Running a Tudor household

Have you ever made butter with your hands? Or cheese? How about bread and beer? I expect there will be a few more takers for the last two.

The other day I visited an open air museum near Chichester. Buildings from all centuries have been moved and rebuilt as they were originally. As research for the Luke Ballard books, it was invaluable. I stood inside the type of house Luke would have lived in. The hall and kitchen were one room and the other side of the downstairs was the 'living room'. In the Luke books, that area is Luke's apothecary shop. What made it all so real was that this particular house had a herbal/physick garden attached. By royal permission, Luke uses the gardens at Hampton Court Palace for his herbs etc., although he does like to collect other plants in the early dawn on a summer's day with his faithful greyspring, Joss, at his side. Now I am determined that Luke shall have his own herbal garden and that idea is spawning some interesting plot points.

The other very interesting attraction at the museum was a working Tudor kitchen. And now I do know how to make butter and cheese. I also know the Tudor housewife had a strict rotation of tasks to ensure that nothing at all was wasted, even the ashes from the bread oven fire. The housewife in a big house or on a farm would probably have to feed 30+ people every day, day in day out. And the work the men did was extremely physical, so a diet of around 6000 calories a day would be needed to keep their energy levels up.

Of course, some foods had to be preserved and salt was used for this. The 'cook' on duty showed us a pot of cheese that had been covered with a salt crust and although it was a bit high, she assured us that one year on from being made, the cheese was still edible. The family pig would be killed and every part of it would be consumed. It, too, was preserved in salt, usually in a brine that was 5oz salt to every pint of water - the usual test was that if an egg floated on the surface, the salt concentration was right. The salt used would be Bay Salt, evaporated from seawater and full of impurities, but preferred by housewives to white salt because it was a better for preserving - and cost a lot less. Pity the poor housewife whose task it was to rub great quantities of salt into meat.

When we read the word 'dairymaid', most people have an image of a sweet-faced ladylike maiden, but in truth, proper dairying was extremely hard work. Even in Tudor times, the necessity for the dairy and all the items used in it to be scrupulously clean was recognised. Many hours would be spent scrubbing walls, scalding vessels etc, because the risk of any dirt tainting the dairy produce not only rendered it a waste of resources, but dirt would stop some of the processes from working.

Fish was plentiful and did not need to be preserved. Indeed in the middle-ages a law was passed prohibiting masters from feeding their apprentices more than three times a week with salmon. How times change!

Having learned all this, I can see why Luke needs a housekeeper.