Q

q.s., qua: s:, q.ss.: quantum sufficit, as much as is sufficient; see also Weights and measures. (John Evelyn, Cook, C17)

QUARTERN, occurring often: a quarter in various kinds of measure. A quartern loaf was one baked from 3 1/2 lb or a quarter stone of flour. (Robert May, 1660/1685)

QUARTERN: a quarter of anything. (Richard Bradley, 1736)

QUARTERN, see BREAD.(Glasse, 1747)

QUARTERNE: a quarter of anything. Its use in Receipt 16 is ambiguous, it may mean a quarter of a pound. In Receipt 84, he talks of ‘a quarterne and a half’ of butter, which presumably means either three-quarters of a pound or six ounces. There are also instructions to take ‘half a quarter’, which must indicate two ounces. (See Weights and measures.)(John Evelyn, Cook, C17)

QUARTERS. Fourth parts of a year, especially as divided by the recognized Quarter Days. Hannah Glasse refers to Candlemas, Midsummer, Michaelmas, and Christmas. In England, Ireland and Wales the Quarter Days are: Lady Day, 25 March, Midsummer, 24 June, Michaelmas, 29 September, Christmas, 25 December. In Scotland, they are Candlemas, 2 February, Whitsunday, 15 May, Lammas, 1 August, Martinmas, 11 November. So Hannah Glasse appears to have followed Scottish practice for one Quarter and English for the rest. Perhaps she took Candlemas from her Scottish mother-in-law.(Glasse, 1747)

QUAVIVER: A kind of sea perch called sea dragon or dragonet, araneus dracaena. (John Nott, 1726)

QUEEN OF HUNGARY WATER: A toilet water believed to have multiple virtues, particularly as a hair rinse. One of its main ingredients was rosemary. Hungary water is still made. (John Nott, 1726)

QUELQUE CHOSE, 446-7: a French term, correctly spelled by May, which seems to have meant, in a culinary context, a dish of no great consequence. May leaned heavily on the French author La Varenne for his egg recipes. The term ‘quelque chose) faded from view in Britain after being turned into an English word, kickshaw, meaning (sometimes in a derogatory way) minor fancy foods, especially in the 18th century. (Robert May, 1660/1685)

QUICKSILVER is mercury. (William Ellis, 1750)

QUIDDANY: A corruption of cotognata, the clear but solid quince sweetmeat or marmalade which was originally a speciality of Genoa and which spread to France as cotignac. The word cotognata came from the Italian mela cotogna, a quince. Before the widespread cultivation of quince trees in England, cotognata was a luxury sweetmeat, imported from Italy and called variously codinniack, chardecoynes (quincemeat), quindiniack and so on. Eventually settled as quiddany, the term was applied to preserves of many other fruits such as plums, raspberries, cherries and apricots. (John Nott, 1726)

QUIL. Quill, used as a measure of thickness, 119, where the reader is told to pull a chicken into pieces ‘as thick as a quil’. Goose quills are about a quarter-inch hick.(Glasse, 1747)

QUINCE: a hard, acid, yellowish, pear-shaped fruit. Several kinds are noted in Bradley s Dictionarium Botanicum (1728): the ordinary yellow quince which looks like a cross between an apple and a pear and ‘is sour, harsh, and of an unpleasant Taste, to eat fresh, but being scalded, roasted, baked, or preserved, becometh very pleasant’; the large yellow Portugal quince which ‘is so pleasant, being fresh gather’d, that it may be eaten like an apple without offence’; the smaller Barbary quince; the Lyon’s quince; and the almost round Brunswick quince. (Richard Bradley, 1736)

QUINCE, PORTUGAL, is among the most important and most popular quince varieties, identified by John Gerard and still grown today. (William Ellis, 1750)

QUODLE: to boil (coddle). (Robert May, 1660/1685)

QUODLING, 33: codlin or coaling, an apple of distinctive character, green and tapering, which was normally boiled. (Robert May, 1660/1685)

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