"Bishop and Abbot and Prior were there; Many a Monk and many a Friar."
INGOLDSBY LEGENDS: The Jackdaw of Rheims.
Whether cookery is indebted to the Roman Catholic Church to the full extent that is commonly supposed is questionable. It is certain, however, that the olden monks and friars performed considerable service in preserving ancient recipes and inventing new formulas, many of which have been improved upon as the science has advanced.
Previous to the Renaissance the higher cultivation of cookery was confined largely to the monasteries, which prided themselves upon their excellent cheer and the hospitality they extended to distinguished visitors. Indeed, numbers of food preparations may be traced to the monastic orders, especially forms of cooking fish, eggs, and various soups. The introduction of soup, which is mentioned for the first time in history at the beginning of the fifteenth century, is closely connected with the clergy. Then it was that, during the fêtes attendant on the marriage of Catherine de Valois to Henry V of England, the Archbishop of Sens, at the head of a procession of his priests, bore the soup and the wine to the royal chamber, accompanied by the blessing of the Papal See.
[Illustration: NON IN SOLO PANE VIVIT HOMO
Around the art of larding is likewise shed the halo of sanctity, its discovery having occurred during the Council of Bâle in 1440, when Amadeus of Savoy, elected pope under the name of Félix V, was tendered a larded capon by his cook. Julienne, or a soup somewhat similar, it is more than probable, is an old monastic dish having special reference to days when meat was proscribed, the same observation applying to numerous fish and vegetable soups and ragoûts.
There is much reason to suppose that not a few treatises on cookery and on wines have appeared whose authors were dignitaries of the church, or at least connected with clericalism, but whose rôle forbade them attaching their names to works of this nature. Thus, during the year 1671 there was published at Molsheim, in southern Germany, an excellent cook-book which treated of the various branches of the science, by Bernardin Buchinger, Abbot of Lützel, having for its title "Koch-Buch so für Geistliche als auch Weltliche Grosse und Geringe Haushaltungen," etc.,--"Cook-Book for large and small Religious as well as Laical Establishments,"--a culinary grammar of much merit which has since passed into several editions. In this work the hierophant's name was omitted, the authorship being announced as "Durch Einen Geistlichen Küchen-Meister desz Gotteshauses Lützel beschrieben und practicirt,"--"described and practised by a religious Master-Cook of the Monastery of Lützel." An important volume of three hundred pages by Vittorio Lancellotti, published in Rome, appeared in 1627, in which is presented month by month a description of a large number of feasts given by various prelates in honour of eminent personages at the commencement of the seventeenth century. The volume was dedicated to Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandino, and is addressed chiefly to the clergy, whose good taste in the matter of good cheer and luxury in entertaining are minutely set forth.[35]
