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‘And
swine is good Saxon’, said the Jester; ‘but how call you the
sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered and hung up
by the heels, like a traitor?’ ‘Pork’, answered the
swineherd. ‘I am very glad every fool knows that too,’ said Wamba, ‘and pork, I think, is good Norman-French; and so
when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Saxon slave,
she goes by her Saxon name, but becomes a Norman, and is
called pork when she is carried to the Castle-hall to feast
among the nobles; what dost thou think of this, friend Gurth,
ha?’
(Walter Scott. Ivanhoe) |
The influence of the
French culinary tradition on the English language of cooking started
with the Norman Conquest (1066) and has continued uninterrupted over
the centuries. After the Conquest it was, of course, particularly in
the context of cuisine of the ruling classes that French
predominated. The first cookbook from Britain is the twelfth-century
volume by Alexander Neckham, an Augustinian canon who was a native
of St Albans (1157-1217) and later a teacher at the University of
Paris. The work prescribes for the high rank families. It rarely
uses any English terms for cooking, Latin and Norman-French being
the languages employed. Other major works on early English cooking
also prescribe for the ruling classes. A vellum roll called Forme
of Cury, supposedly written by the cook of Richard II, as well
as The Noble Book of Cookery, cater for and describe royal
and aristocratic entertainment.
The Norman-French
predominance in cooking matters has become epitomized in the
oft-noted but nonetheless remarkable contrast between the
Anglo-Saxon origin of most of the words for live animals (e.g., cow,
calf, deer, sheep, pig) and the French derivation of the
corresponding terms for the flesh of these animals as it appears in
the butcher’s shop or on the table (e.g., beef, veal, venison,
mutton, pork). The usual explanation of these divergences is that,
after the Conquest, the Normans left the care of the animals to
their Saxon menials, who went on using the old names for the live
creatures. The meat went to the tables of the Norman masters and was
named with the words they knew. Walter Scott gave this idea currency
in Ivanhoe. Not all the meat went to the Normans: the less
favoured portions, the offal, went to the lower orders and we still
talk of oxtail, calf's liver, sheep's head and
pig's kidneys, for instance.
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