The history of bread : from pre-historic to modern times / by John Ashton.

  • John Ashton
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The history of bread : from pre-historic to modern times / by John Ashton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    unyielding, our worthy colleague sallies forth in his new hat. A curious use of dough, somewhat sweetened, was made at Christmas, when it was manufactured into Yule doughs, or dows, or Yule babies, small images like dolls with currants for eyes, intended probably to represent the infant Jesus, which were presented by bakers to the children of their customers. Another Christmas custom connected with dough used to obtain in Wiltshire, where a hollow loaf, containing an apple, and ornamented on the top with the head of a cock or a dragon, with currant eyes, and made of paste, was baked, and put by a child’s bedside on Christmas morning to be eaten before breakfast. This was called a Cop-a-loaf\ or Cop-loaf. Much land in England was held by tenure, in which bread plays a part, as the following instances out of many will show.1 Apelderham, Sussex.—John Aylemer holds by court roll one messuage and one yard [thirty acres] land . . . And he ought to find at three reap days, in autumn, every day, two men, and was to have for each of the said men, on every of such reap days, viz., on each of the two first days, one loaf of wheat and barley mixed, weighing eighteen pounds of wax, every loaf to be of the price of a penny farthing ; and at the third reap day each man was to have a loaf of the same weight, all of wheat, of the price of a penny halfpenny. Chakedon, Oxon.—Every mower on this manor 1 Tenures of Latid and Customs of Manors, originally collected by Thomas Blount. London, 1874, 8vo.