almonds, and of olive oil.
When Du Gueselin went out to fight the English knight William of
Blancbourg in single combat, he first ate three sorts of soup made with
wine, "in honour of the three persons in the Holy Trinity."

[Illustration: Fig. 113.--Interior of a Kitchen of the Sixteenth
Century.--Fac-simile from a Woodcut in the "Calendarium Romanum" of Jean
Staeffler, folio, Tubingen, 1518.]

We find in the "Menagier," amongst a long list of the common soups the
receipts for which are given, soup made of "dried peas and the water in
which bacon has been boiled," and, in Lent, "salted-whale water;"
watercress soup, cabbage soup, cheese soup, and _gramose_ soup, which was
prepared by adding stewed meat to the water in which meat had already been
boiled, and adding beaten eggs and verjuice; and, lastly, the _souppe
despourvue_, which was rapidly made at the hotels, for unexpected
travellers, and was a sort of soup made from the odds and ends of the
larder. In those days there is no doubt but that hot soup formed an
indispensable part of the daily meals, and that each person took it at
least twice a day, according to the old proverb:--

"Soupe la soir, soupe le matin,
C'est l'ordinaire du bon chretien."

("Soup in the evening, and soup in the morning,
Is the everyday food of a good Christian.")

The cooking apparatus of that period consisted of a whole glittering array
of cauldrons, saucepans, kettles, and vessels of red and yellow copper,
which hardly sufficed for all the rich soups for which France was so
famous. Thence the old proverb, "En France sont les grands soupiers."

But besides these soups, which were in fact looked upon as "common, and
without spice," a number of dishes were served under the generic name of
soup, which constituted the principal luxuries at the great tables in the
fourteenth century, but which do not altogether bear out the names under
which we find them. For instance, there was haricot mutton, a sort of
stew; thin chicken broth; veal broth with herbs; soup made of veal, roe,
stag, wild boar, pork, hare and rabbit soup flavoured with green peas, &c.

The greater number of these soups were very rich, very expensive, several
being served at the same time; and in order to please the eye as well as
the taste they were generally made of various colours, sweetened with
sugar, and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and aromatic herbs, such as
marjoram, sage, thyme, sweet basil, savoury,