silver spoons, the ewers and alms mugs and sweetmeat dishes, and to usher the guests to their places; a head waiter and two servitors for each table, a flower girl to make chaplets of flowers for the guests, women to see to the linen and deck the bridal bed,[22] and a washerwoman.  The floors were strewn with violets and green herbs and the rooms decked with branches of May (all bought in the market in early morning), and there was a good stock of torches and candles, small candles to stand on the supper tables, and great torches to be set in sconces on the walls, or to be carried in procession by the guests, for the supper ended with ‘dancing, singing, wine and spices and lighted torches’.  On this occasion eight francs were given to the minstrels, over and above the spoons and other presents made to them during the meal, and there were also acrobats and mimes to amuse the guests.  If they had to prepare a great feast Master John and his little mistress could not go far wrong after this, or fail to please the genial epicure who set it down for them.  The Menagier copied many of his recipes from other cookery books, but he must have got the details of this entertainment from Master Elias himself, and one can see their grey heads wagging with enjoyment, as one talked and the other wrote.

The cookery book ends with a section containing recipes for making what the Menagier calls ‘small things which are not necessities’.  There are various sorts of jams, mostly made with honey; in the Middle Ages vegetables were evidently much prepared in this way, for the Menagier speaks of turnip, carrot, and pumpkin jam.  There is a delicious syrup of mixed spices (at least the palate of faith must believe it to have been delicious) and a powder of ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and sugar, to be sifted over food, as sugar is sifted today; there is a recipe for hippocras, and for ‘gauffres’ or wafers, and for candied oranges.  There are various sage pieces of advice as to the seasons for certain foods and the best ways of cooking and serving them.  Most amusing of all these are a number of recipes not of a culinary nature—­to wit, for making glue and marking ink, for bringing up small birds in aviaries and cages, preparing sand for hour-glasses, making rose-water, drying roses to lay among dresses (as we lay lavender today), for curing tooth-ache, and for curing the bite of a mad dog.  The latter is a charm, of the same type as the Menagier’s horse charms:  ’Take a crust of bread and write what follows:  Bestera bestie nay brigonay dictera sagragan es domina siat siat siat.’  Let us remember, however, that the nation which produced it, some four centuries later, produced Pasteur.

[Illustration:  V. THE MENAGIER’S WIFE HAS A GARDEN PARTY]