Robert May

To turn from french to English cooking in 1600 is to step back in many ways a hundred years. The refinements of the Renaissance spreading northward through France, were slow to cross the Channel. The influence of Scappi and the other great Italian chefs was so remote as to be almost imperceptible. Memories of great medieval banquets, with their indiscriminate display of flesh, fish, and fowl, were still very much alive. It was with small success that Henrietta Maria of Spain, who married Charles I in 1625, tried to introduce the dishes of her homeland to the court.