The peacock, which was as much thought of then as it is little valued now, was similarly arrayed, and was brought to table amidst a flourish of trumpets and the applause of all present.  The modes of preparing other roasts much resembled the present system in their simplicity, with this difference, that strong meats were first boiled to render them tender, and no roast was ever handed over to the skill of the carver without first being thoroughly basted with orange juice and rose water, and covered with sugar and powdered spices.

We must not forget to mention the broiled dishes, the invention of which is attributed to hunters, and which Rabelais continually refers to as acting as stimulants and irresistibly exciting the thirst for wine at the sumptuous feasts of those voracious heroes (Fig. 120).

The custom of introducing salads after roasts was already established in the fifteenth century.  However, a salad, of whatever sort, was never brought to table in its natural state; for, besides the raw herbs, dressed in the same manner as in our days, it contained several mixtures, such as cooked vegetables, and the crests, livers, or brains of poultry.  After the salads fish was served; sometimes fried, sometimes sliced with eggs or reduced to a sort of pulp, which was called carpee or charpie, and sometimes it was boiled in water or wine, with strong seasoning.  Near the salads, in the course of the dinner, dishes of eggs prepared in various ways were generally served.  Many of these are now in use, such as the poached egg, the hard-boiled egg, egg sauce, &c.

[Illustration:  Fig. 121.—­Shop of a Grocer and Druggist, from a Stamp of Vriese (Seventeenth Century).]

Seasonings.—­We have already stated that the taste for spices much increased in Europe after the Crusades; and in this rapid historical sketch of the food of the French people in the Middle Ages it must have been observed to what an extent this taste had become developed in France (Fig. 121).  This was the origin of sauces, all, or almost all, of which were highly spiced, and were generally used with boiled, roast, or grilled meats.  A few of these sauces, such as the yellow, the green, and the cameline, became so necessary in cooking that numerous persons took to manufacturing them by wholesale, and they were hawked in the streets of Paris.

These sauce-criers were first called saulciers, then vinaigriers-moustardiers, and when Louis XII. united them in a body, as their business had considerably increased, they were termed sauciers-moutardiers-vinaigriers, distillers of brandy and spirits of wine, and buffetiers (from buffet, a sideboard).

[Illustration:  Fig. 122.—­The Cook, drawn and engraved, in the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.]

But very soon the corporation became divided, no doubt from the force of circumstances; and on one side we find the distillers, and on the other the master-cooks and cooks, or porte-chapes, as they were called, because, when they carried on their business of cooking, they covered their dishes with a chape, that is, a cope or tin cover (Fig. 122), so as to keep them warm.