during which service he is not to claw
at his back as if pricked by a flea, to blink
with his eyes, pick his nose, and "lick not with
thy tongue in a dish, a mote to have out."

The idle young man in the wood now asks
the learned steward for some instruction in
carving, and he gets it, after preliminary
warning that everything indigestible is signified
by the letters, F. R. S., which mean fat and
fried, raw and rancid, salt and sour. Slices of
venison should be served in furmity soup;
from partridges carve the wing, and mince it
small in syrup; capons and fat hens should
have ale or wine poured over them, and the
wing, before it is served, be minced into a
sauce with hot spices. Of small birds, as
quails, larks, or thrushes, serve the legs to
your lord first, and afterwards the wings, if he
desire them. Of fawn, serve first the kidney,
then a rib; of pig, the shoulder first, and then
a rib. Whatever meat is served should be
cut into four strips, that your master may,
without trouble, take each piece between his
two fingers, and dip it in the sauce. Of the
wings of large birds, serve in the sauce only
three pieces at a time. Open meat pies at the
top, above the rim of the crust; take teal or
chicken out of their pie, mince them, and stir
in gravy, that your lord may eat them with a
spoon. John Russell sets his face against fried
meat and new-fashioned confections, as bad for
digestion; but he approves of apple fritters
when hot, and does not object to the occasional
dearness of cow-heel and calf's-foot used in
jellies. In the way of sauces, he applauds
mustard for brawn beef or salt mutton,
verjuice (or juice of unripe grapes) for boiled
capon, veal, chicken, or bacon; a sauce called
chaudern (made of chopped liver and entrails
boiled with blood, bread, wine, pepper, vinegar,
cloves, and ginger) was to be eaten with
cygnet and swan; garlic, vinegar, or pepper
with roast beef or goose; ginger sauce with
lamb, kid, pig, or fawn; but with pheasant,
partridge, or coney they eat mustard and sugar;
sugar and salt, with river water, is eaten with
curlew; camelin, a sauce of currants, nuts,
bread-crusts, cloves, ginger, and cinnamon,
powdered and mixed with vinegar, is the sauce
for egret, crane, and plover, bustard and shoveler,
which is a sort of sea-gull. Salt and
cinnamon are to be eaten with venison, and also
with sparrows, woodcocks, martins, larks,
thrushes, lapwings, quails, and snipes. Eat
beavers' tails with pease porridge or furmity;
dried herring, dressed with white sugar, is to
be eaten with mustard; white herring, fresh,
with salt and wine; salt salmon and conger are
to be eaten with mustard; but serve sweet
butter with salt fish, stock fish, or mackerel.
Sauce plaice with wine or ale, and put vinegar
and spice to roasted eels or lampreys. Shrimps
to be picked from their scales, laid round a
saucer, and so served with vinegar.