LADE, LADY: a noun and verb. The verb lade, in Receipt 172 written ‘ladying’, means to draw water or to empty by ‘lading’, with a lade or ladle (OED). OED cites more uses relating to brewing than anything else, although one eighteenth-century book on dairying uses it in the same manner as Evelyn. (John Evelyn, Cook, C17)
LADY-DAY. Now only 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation (and also, until 175t, the first day of the Civil or Legal Year in England). Formerly also 8 December, the Conception of the Virgin; 8 September, the Nativity; and 15 August, the Assumption.(Glasse, 1747)
LADY DAYS IN HARVEST: feasts of the Virgin, 8 September (Nativity) and probably, though not certainly, 15 August. (Sir Kenelm Digby, 1669)
LAMB. Hannah Glasse refers to both house lamb and grass lamb, 160. House lambs were produced all the year round, being intensively reared under cover and sold at 8 to 10 weeks old. Grass lambs, however, being reared out of doors, were seasonal. It seems that, for the production of these, ‘Dorset ewes’ were favoured. They would be bought in October and bear their lambs about Christmas. The lambs, after being fed on turnips in the spring, would be sold in April and May (at 20s a head, according to one 18th century source).(Glasse, 1747)
LAMBSTONES: lambs’ testicles. (John Evelyn, Cook, C17)
LAMBSTONES. Lamb’s testicles.(Glasse, 1747)
LAMPRY, 347. Now spelled lamprey, an eel-like fish taken in rivers, notably the Severn. (Robert May, 1660/1685)
LANG DE BEEF, 95, 452: ox (beef) tongue (French langue de boeuf). (Robert May, 1660/1685)
LARD, 167, also LARDONS: strips of fat or lard which were threaded into pieces of meat etc to keep them from drying out when spit-roasted. The threading was done with a kind of needle, the ‘larding prick’. Even something as small as an oyster would be larded (390-1). (Robert May, 1660/1685)
LARDEVIS: strips of bacon or salt pork used for larding. (Sir Kenelm Digby, 1669)
LATIN BOX: a metal biscuit box. Latin here is latten, an alloy of copper and tin. (Robert May, 1660/1685)
LATON, latton, latten: a utensil made of thin brass, or mixed metal. (Sir Kenelm Digby, 1669)
LAUREL LEAVES. It is notorious that even in modern cookery books the French word laurier, which means bay (leaf) is sometimes mistranslated as laurel (leaf); and that laurel leaves are toxic, with a bitter almond flavour. Hannah Glasse uses laurel leaves four times, for: Ratafia Pudding, 111; Ratafia Cream, 144; a Fine, Plain, Baked Pudding, 109; and a Fine Plain Pudding, 111. Of these recipes, the first comes from either Eliza Smith (1742) or The Whole Duty of a Woman (1737), the second and third from Eliza Smith, and the fourth from The Whole Duty. In the first two recipes a bitter almond (ratafia) flavour is clearly desired. The laurel leaves are used to provide this, and then discarded. In the third and fourth recipes, where it is not obvious that a ratafia flavour is desired, she starts by putting six laurel leaves into a quart of milk. In the fourth, but not in the third, she takes them out again almost at once. The explanation of this discrepancy is that the instructions which she copied from The Whole Duty are more explicit than those she copied from Eliza Smith. Although it is hard to be sure that Hannah Glasse gave any thought to recipes which she simply transcribed verbatim, it seems reasonable to suppose that she did mean laurel leaves in all these instances, and that she should have advised removing them in all four. In savoury dishes she calls for bay leaves.(Glasse, 1747)
LAWN-BAG: bag made of linen. (Sir Kenelm Digby, 1669)
LAWN SIEVE, 77. A very fine sieve, made of lawn, a kind of fine linen.(Glasse, 1747)
LAWNE SIEVE, SIV: a sieve with lawn or fine linen as the mesh. (John Evelyn, Cook, C17)
LEACH, 194, 209: as a verb, to cut in slices, e g ‘leach your brawn’. The word was also a noun, referring to a wide variety of dishes consisting of sliced up material, from almond jelly to gingerbread. (Robert May, 1660/1685)
