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In his treatise on Kitchen Utensils, Neckam commences with naming a table, on which the cook may cut up green stuff of various sorts, as onions, peas, beans, lentils, and pulse; and he proceeds to enumerate the tools and implements which are required to carry on the work: pots, tripods for the kettle, trenchers, pestles, mortars, hatchets, hooks, saucepans, cauldrons, pails, gridirons, knives, and so on.
But it is needless to say that Neckam merely dealt with a theme, which had been familiar many centuries before his time, and compiled his treatise, "De Utensilibus," as Bishop Alfric had his earlier "Colloquy," with an educational, not a culinary, object, and with a view to facilitate the knowledge of Latin among his scholars. It is rather interesting to know that he was a native of St.
Be this as it will, it appears that Gervais of Tilbury, chancellor to Otho the Fourth, emperor of Germany, Helinandus, a Cisterian monk, and Alexander Neckam, all of whom lived about this time, first recorded these particulars in their works.
Coal is not mentioned in King Alfred's Bede, in Neckam, in Glanville or in Robert of Gloucester, though the two latter writers speak of the allied mineral, jet, and are very full in their enumeration of the mineral productions of the island.
Neckam gives very minute directions for the preparation of pork for the table. He appears to have considered that broiling on the grill was the best way; the gridiron had supplanted the hot stones or bricks in more fashionable households, and he recommends a brisk fire, perhaps with an eye to the skilful development of the crackling.
The first attempt to illustrate this branch of the art must have been made by Alexander Neckam in the twelfth century; at least I am not aware of any older treatise in which the furniture and apparatus of a kitchen are set forth.
B and p were often confused, as in babtizare, plasphemus; and p made its way into such words as ampnis, dampnum, alumpnus. A triumph of absurd variation is achieved by Alexander Neckam, who begins a sentence 'Coquinarii quocunt'. With the increased learning of the Renaissance these varieties gradually disappear.
We keep the phrase pot luck; but, for most of those who use it, it has parted with all its meaning. This said production of Neckam of St. Albans purports to be a guide to young housekeepers.
He died without the happiness of bringing his archi-episcopal nostrils in contact with the sage and onions of wiser generations, and thinks that a little salt is enough. But, as we have before explained, Neckam prescribed for great folks. These refinements were unknown beyond the precincts of the palace and the castle.
The Arabs, who voyaged to Ceylon and Java, appear to have learnt its use from the Chinese, and it is probably from them that the mariners of Barcelona first introduced its use into Europe. The first mention of it is given in a treatise on Natural History by Alexander Neckam, foster-brother of Richard, Coeur de Lion.
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