Blast from the repast

Star-crossed lovers, delirious monarchs, lovelorn countesses, bumbling jesters, scheming consorts — it’s not hard to visualise the brain behind such characters, William Shakespeare, leaning over a writing desk, quill in hand, and a mug of ale (brewed with malt and water by most housewives of the time) within reach. A buttered loaf and pies — made with elderberry or blackberry (research suggests that both Shakespeare and his contemporary Christopher Marlowe loved these) — are at arm’s length from the page on which Viola or Lady Macbeth is being brought to life.

It may come as a shock that the great Elizabethan poet and playwright, who dearly loved a feast, was also a food hoarder who was threatened with imprisonment for tax evasion. Research by Jayne Archer, lecturer in medieval and renaissance literature in Wales’s Aberystwyth University, shows that for nearly 15 years Shakespeare “bought and stored grain, malt and barley for resale at inflated prices to his neighbours and local tradesmen”. Interestingly, his play Coriolanus , which shows how a famine is created by the rich and corrupt, was written at the height of the 1607 food riots in England. The Midland Revolt, led by peasants, was a cry against unfair food distribution, hoarding and widespread hunger. In Shakespeare’s hands, the rioting farmers became Roman plebeians up in arms against the autocratic Coriolanus.

Without doubt, Shakespeare’s food imagery mirrors the culinary practices and habits of the time. Barring, of course, the odd cauldron bubbling over with ‘hell broth’ made of ‘fillet of a fenny snake’, ‘eye of newt, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog, adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing’.

His plays have generous helpings of meats, pies, wines, cakes and breads. And he tells us not just what his characters ate, but also how it was made. Picking up the many enticing clues littering the works, award-winning chef Alan Deegan, in collaboration with Shakespeare scholar Alycia Smith-Howard, wrote The Food of Love: A Shakespeare Cookbook in 2012. Arranged by season, Tudor recipes are given a modern twist in the book. The list starts with Spring, where Deegan suggests a light lamb ‘hodgepodge’, or stew, and the famous crimped cod. The hearty venison pasty (from The Merry Wives of Windsor ) is the highlight of the Autumn menu.

The food that Shakespearean characters eat or refer to also reflects the changes in the British diet under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Credit for much of this change goes to overseas expeditions by the likes of Sir Walter Raleigh (known to be the Empire’s first potato planter) and Sir Francis Drake. They helped tomatoes, potatoes, turkey, chillies, quince, vanilla and sugar make their way into English kitchens and larders.

Breads and cakes

If not a writer, Shakespeare could well have been a star baker. The very first lines of Troilus and Cressida evoke the intricacies of baking a cake (‘Food, Taste and Cooking in Shakespeare’s Plays’ by Federica Scarpa, University of Trieste, 1995). Pandarus, underscoring the virtue of patience which Troilus needs to win Cressida’s affections, says: “He that will have a cake out of the wheat must needs tarry the grinding… Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting… Ay, the bolting, but you must tarry the leavening… Ay, the leavening, but here’s yet in the word ‘hereafter’ the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven and the baking; nay, you must stay the cooling too, or you may chance to burn your lips.”

In Coriolanus , he employs bread-making to illustrate the lead character’s crudeness in language: “Consider this: he has been bred i’ the wars/ Since he could draw a sword, and is ill school’d/ In bolted language; meal and bran together/ He throws without distinction.”

The “un-sieved flour” refers to the bread politics of the period where wheat bread was losing ground to white bread. The former was still eaten by the country folk while ‘white’ bakers in London were almost double in number than the ‘brown’ ones. The brown bread, made from bran and other cheap grains, was the food of the working class.

In Troilus and Cressida , Shakespeare introduces ‘biscuit’ as a sailor’s food: “Cobloaf!/ He would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a sailor breaks a biscuit.” The word ‘cobloaf’ refers to a “small loaf shaped with a round head”. The “biscuit” in question are rusks of “twice-cooked bread that were, in Italy, produced on a commercial scale” (Scarpa) for fleets and battalions. Research shows that what the Tudors called biscuits were more refined and “served as a sweetmeat for banquets”, while the sailor’s rusks were meant to last through long voyages.

