What's Cooking?
John Trigg, steward to Alice Brownlow for over a decade in the early 18th century kept details of all payments in his records. He held the cash in money bags and would pay sums out even to Alice herself, for personal use. Much of the expenditure relates to food cooked in the Old Kitchen, now the Billiard Room. This double height area encompassed the present day dining room with a larder where the breakfast room lies. Beneath the latter the scullery remains in the basement.
This section summarises food cooked in the first 20 years of the 18th century not only at Belton, but also at Holland House where Alice rented an apartment for family visits to London. It explores what vegetables, fruit, bread, fish , fowl, red meat, and dairy were digested by sampling different years.
Subsequent pages will look at non-food items. Money quoted is adjusted using the Bank of England historical inflation calculator.
Banner image, Belton painted between 1710 and 1720.
An upper ground floor plan drawn after James Wyatt's alterations for 1st Baron Brownlow in the 1770s shows a kitchen where the dining room now is and a larder in the breakfast room area (NT 434362). A similar plan exists before Wyatt's changes and is labelled Sir John Brownlow, i.e. Viscount Tyrconnel (NT 434364). Apart from dissipating the heat, double height kitchens allowed meat to be hung, such as bacon. Grantham House still has its bacon loft above the site of the original kitchen. Turkeys were bled slowly to death suspended upside down. The same applied to calves to become white-fleshed, veal (Davis 2007, page 57).
An example of Trigg's accounts, this page, 57, covers the week of Alicia Brownlow's wedding (© Lincolnshire County Council).
Other transcriptions used in this analysis are January 1701 to December 1702 and July 1710 to October 1711 (Julian). How to analyse this mass of data? We can use text analysis software to boil the entries down, like the bubble diagrams below with the 75 most used words. Bubbles sized according to frequency.
Belton House accounts 19th March to 23rd July 1703
At Belton, a regular kill took place of sheep, bullocks, calves & pigs for red meat. Measurement terms are frequent like strike used for weekly wheat made into bread using liquid [Y]East. Large quantities of butter, eggs, chickens were consumed. But also sea food, like salmon, shrimps, cockles and oysters. Fowle has ducks, pigeons and geese.
The female orientation of the household is reflected in my lady, madam, Jane [Brownlow], ladys - the Brownlow sisters. Jane and Alice were frequent letter writers and in receipt of the same. The horse refers to the near weekly delivery of items from Grantham. Only pares and lemons feature as fruit in this sample. Conspicuous is the little amount of alcoholic beverage consumed compared to Alice's nephew, the later Viscount Tyrconnel.
Holland House, London accounts 17th September to 14th January 1703
In London, the most prominent difference is bill. A lot more items are bought in, especially bread from Mr & Mrs Way. Conduit and water refer to the lack of running water. This was brought in in turns. A tun is a large cask used for wine and equals ~252 gallons. This water may have come from either the conduit at Kensington Palace or that at Bayswater, less than 3 miles distant. They provided fresh spring water.
Trigg used flower to refer to flour, flowers and floor. Ann Gunn is the washer woman using the sope. James Illingworth supplied meat. Lemons feature yet again, to prevent scurvy, known about since C17. A luxury item in London at £2 each, but shipped to Belton they cost £6 each. Pippin apples, pares and quinces are consumed. Coffee berrys, but not tea, feature at a cost of £35 for a weight that would cost you £3 in Morrisons.
A C18 kitchen from The Housekeeper's Instructor.
Belton's Kitchen inventory 1688 is similar, one verie large fire Grate, one paire of greate Racks, two fenders, two Endirons [andirons, racket support on which logs are laid for burning in an open fireplace], with Gallow baulk & hooks [an iron bar in the fire place with hooks to hang pots from] one large Jacke, two chains, two beefe forks [ meat is visible on a spit in front of the fire, as is a mechanical roasting jack - the cook would wind the chain up and leave the pulleys and weights to turn the spit in the hearth for around half an hour]
The Conduit at Bayswater.
More on a London stay and expenditure of food is detailed in London 1702 and the food cooked at Belton and consumed at Weddings.
The top 29 Belton kitchen orders for 1701 to 1702 (Julian calendar) are displayed by frequency rather than quantity. Red - red meat, yellow - fowl and eggs, grey - sea or river food, green fruit and vegetable, blue miscellaneous. Important to remember that this was catering for the servant establishment as well as Alice and her 4 daughters living at home at that time.
What is not clear is whether the detailed quantities and prices recorded for Belton were all bought in, or prices recorded for internal accounting and sale of the surplus beyond the household consumption.