LEACH: usually called leach of cream in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A leach was a set hard enough to be sliced, the word leach itself originally meaning slice. White leaches were usually made with almonds, but there were some recipes, as Receipt 215, that omitted this ingredient. See Hess for some useful observations. (John Evelyn, Cook, C17)
LEAF is the layer of fat round the kidneys of a pig, but was then generalized to describe the internal fat of any animal. (William Ellis, 1750)
LEAR, 235, and LEIR, 73. This word shares the same derivation as the French ‘lier’, to bind, and refers to a thickened sauce. (Robert May, 1660/1685)
LEATHER, used for covering pickles, 132. This was a common practice, since leather gave better protection than the piece of bladder often used under it (see under BLADDER).(Glasse, 1747)
LEE. Boiling lee is used in the receipt for getting rid of Buggs, 166. It seems more likely that this was lye rather than lees (of wine or vinegar).(Glasse, 1747)
LEMBICK, alembic, an apparatus used in distilling.(Glasse, 1747)
LEMONS, MARMALADE OF: A preserve midway between a jelly and a paste, not marmalade as we know it. See L 38. (John Nott, 1726)
LENITIVE means laxative. A lenitive electuary is a thick syrup that will ease the motions. (William Ellis, 1750)
LETTICES. Lettuces. Hannah Glasse uses in her recipes, or lists (164-5) the following varieties: Cabbage, Cos, Dutch Brown, Imperial, Romaine, Royal and Silesia. Cabbage, the common, round, hearted lettuce, is the one which she uses most often. The long-leaved Cos lettuce, of which Silesia and Romaine (or Roman, as other writers had it) were varieties, was also popular from the 17th century onwards, and had been known even earlier. Its name is said by most writers (and by the OED) to come from the Greek island of Kos, but no one has explained satisfactorily why that island should have been the eponymous producer. Bradley (1728), in the course of giving a longer list of lettuces than Hannah Glasse’s, observes that: ‘we have several Sorts of Lettuce, which are brought from Turkey, which the Gardeners call Chos Lettuce, but should rather be call’d Chos only, because . . . Chos is the Turkish and Arabian name for Lettuce; …’ Bradley, incidentally, counts the Roman as a cabbage lettuce; and also so lists Imperial and Royal, along with Tennis-Ball. Adam’s Luxury and Eve’s Cookery (1744) has a business-like section on lettuce-growing, which names all Hannah Glasse’s varieties except Imperial and Royal, and adds Green Capuchin.(Glasse, 1747)
LEVERIDGE PUDDING, 184. Lever is an archaic spelling of liver, a principal ingredient of the pie, and this is probably the explanation of the name. (Robert May, 1660/1685)
LEVIGATE, TO, means to pound in a mortar to a fine powder. (William Ellis, 1750)
LICQUORAS, 275: liquorice, an extract from the root of the plant Glycyrrhiza glabra. Introduced to England in medieval times for medicinal purposes, it came to have culinary uses. (Robert May, 1660/1685)
LIÉ: thickened (French). (Sir Kenelm Digby, 1669)
LIGNUM-CASSIAE, cassia: a coarser form of cinnamon, made from thicker pieces of the bark of Cinnamomum zeylanicum, a tropical tree. (Sir Kenelm Digby, 1669)
LIGHTS: lungs. (Richard Bradley, 1736)
LIGHTS, lungs.(Glasse, 1747)
LIMBECK: vessel for distillation, alembick. (Sir Kenelm Digby, 1669)
LIME, LIME JUICE: To judge from the large quantities sometimes called for, this must have been preserved lime juice imported from the West Indies and carried in ships as an antiscorbutic. See L 30. Also carrot pudding sauced with lime juice and sugar, C 65. (John Nott, 1726)
LIMES. It is interesting that Hannah Glasse says, 135: ‘you pick them off the lime-trees in summer.’ Although some tropical limes (Citrus aurantifolia) were being grown in greenhouses in the 18th century, it seems clear that she was referring to the small globe seeds of Tilia cordata, the small-leaved linden tree of Europe. These would have been pickled like ash keys.(Glasse, 1747)
