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. Ou 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.
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