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57 Meat ‘n’ Grate

Writer's picture: Dave GobleDave Goble

Updated: Mar 28, 2024

Sunday, May 31st.


8,200 sheep, 2,330 deer, 1,870 pigs, 1,240 Oxen, 760 calves and 53 wild boar. That's 14,453 animals. A lot of meat. Every year. The roasting grate(s) would've been busy.


The Great Kitchen - One of the Great Fires at Hampton Court kitchens


The opening paragraph above is an example of a Tudor shopping list showing the quantities of meat procured for the Court annually during the reign of Elizabeth I.


Goodness knows by what number we're meant to multiply that for a typical year under Henry VIII's reign, but I thought I’d focus briefly on what was probably his favourite bit of Hampton Court Palace. His changing waistline suggests as much: when he came to the throne in 1509 he was just shy of 18 years of age and physically active, weighing 15 stone with a waistline of 32” and a 39” chest. When he died in 1547 he weighed 28 stone, had a waist measuring 52” and a 53” chest. It should be said, reduced mobility in his later years didn’t help, especially after a serious jousting accident aggravated leg ulcers that had plagued him. The thing is, his appetite remained undiminished, and Hampton Court, with it’s great kitchen(s), became his favourite place to spend time from among his 60-ish homes.


The King had the kitchen enlarged and improved to cater for his extravagant lifestyle and burgeoning appetite. The result was the largest kitchen "complex" of Tudor England, which effectively became a “food factory” where at peak about two hundred cooks served approximately 1,600 meals a day to the King and his 800 courtiers. The palace is now home to the largest surviving 16th Century kitchen in the world.


Each room in the kitchens had a specific function. Food would be taken from larders and prepared in separate bake-houses. Meat was roasted in front of the big fires in the Great Kitchen. Fresh water for drinking and cooking was piped into the palace from springs three miles away.


More from the kitchens


And one more


Meals were about more than eating. They were a display of a monarch’s power. Exotic foods demonstrated wealth, and seating arrangements reflected the court’s hierarchy. This all said, I reckon Henry was more interested in the eating part. His food was actually prepared in a private kitchen, under the direction of Privy Master Cook, John Bricket. Henry tended to eat in his private rooms, away from the crowds. On more formal occasions he usually sat alone at a high covered table in his Presence Chamber, under the canopy of state. He would choose from a great buffet, sampling whatever he fancied. Dishes would include game, roasted or served in pies, lamb, swan and venison. For banquets, unusual items including conger eel and porpoise might appear on the menu. Sweet dishes often accompanied savoury.


A fork was a “luxury” afforded uniquely to the King, with which he ate sweet preserves. Everyone else managed with spoons and knives. Otherwise forks were set aside to serve, cook and carve. Eating with them only become popular in Britain in, and from, the 17th Century, the utensil having taken it’s time to gain favour by way of Europe, where it arrived in the 11th Century via a couple of Byzantine princesses, one of whom married a Venetian doge, the other a Holy Roman Emperor. Both sent their new subjects (and quite possibly their husbands) into shock by bringing forks with them, and then using them to carry food to their mouths. All this when, according to one of the Venetians, “God, in his wisdom, has provided man with natural forks—his fingers”. Funny what we take for granted. A few years later the princess married to the doge died of the plague, and Saint Peter Damian announced that it was god’s punishment for her vanity.


Away from the King’s personal, private arrangements, meals were served to high ranking courtiers in the Great Watching Chamber, and lesser ranks in the Great Hall, twice a day at 10am and 4pm.


For the lowliest servants food choice was limited, but what there was, was plentiful. Food formed part of their wages for being at court. A daily menu for ‘Maides, Servants, Children of Offices, Porters and Skowerers’ lists two meals of ‘Bread, Ale, Beefe and Veale, or Mutton’


Each meal had two courses served in messes, i.e. portions that would be shared between four people. Diners used napkins to cover their laps. It was considered rude to finish everything at the table, mainly because others depended on leftovers. These were routinely distributed to the ‘deserving poor’ at the palace gates.


Table manners were highly regarded by polite society. In 1534 Dutch writer Erasmus, De Civitate published a book with a list of helpful instructions, among them this little nugget:


“Sit not down until you have washed. Don't shift your buttocks left and right as if to let off some blast. Sit neatly and still”.


With that bombshell ringing in your ears, I’ll close this post with a few photographs from outside the main gate to the palace.


Outside the gate from Hampton Court bridge (1 of 2)


2 of 2


Peeping through the gate bars


Planting in a border to the right of the palace gate, looking towards Hampton Court Bridge


Needn’t have bothered with a red arrow – just couldn’t help myself

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