How to serve at table

Walter de Henley
The boke of husbandrye
[London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1508?]

The Book of husbandry and the Boke of kervynge were two practical guides for everyday life–one on how to farm, and the other on how to serve at table– and are unique surviving copies printed by William Caxton’s collaborator and successor Wynkyn de Worde. Young noblemen frequently spent time in service in court, to learn the comportment of polite society, and the Boke of kervynge was a textbook on this subject. Moore’s copy bears the annotation of one Edward Powell, perhaps the same (young?) reader who also doodled a pair of cats on the final leaf.

This volume has been digitised in full: to view this, click ‘Open Digital Library’.

Sel.5.19 (Royal Library)

The Boke of kervynge is an extremely practical guidebook, giving detailed instructions on how to serve at the table of a noble household. This includes very specific details on carving and saucing various meats, with individual terms for each type of animal and bird, such as ‘dysmembre that heron, displaye that crane, disfygure that pecocke’, giving an impression of the great variety of birds which were eaten in medieval and early modern England. The instructions also emphasised the hierarchy at table: ‘Venyson with fourmenty [frumenty, wheat boiled in milk] is good for your soverayne, touche not the venyson with your honde but with your knyfe cut it’.

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