For his wife’s further guidance the Menagier sets out a careful specification of the catering arrangements for several great feasts—­to wit, a dinner given by the Abbot of Lagny to the Bishop of Paris and the members of the King’s Council, the feast, comprising dinner and supper, which one Master Elias (evidently a grave and reverend maitre d’hotel, like Master John le despensier himself) made for the wedding of Jean du Chesne, upon a Tuesday in May, and the arrangements for another wedding, “les nopces Hautecourt”, in the month of September, as to which the Menagier observes “that because they were widower and widow they were wed very early, in their black robes and then put on others”; he was anxious that his widow should do the correct thing at that second wedding of hers.  The description of the wedding feast arranged by Master Elias is particularly detailed and valuable.[21] The careful Menagier, perhaps because he foresaw some big entertainment which he must give to the burgesses and gentlemen of Paris, perhaps because of his delightful interest in all the details of material life, has set down at length not only the menu of the dinner and supper, but a long account of the ingredients needed, their quantities and prices, and the shops or markets where they must be bought, so that the reader can see with his eyes the maitre d’hotel and the cooks going round from stall to stall, visiting butcher and baker, poulterer, saucemaker, vintner, wafer maker, who sold the wafers and pastries dear to medieval ladies, and spicer whose shop was heavy with the scents of the East.

The Menagier sets down also all the esquires and varlets and waiters who will be needed to serve such a feast as this.  There was the master cook, comfortably stout and walking ‘high and disposedly’, as Queen Elizabeth danced, brain pan stuffed full of delectable recipes, hand of ravishing lightness with pastries, eye and nose skilled to say when a capon was done to a turn, warranted without a rival

To boille the chiknes with the marybones,
And poudre-marchant tart and galyngale ... 
He koude rooste and seethe and boille and frye,
Maken martreux and wel bake a pye ... 
For blankmanger, that made he with the beste.

He brought his varlets with him, and in Paris he took two francs for his hire ‘and perquisites’ (a pregnant addition).  Then there were ushers, ‘stout and strong’, to keep the doors, and a clerk to add up the account; bread-cutters and water-carriers, two squires to serve at the dresser in the kitchen where the plates and dishes were handed out, two others at the hall dresser to give out spoons and drinking cups and pour wine for the guests, and two others in the pantry to give out the wine which their varlet kept drawing for them.  There were the two maitres d’hotel to set out the silver salt-cellars for the high table, the four great gilded goblets, the four dozen hanaps, the four dozen