LISBON SUGAR: Sugar imported in loaves via Portugal. Initially from the Azores, later from Brazil. (John Nott, 1726)
LISBON WINE: ‘Red and white wines of the valley of the Tagus, down to the Atlantic from Lisbon were fortified and shipped to England in large quantities during the eighteenth century’. (A. L. Simon). (John Nott, 1726)
LITH: smooth, thick. (Sir Kenelm Digby, 1669)
LIVERWORT, LIVERWORTH (ash-coloured, ground, 166, also 159). This is the plant Peltigera canina, English liverwort or Dog lichen, which grows in moist shady places and is used for liver complaints and, in some European countries, as a red dye.(Glasse, 1747)
LIVERWORT can refer to several plants, all thought beneficial to the liver. Agrimony is one, stone liverwort (Marchantia polymorpha) is another, Anemone triloba is a third, dog lichen (Peltigera canina) a fourth. Ellis does not specify. (William Ellis, 1750)
LIVER-WORTH: Agrimonia upatoria, agrimony. (Sir Kenelm Digby, 1669)
LOACH: Small silvery river fish. (John Nott, 1726)
LOAF SUGAR: Sugar was bought in tall conical loaves and pieces were cut from them with special sugar-cutting implements. Well-to-do households bought whole sugar loaves, but smaller quantities could be bought from the apothecaries (originally sugar was treated as a spice) and later from grocers. (John Nott, 1726)
LOBLOLLY is the same as burgoo (q.v.). (William Ellis, 1750)
LUCATELLUS BALSAM is the same as Locatelli’s balsam which figures in later recipe-books, for instance The New Female Instructor, c.1810. It was an emollient ointment, or could be taken internally, for wounds and sores, or against coughs. It was coloured red (often from red saunders) and its main ingredients were wax and turpentine. (William Ellis, 1750)
LUMBER PIE, 224. The name may be a corruption of Lombard. It was a savoury pie made of meat (or fish) and eggs. May’s two versions called for a filling consisting of separate little puddings or forcemeat balls, but the longer recipe given by Rabisha (1682) for ‘Lumbard pie’ did not have this requirement; the pie filling was put altogether into the ‘coffin’. (Robert May, 1660/1685)
LUMBER PYE: Lombard pie. A large covered pie filled with a variety of ingredients, often a mixture of dried fruit and fish for fasting days, meat and poultry or game for meat days. When the pie was baked the crust was removed, a thickening of egg yolk and wine or cream poured in, the crust replaced, and the pie returned to the oven until the thickening was set. A survival from medieval cookery. (John Nott, 1726)
LUMBER-PIE: according to Randle Holme, this is a dish ‘made of Flesh or Fish minced and made in Balls or Rouls, with Eggs and hard Eggs, and so Baked in a Pye with Butter’. (Richard Bradley, 1736)
LUMP, 363: the lumpfish, Cyclopterus rumpus. Sir Thomas Browne (1662, the year when May’s book was first published) recorded that it was ‘esteemed by some as a festival dish, though it affords but a glutinous jelly …’ In fact there is a great difference between the flesh of a male (which is palatable) and that of the female (which at some seasons is quite inedible). In the Scandinavian countries, where this fish is eaten, there is a different name for each. (Robert May, 1660/1685)
LUMP: ? Lump fish. This fish, Cyclopterus rumpus, in French lompe, also lievre de mer or sea hare, is the one from which the roes are taken to produce a feeble imitation of caviar
LUNG-WORT: Pulmonaria officinalis, medicinal. (Sir Kenelm Digby, 1669)
LUPINES: Bradley meant ‘the flowring Stalks of Turnips’. (Richard Bradley, 1736)
LUTE: to close with a flour-and water paste, to adhere. (Sir Kenelm Digby, 1669)
LYE: An alkaline solution used especially for washing clothes, but also used in preserving as a neutraliser of acids in fruit peels. (John Nott, 1726)
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