Diet of the Yeoman and the Poor [This is taken from W. Carew
Hazlitt's Old Cookery Books.] The staple food among the lower
orders in Anglo-Saxon and the immediately succeeding times was
doubtless bread, butter, and cheese, the aliment which goes so
far even yet to support our rural population, with vegetables
and fruit, and occasional allowances of salted bacon and
pancakes, beef, or fish. The meat was usually boiled in a kettle
suspended on a tripod [Footnote: The tripod is still employed in
many parts of the country for a similar purpose] over a wood-
fire, such as is used only now, in an improved shape, for fish
and soup. The kettle which is mentioned, as we observe, in the
tale of "Tom Thumb," was the universal vessel for boiling
purposes [Footnote: An inverted kettle was the earliest type of
the diving-bell], and the bacon-house (or larder), so called
from the preponderance of that sort of store over the rest, was
the warehouse for the winter stock of provisions [Footnote: What
is called in some places th