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Page 3
hammer-beam roofed Great Hall, and vast kitchens to cope with his feasting requirements.
Wolsey's Hampton Court household had amounted to 1,000 persons in support of his lavish lifestyle and royal entertaining. Not to be outdone by his former advisor, Henry VIII enlarged Wolsey's kitchen plan to 50 rooms; a vast 36,000 square feet of food-preparation capacity. We already have a clear picture of the Royal appetite from the Eltham Statutes, a series of ordinances drawn up in 1526 by Cardinal Wolsey, the king's Chancellor, for the better running of the King's household. As a preamble the Statutes laid down a ruling that master cooks be paid to clothe the scullions. They had hitherto run about naked, (and slept), in the appalling heat of the open fire kitchens, or wore particularly vile and soiled garments. We see from the Eltham ordinances that two courses should be served at the table of 'the King's Majesty and the Queen's Grace' for dinner. For a first remove, the kitchens served up 15 dishes from a choice of bread and soup, beef, venison, red deer, mutton, swan (alternating with goose or stork), capon, coney and carp. The remove was completed with a 'custard' or fritters. This was followed by the second remove of nine dishes. These were composed of jelly, spiced wine and almond cream, followed by a selection from practically every bird in the sky - pheasants, herons, bitterns, shovelards, partridges, quails, cocks, plovers, gulls, pigeons, larks, pullets, and chickens. These joined lamb, kid, or rabbit, venison, and tarts on the royal table. Supper was a variation on dinner, with the addition of a blancmange pudding, butter, eggs and perhaps quinces or pippins. During Lent, on Fridays and on meatless days, a lighter fare was set before the King(!) His first course of a meagre 15 dishes was taken from bread and soup, ling, eels or lampreys, pike, salmon, (which ran up the still unpolluted Thames in Tudor times), whiting, haddock, mullet or bass, sea-bream or sole, conger, carp, trout, crabs, lobster, porpoise or seal (counted as fish in those days), custard, tart, fritters and fruit. The second course comprised nine dishes from a menu of another soup, sturgeon, bream, tench, perch, eels, lampreys, salmon roes, crayfish, shrimps, tart, fritters, fruit, baked pippins, oranges, butter and eggs. Saltwater fish was brought upriver to the palace in barrels packed with seaweed.
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