Read All the King's Cooks for Free Online

and four feet of each ox, while the yeoman and groom had its belly-piece, rump, and ‘sticking-piece’ along with the head, caul, ‘gatherings’ (heart, liver and lungs) and feet of each sheep; and the clerk got the head and skin of each veal calf. 1
    On arriving at the palace kitchens, the carcases would be brought through the Back Gate to the door leading from the Pastry Yard into the boiling house (no. 26) and from there into the larder. Here ventilation was very important for keeping themeat fresh, although the throughput must have been very rapid when the court was in residence. In the Larder, the meat was inspected by James Mitchell, sergeant of the larder, and its quantity recorded by his clerk, Anthony Weldon. 2 In 1541 Weldon had been granted both the income from the town of Penlosse in northwest Wales and the passage of boats to Conway, etc. By 1543 he was clerk of the pastry, and then promoted to second clerk of the kitchen, while in 1544, when he returned to the larder, he received the lease of the manor of Swanscombe in Kent. Weldon had done well for himself. But it was not unusual for officers to substantially improve their income through service in the household. 3

    18.   The Paved Passage Now known as ‘Fish Court’, this passageway provided the main means of communication between the larders, the boiling house, the pastry, the workhouses and the main kitchens. The upper rooms were used as lodgings for the staff who worked in the rooms directly below, the larder staff sleeping over the larders to the left.
    The work cycle began here in the larder each evening, when the clerk comptroller and the clerk of the kitchen, together with the larder staff, attended ‘the coupage of the fleyshe … in the grete larder, as requiryth nyghtly to knowe the proportion of beef and moton for the expences of the next day, and see the fees thereof, to be justly smytten by the yeoman cooke’. 4 The larder officers, like the acatery officers just mentioned, took their ‘fees’ in the form of joints cut off the ends of the carcases. The sergeant had the two joints of each ox cut from just above the rump, the two top neck joints with the ‘bore of the head’, the feet, the belly piece and the hindquarters ‘to the arse bone’, while the yeomenhad the forelegs struck off at the first joint, and a piece of the first joint of the neck. 5 The yeomen also took three joints of the scragend of the necks of sheep and veal calves, along with their rumps and the lower parts of their back legs, while the grooms had the head, feet and small end of the chine, or lower back joint, of every hog. The main parts of the carcases, complete with ribs, breasts, shoulders, loins and hindquarters, would then be cut into portions, each sufficient to serve a certain number of messes ‘according to the ancient custome’ 6 Each ox, which would weigh some 500lb (227kg), was cut up into major joints that would provide the following messes:

    19.   Larder fees The ox and sheep heads, together with the tongue, as shown in this woodcut from Lobera de Avila’s Banket der Hofe und Edelleut of 1556, would all have been cut off and taken as fees by the officers of the larder, leaving only the main carcases for the kitchens.
Messes
Two livery pieces
10
Two crops [necks]
6
Two briskets [lower chest]
6
Two sirloins [small of back]
4
Two shoulders
4
Chines (lower back)
4
Fillet (undercut to sirloin)
4
38 messes
at 4 people per mess, 152 individual servings
    As for the other carcases:
Messes
Individual servings
One mutton
10
40
One veal
12
48
One pork
13
52
One stirk (a bullock or
heifer of 1–2 years)
24
96
    The meat was cut in the evening so as to be ready for cooking at any time after five the next morning, in time for the ten o’clock dinner. The poultry and rabbits that had been plucked or skinned in the scalding house in the Outer Court arrived in the larder before eight, so that the officers could distribute them to the various master cooks,