Vegetables
The Brownlows didn't just eat turnips! The Kitchen Garden would supply vegetables at Belton, not recorded here. However, the bills from their London sojourns provides information about vegetable & herb consumption,
Asparagus, spinach, sprouts, cucumbers, horseradish, onions, cauliflower, artichokes, carrots, peas, capers, samphire, mustard, mint, turmeric, fenugreek, tamarinds, rosemary and sorrel. Potatoes never appear.
Fruit
As with the vegetables we cannot be certain how much was home grown and so don't appear in the Mansion kitchen accounts. The only consistent purchases over two sets of dates 10 years apart are apples and lemons, see the two charts below that show the occurrence(s) of that purchase in a month, not the amounts.
Apples
Where stated a median of 7.5 pecks of apples were bought (n= 18, 2 to 20). One peck equates to ~35 apples. Hence, buying a median of 263 apples at a time implies that they were for servant, as well as family, consumption. Pippin and Kentish pippin are the named apples. It is surprising that Belton wasn't supplying its own apples, even in London. The London records have oranges and lemons being sent to Belton, and hampers arriving via carriers at Holland House possibly from Belton.
Lemons
A median of 12 lemons were acquired in months with lemon purchases (n= 25 from 2 to 68). Robert May's 1665 The Accomplisht Cook, Or The Art and Mystery of Cookery has 100 lemon references. Written in 1747, Hannah Glasse's (1708–1770) The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy has 276 recipes using lemon peel and/or juice.
Credibly, lemons were reserved for family consumption, Trigg paid around £3 in 1701 and £4 in 1711 for each fruit (present day price 30p). Oranges only arise infrequently. Hannah Wooley (1670) provides recipes for preserving soft fruit.
In 1709, a new Act superseded the Assize of 1266. Magistrates were empowered to control the type, weight and price of loaves for sale. Only white, wheaten (wholemeal) and ‘household’ bread were permitted (‘household’ bread was made from low grade flour).
Bread
Belton Maintenance Team, 1853: Cleared old oven and built new oven & flue complete to Bake house.
Where the bake house was is unknown.
Bread was a major element in the British diet. In the course of a year, about one fifth of the food budget was spent on it (King 1695). There are few figures on how much was consumed per day. Boulton (2000) quotes London paupers on 1 lb. Toutain (1995) reports the French consuming 1.5 lb, giving 1,900 calories. Malthus (1808) has a labourer on 2 quartern loaves a week, say a quarter a day (see below). The National Magazine (1860) has bakers themselves on an allowance of half a quartern a day.
Yeast
The purchase of liquid East was variable, on average 1 in 2 weeks, but ~2 gallons would match the amount needed for 9 strikes based on Cobbett's recipe. In weeks when not bought, it must have been Ale-yeast from Belton's brewery. On occasion yeast was ordered for the brewhouse, e.g. 1.5 gallons in June 1703.
How many loaves per week?
The commonest weekly order of wheat to be milled was 9 strike (n= 79, 6 to 18), a measure of capacity (one strike equivalent to 2 bushels or 8 pecks). How this was processed to bread is confusing because of the use of capacities of wheat, but weight of loaves. One could achieve an 80% extraction of flour when milling the wheat.
A quartern is one quarter of a peck or a pound. A quartern loaf was a large loaf cut into 4 for sale and around from the late C17. A quartern was defined in British 18th century bread laws as one fourth of a 14 pound peck. Rubel (2021) has the quartern loaf started with a quartern of grain, 3.5 pounds (1590g). The 80% extraction of flour from wheat reduced this to 2.8 pounds (1270g). The final loaf weight would be around 4 pounds 4 ounces because of water content etc. With 32 quartern loaves per strike of wheat, 9 strikes of wheat would yield 288 loaves per week, but other recipes give lower numbers.
Martha Washington's Cook Book 1747 has a recipe for plain white bread that would produce 25 loaves per strike, i.e. 225 loaves per week.
Cobbett (1821) on page 53 calculates 13.5 quartern fine flour loaves from a bushel of wheat, i.e. 27 quartern loaves from one strike or 243 loaves a week. But if using household flour from which only the bran is removed, 275 loaves per week. Page 73 has baking details.
Middleton (1798) claims 8 bushels or 4 strike of wheat consumption pa, leading to two quartern loaves per week per person, or a quarter of a loaf per day, but for adults of both sexes and children.
Hence a 9 strike week would yield between 225 to 288 loaves. On a daily consumption of half a quartern, then Belton's baker catered for between 64 and 82 mouths. Putatively, the majority of these would be Belton Establishment workers.
A kitchen illustration from a 1683 Dutch book. Note the copper boiling on the left and the bread oven to the right heated up by faggots inserted directly in the oven.
Where was the bread baked?
