The Middleton Accounts of 1526: #61
The next entry in the Middleton household accounts for Sir Henry Willoughby in 1526 was dated 10th October. It was described as a payment allowed to Sir William for sugar to make conserves. The amount was 12 pence, which was the equivalent of about £22.06 today. The Sir William in this entry is believed to have been Sir William Webster (or Webb), who was the private chaplain of Sir Henry and is thought to have been the Master of the Children of the Chapel.
In a previous entry, sugar had been purchased with the weight of the amount purchased provided. If it was assumed that the cost was the same, it could be determined that in this entry about 1.92lbs (870g) of sugar had been purchased for Sir William.
Conserves in this era were not like modern jams. They were a very thick sliceable paste. However, the difference was due to the cooking technique not the recipe. Hence, standard recipes for jams remain relevant to this entry. In these recipes there is a straight 1:1 ratio of sugar to fruit, which means the same amount of fruit and sugar would have been used. Unfortunately, it is not known what fruit would have been used as it was not mentioned in the entry and various types of fruit were known to have been grown on the Willoughby Estates including cherries, plums, blackberries, quince and more.
Due to the mathematically known standard water loss during the cooking process of jam-making, this quantity can be concluded to have made about 2.95lbs (about 1.33kg) of conserve. In today’s terms, the jam industry standard jar holds 1lb (454g or 380ml) of jam and thus this mix would have made about 3 jars of jam. However, in Tudor times, it would not have been stored in glass jars. Instead, earthenware pots, stoneware jars or ceramic vessels were used and they were sealed with either parchment or bladder skins.
As indicated in a previous post about Sir William, he appears in numerous other entries in the Middleton household accounts. At the end of June 1524, the same Sir William had 6 glasses purchased for him for a cost of 12 pence (about £26 today). Interestingly, in the context of him making jam, in the same month, 8 pence (about £17.33 today) worth of strawberries were purchased specifically in order for this same Sir William to make strawberry water.
Strawberry water was considered a distilled medical cordial. 8 pence would have bought a lot of fruit. However, although the distillation process required a lot of fruit, it only produced a small amount of liquid essence from it. The glasses likely referred to apothecary glass vials, as glass vessels were not common in Tudor times. This type of vial would only have held about 2 fluid ounces.
However, why would a chaplain have been making the conserve and the strawberry water? In this era, private chaplains were not just a priest, but were highly educated, trusted, upper-level servants who would, in that role, like other servants, fulfil other household tasks. Chaplains would have been one of the few who were literate in Latin and other languages, which enabled them to read medical and botanical texts. These provided the measurements for the vital recipes. Their training would also have involved using and preparing different compounds. The distillation process to make the strawberry water was a semi-alchemical scientific process and a standard kitchen worker would have had neither the literacy nor the skill to safely follow a recipe of that nature. Hence, it was not unusual for a private chaplain to act as a kind of household apothecary. There is also a possibility that he was using it as a teaching experience for his students.
Further Reading:
W. H. Stevenson, Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1911. pp.366, 385.
Mark Dawson, Plenti and Grase, 2009.
Author - Debbie Jordan, Middleton Hall Volunteer.
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