Sir Toby Belch’s cakes in Twelfth Night (“Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”) are probably shortcakes spiced with ginger. A 1655 recipe indicates that these cakes were eaten at banquets. The anti-Puritan strain in Sir Toby’s words echoes the popular sentiment against the impending ban on lavish festivities and entertainment.

Pudding and pie

The Bard’s interest in pies — both in the making and eating — finds expression in Titus Andronicus , in a rather bone-chilling manner:

“Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust/ And with your blood and it I’ll make a paste/ And of the paste a coffin I will rear/ And make two pasties of your shameful heads/ And bid that strumpet, your unhallow’d dam/ Like to the earth swallow her own increase./ This is the feast that I have bid her to…/ Let me go grind their bones to powder small/ And with this hateful liquor temper it/ And in that paste let their vile heads be baked.”

Human bones, blood, severed heads are not the most desired ingredients for the perfect pie, but Titus’s words demonstrate a sound knowledge of pie-making. The word “coffin” was commonly used by Elizabethan bakers to describe the pie-crust. While Titus uses the blood of Demetrius and Chiron to moisten the paste for a pie that he served to their mother, Elizabethan cooks, as well as many others before and after them, used animal blood to add “colour” to black puddings and sauces.

The word “pudding” often stands for stuffing and guts in the Shakespearean lexicon. In Henry IV , he writes (of Falstaff): “Why dost thou converse with (…) that stuffed cloak-bag of guts/ That roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly.”

The suckling pig with “a pudding in his belly” was frequently mentioned in recipe books from 15-18th century. There is evidence that the invention of the pudding cloth — the first use was recorded in Cambridge, in 1617 — eventually snapped the ties between puddings and animal guts. Freed from the grip of animal entrails, the pudding finally became a welcome addition to the daily fare of all classes (Scarpa).

Sugar, sauces and meats

It is safe to assume that Shakespeare had, apart from a soft spot for carbs, a sweet tooth. Sugar was also used in seasoning meat and fish dishes in wealthy Elizabethan households back then. It relegated the cheaper honey to kitchens of the poor. This change in the sweetener hierarchy finds voice in As You Like It : “…for honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar”. In this image, Shakespeare makes honey only a sauce drizzled occasionally on sugar.

The practice of caramelising and candying fruits — both techniques that require sugar and honey — finds a mention in Hamlet , where the tongue of the flatterer is described as “candied”. When Henry, Prince of Wales, addresses Falstaff as “O! My sweet beef…” he brings to mind the sweetened pies of meat and dried fruit that remained an English favourite till the Georgian period (1714-1830) (Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to Recent Times, CA Wilson, 1973).

The Clown’s shopping list in The Winter’s Tale tells us the day’s common kitchen ingredients. Of course it has sugar, along with the dried fruits and spices: “What am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pounds of sugar, five pound of currants, rice…/ I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates… nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg;/ Four pound of prunes, and as many raisins o’ th’ sun.”

Other than adding to the taste of meat-based dishes, spices and pungent sauces were also used to mask the odours of “tainted meat”. The practice, quite understandably, was common in kitchens of England’s poor, who, unlike the rich, could ill afford fresh meat through much of the year.

There is a reflection of this in Bassanio’s words ( The Merchant of Venice ): “The world is still deceiv’d with ornament/ In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt/ But, being season’d with gracious voice/ Obscures the show of evil?”

We’ll never know what the spread at Macbeth’s banquet was like. Banquo — rather, his ghost — stole the thunder that could have belonged to Lady Macbeth’s chef. But we know the duo loved their meats with sauce. In an effort to embolden her husband’s spirit, Lady Macbeth says, “… the sauce to meat is ceremony/ Meeting were bare without it.” Macbeth, a tad unsure of their murderous plot, says that he is plagued with “saucy doubts and fears”.

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