Bread for the servant workforce was baked in the Back House in or near the Offices (1698 inventory). The family's oven was in in the paistrie, in the basement and may have baked fine bread for them there; bread baskets are listed in the Butler's Pantry. The pastry, the place where pastry work is wrought (Bailie et al, 1730). Belton's inventories,
1688
In the paistrie two dressers, one flower Milne [flour mill for grinding the weekly delivery of strikes of wheat], one brandreth [a gridiron or iron trivet], one Iron peele [long handled flat shovel for putting bread and pies into the oven], two pastie peeles, two Iron oven lidds, one Iron forke, one Iron coule [coal] rake, one Leaden Seysterne with a brass cocke [water for dough and washing?]
1698
In the pastry one Trevit 1. Iron peel, & Coul Bake 1. Cratch [Any kind of wooden rack, frame or cradle]. 1. Basket 2 dry Barrells
The pastry appears in both inventories written adjacent to the wet (wett, weet) larder, the latter thought to be the area immediately north of the tunnel mouth, by the old kitchen and under a larder in the now, Breakfast Room. As in the image above, no direct fire was necessary. Hot charcoal or faggots were placed in the oven to heat it then scraped out before putting in bread or pastry items. Baking ovens separate from the main cooking fire might have their own flue for the smoke generated, e.g. as at Brockhampton, but it was not essential.
The inventories name water cisterns in rooms interconnected by the south corridor, called the Passage to the Pastry in 1737. The corridor continues through the C19, under butler's bedroom to an area that is now the tradesmen's entrance. This is a possible Pastry site, on the other side of the West stairs from the Wet larder. Ventilated by the window that was there and close enough to the kitchen to fetch burning faggots, but far enough away to have its own water cistern. Or, with its own fire; the Ante library with a fireplace is overhead. Sally Lunn's commercial Bath Bun bakery, below, gives a representation of size and appearance.
Sally Lunn baking Bath buns in her 1680 bake house. The area is lit and ventilated by one basement window.
A bundle of faggots to the right. Purchases of these are recorded during the Brownlows' London sojourns at Holland Park.
Sea & River food
The Brownlows had some form of seafood most weeks in the year. This is excepting London where only mackerel was bought, either due to availability or perhaps safety.
The pie chart, left illustrates the variety of fresh seafood brought to Belton's kitchen. The commonest was 'fish' followed by shrimps mixed occasionally with cockles.
Salmon were crimped, cut into collops while still alive.
Ruffs displaying their plumage to the female reeve
The chart indicates the number (vertical axis) of birds eaten per month in Trigg's records for the 1710 to 1711 period. It includes Jane Brownlow's wedding in June.
The pervading smell from Belton's kitchen would have been chicken. Partridge, plover, geese and ducks follow in order. Turkey appeared on Christmas tables as early as 1573. Teale, snipe and quail were the least likely to appear at table. Ruffs and reeves, wading birds were common in Lincolnshire before the draining of the fens. Many of these game birds would be reserved for the family. Three plover would cater for just two people.
Game consumption in February and March was replaced with fish & seafood. This may relate to Lent where 'warm-blooded' animals were replaced with 'cold-blooded fish'.
An October 1711 entry has a man with 4 swans 2s 6d (£25). But we know not whether they ended up ingested or on ye Great Pond to the east of the house. However, swan pie was consumed by the Brownlow family in January 1690.
Hulssberg's early 18th century plan of Belton
The Poultry Yard is marked 'z' on the plan left, located where the Dell is now. Stables marked 'a'. 'Y' the Brew House and Hog Yard. North is image bottom. The same area today viewed from the north.
But was this functional when neither chickens or eggs were recorded as 'valued' by Trigg? Could the poultry yard yield the 100 or more chickens and 600 to 1,000 eggs (see below) consumed each month?
Red Meat
The Slaughter House (1698) was situated with the Brew House in the area now used for the Gardeners' green houses (see 'Y' Hulssberg's map above). Sheep, calf, beef, pork & bacon are the commonest red meats accounted for. These were weighed and valued for internal accounting, but would have come from the Belton estate. Only when in London, was red meat bought. Data is extracted from the household accounts for July 1710 to January 1711 (Julian, i.e. 1712 Georgian calendar).
Beef
Taking an 80-week sample from 1710 to 1711 (Julian), when 43 bullocks were killed, the average weight was 48 stone. This is only slightly less than the present day average of 346 kg. From that, 43% is the meat yield.
At an 1800 average 70 lb of beef per person pa in London, the beef would have fed 116 individuals per week.
Venison
Venison consumed from the Park will go unmentioned. But reference to venison pots and a delivery of a haunch from Burghley House, demonstrates that it was eaten. During the 1700s, it was the meat symbolising the highest social status.
Sheep
Sheep were slaughtered and weighed each week for the same period over 80 weeks. The weekly average was 12 stone, or ~ 2 sheep. Total killed was 931 stone. The meat yield is 43%. The average Londoner ate 59 pounds of mutton each year in 1800. On this basis the kill would have fed 54 individuals per week.
