1, Carving-knife (Sixteenth Century);
  2, Chalice or Cup, with Cover (Fourteenth Century);
  3, Doubled-handled Pot, in Copper (Ninth Century);
  4, Metal Boiler, or Tin Pot, taken from “L’Histoire de la Belle Helaine”
    (Fifteenth Century);
  5, Knife (Sixteenth Century);
  6, Pot, with Handles (Fourteenth Century);
  7, Copper Boiler, taken from “L’Histoire de la Belle Helaine” (Fifteenth
     Century);
  8, Ewer, with Handle, in Oriental Fashion (Ninth Century);
  9, Pitcher, sculptured, from among the Decorations of the Church of St.
     Benedict, Paris (Fifteenth Century);
 10, Two-branched Candlestick (Sixteenth Century);
 11, Cauldron (Fifteenth Century).
]

It is possible that even now this kind of soup might find some favour; but we cannot say the same for those made with mustard, hemp-seed, millet, verjuice, and a number of others much in repute at that period; for we see in Rabelais that the French were the greatest soup eaters in the world, and boasted to be the inventors of seventy sorts.

We have already remarked that broths were in use at the remotest periods, for, from the time that the practice of boiling various meats was first adopted, it must have been discovered that the water in which they were so boiled became savoury and nourishing.  “In the time of the great King Francis I.,” says Noel du Fail, in his “Contes d’Eutrapel,” “in many places the saucepan was put on to the table, on which there was only one other large dish, of beef, mutton, veal, and bacon, garnished with a large bunch of cooked herbs, the whole of which mixture composed a porridge, and a real restorer and elixir of life.  From this came the adage, ’The soup in the great pot and the dainties in the hotch-potch.’”

At one time they made what they imagined to be strengthening broths for invalids, though their virtue must have been somewhat delusive, for, after having boiled down various materials in a close kettle and at a slow fire, they then distilled from this, and the water thus obtained was administered as a sovereign remedy.  The common sense of Bernard Palissy did not fail to make him see this absurdity, and to protest against this ridiculous custom:  “Take a capon,” he says, “a partridge, or anything else, cook it well, and then if you smell the broth you will find it very good, and if you taste it you will find it has plenty of flavour; so much so that you will feel that it contains something to invigorate you.  Distil this, on the contrary, and take the water then collected and taste it, and you will find it insipid, and without smell except that of burning.  This should convince you that your restorer does not give that nourishment to the weak body for which you recommend it as a means of making good blood, and restoring and strengthening the spirits.”

The taste for broths made of flour was formerly almost universal in France and over the whole of Europe; it is spoken of repeatedly in the histories and annals of monasteries; and we know that the Normans, who made it their principal nutriment, were surnamed bouilleux.  They were indeed almost like the Romans who in olden times, before their wars with eastern nations, gave up making bread, and ate their corn simply boiled in water.