Food History

Whenever I take a book from one of the cookbook shelves, three of the wrong cookbooks fall on top of it and none of the four is the one I’m after. So no Anne tonight. My books aren’t that disorderly, but I fear my brain is.

There are two good solutions to a disorderly brain: chocolate and good drink. Tonight’s solution is of the alcoholic variety. It’s a 14th-15th century rhyme. I will be having a small glass of liqueur tokay while I sing it, because I don’t have any good ale on hand. I have white bread, but no brown. I have beef but it’s frozen so not much use to me. I never have bacon and seldom have mutton and never, ever eat tripe (there’s some religious reason behind not eating tripe). And this post is rapidly becoming obscure. You need the song, not my personal dietary preferences.

The song’s chorus goes:
Bryng us in good ale, and bryng us in good ale;
fore owr blyssyd lady sak, bryng us in good ale.

The verses tell us all the things we should not bring to eat and sometimes gives reasons why. Brown bread is ‘mad of brane’ (which is much less interesting translated than it is misread into modern English) and white bread is possibly a tad boring. Beef has bones whereas ale goes down at once. bacon is fat and mutton is lean and tripe is ’syldom clene’. Eggs have shells, which are a nuisance, as are the many hairs in butter. Pig’s flesh turns people into ‘borys’ and puddings have ‘gotes blod’ and venison isn’t that good either. Capon and duck are likewise intolerable.

There rests only ale. Or a rather nice Rutherglen liqueur tokay. Then I’ll go put away all those books and tomorrow I will remember that I was looking on the wrong shelf entirely and you will get that post on Anne.

Note: the song comes from one of my currently-favourite anthologies “Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries” ed RH Robbins. There is more food in there, just waiting for a suitable occcasion. Maybe next time it won’t be my sad lack of hand-eye co-ordination that will cause the occasion.