The disparity between beef and mutton meat weight is explicable by selling off the surplus beef, hence its valuation at each killing.
Pigs
Hannah Glasse (1796): To kill a Pig and prepare it for roasting
STICK, your pig just above the breast-bone, run your knife to the heart, when it is dead put it in cold water for a few minutes, then rub it over with a little rosin beat exceeding fine, or its own blood, put your pig into a pail-of scalding water half a minute, take it out, lay it on a clean table, pull off the hair as quick as possible, if it does not come clean off put it in again, when you have got it all clean off wash it in Warm water, then in two or three cold waters, for fear the rosin should take ; take off the four feet at the first joint, make a slit down the belly, take out all the entrails, put the liver, heart, and lights to the pettitoes, wash it well out of cold water, dry it exceedingly well with a cloth.
Presumably all done in Belton's present day 'billiard room'.
Twenty three swine were killed for bacon.
Twenty two porketts were killed for pork. A 60 pound pig can serve 60 meals based on using the meat for soup, stews, casseroles and chops, as well as roasts because it does not shrink in cooking as much as fatty meat. On average each time a pig was slaughtered it fed 78 persons.
Calves
27 calves were killed over the 1710/1711 80-week period, or one every 3 weeks on average. Mary Eaton's 1822 The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary has at least 19 recipes using veal.
Cupple of Rabbatts
Rabbit occurs occasionally, but a huge area east of present day Bellmount Plantation was given over to a warren and would have provided 'free' meat. A 1731 lease from Viscount Tyrconnel was given to George Ellis of Belton, warrener.
Eggs & Butter
Eggs
To determine whether for servants or family, comparison was made between two 15-week periods at Belton in 1701 and 1710/11 (Julian). For the 1710/11 months the household was two family members down after Alicia's marriage and Margaret's death. This left Alice, Jane, Eleanor and any guests. During these periods 174 eggs per week were cooked in 1701 and 199 per week in 1710/11.
There is no evidence of reduction in egg consumption. One concludes that they were primarily a servants' comestible.
In 2021, weekly egg consumption was 4 per week per person. If applicable to C18, then this implies eggs sufficient for 50 individuals per week in 1710/11.
Butter
Gargantuan amounts of butter were utilised in the kitchen, an average of 152 lb per month, excluding June.
The red line shows the variation in orders, with higher order numbers with smaller weights purchased in the winter and spring months.
That this butter was intended for the household and servants is the June spike with Jane Brownlow's wedding, when consumption of other food stuffs increased dramatically.
One quote for butter use is Dutch sailors issued with half a pound per week. In 2018/2019, the average consumption of butter was 0.7 lb per person per week.
The butter churner Henry Robert Morland (London circa 1719-1797)
Butter affords good Nourishment; the best that is for the Stomach, is made from May to August it's very wholsom, if eaten moderately with Bread or with Herbs, Roots, or the like. Take good Butter and melt it thick, and put it to your Herbs, as you do Oil, and it eats as well and pleasant, and can scarce be distinguish'd from Oil: This (I believe) a great many may have cause to thank me for: All Butter ought to be well seasoned with Salt. (Tryon, 1634-1703)
Butter was made from March through to about September. But changes in bovine husbandry and improved cattle breeds in the 18th century meant cows could be milked all year round (Gray). There is no evidence of seasonality in the Belton data.
Whether the butter was truly bought in or this is an example of internal accounting as happened with butter in the Belton C19 accounts, is unknown. However, while milk is purchased in London, it is never mentioned at Belton though dairy-related items are. Furthermore, Trigg would summarise the weights and values of the red meat slaughtered, but not eggs, butter, chickens etc. The price per number or pound varies for eggs and butter suggesting they were truly bought in from outside the estate.
Belton's inventories again,
1688
In the Darie Eight Shelves, one greate brass pann, Sixteene cheese fatts [wooden moulds to take the curds], foureteene pantions [pancheon - large shallow earthenware bowl to allow milk to stand], five piping potts, two Soes [wooden bucket with two ‘ears’ for a pole for carrying], three butter bowles [wooden bowls for working and washing butter], two Churnes [butter churn], foure pales & a Cheese presse [to compress the curds in the moulds]
But by 1698 there is no Darie mentioned just a Butter room
In the butter Room 2. forms, 6 Earthen pipkins 3 Rubin Brushes, 12. small flower potts, 6 Earthen basons, 1. cagg of soap, 1. Tinn Tunnell
These seem the same areas close to the Still Room, perhaps where the Steward Boy's washing up area now is. The absence of churns in 1698 indicates they are no longer producing butter in house.