Print appearances of this use of "rare" are found as early as around 1615."["implied in: G. Markham Eng. Hus-wife in Countrey Contentments ii. 54 To know when meate is rosted enough, for as too much rareness is vnwholsome, so too much drinesse is not nourishing.
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John Moore (10 November 1907-1967) was a best-selling British author and pioneer conservationist. He was described by Sir Compton Mackenzie as the most talented writer about the countryside of his generation. His best-selling trilogy, published in the years immediately after the Second World War - Portrait of Elmbury, Brensham Village and The Blue Field - was followed by a series of novels and self-styled 'country-contentments'.
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The English Huswife is a book of English cookery and remedies by Gervase Markham, first published in London by Roger Jackson in 1615. Markham's best- known work, it was a bestseller of its time, going through nine editions, and at least two other reprints, by 1683. It was issued as a two-volume work, Countrey Contentments, the other volume being The Husbandmans Recreations. Although Markham disclaims authorship in the preface, he did adapt the recipes to suit current tastes, notably with sweet and sour sauces.
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The two-volume book was dedicated to Sir Theodore Newton. The English Huswife was issued as the second part of Covntrey Contentments, In Two Bookes, The first, containing the whole art of riding great Horses in very short time... Likewise in two new Treatises the arts of hunting, hawking, coursing of Grey-hounds with the lawes of the leash, Shooting, Bowling, Tennis, Baloone &c.; The Second intituled, The English Huswife: Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman: as her Phisicke, Cookery, Banqueting-stuffe, Distillation, Perfumes, Wooll, Hemp, Flaxe, Dairies, Brewing, Baking, and all other things belonging to an Houshold.Markham, title page.
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The name is first known in Gervase Markham's 1623 Countrey Contentments, or English Huswife (new ed.) vi. 222 "From this small Oat-meale, by oft steeping it in water and clensing it, and then boyling it to a thicke and stiffe jelly, is made that excellent dish of meat which is so esteemed in the West parts of this Kingdome, which they call Wash-brew, and in Chesheire and Lankasheire they call it Flamerie or Flumerie". The name is derived from the Welsh word for a similar dish made from sour oatmeal and husks, , which is of unknown origin. It is also attested in variant forms such as thlummery or flamery in 17th and 18th century English.
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Linda Woodbridge, reviewing Michael Best's edition of The English Housewife, describes it as a splendid modern text. She describes the maladies for which Markham proposed remedies as "some picturesque, some desperate", as they included "stinking breath which cometh from the stomach", "pimpled or red-saucy face", "griefs in the stomach", "desperate yellow jaundice", "pissing in bed", "falling of the fundament", and "privy parts burned". The remedies make use of "curatives as homely as parsley, as exotic as dried stag's pizzle. She notes that in the two parts of Countrey Contentments, Markham expected the country gentlemen to lead a purely recreational life, the country gentlewoman to have "one long round of unremitting hard work.
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For instance, du Fouilloux says limiers of the St. Hubert kind are good, so that when Turberville translates 'limiers' as 'bloodhounds', he is not saying that St. Huberts and Bloodhounds are the same breed, only that they work well as leash hounds. Though by then this form of hunting was becoming old-fashioned, in Country Contentments, or the Husbandmans Recreations, 1615, Gervaise Markham writes: > The blacke hound, the black tann'd or he that is all liver-hew'd or the > milke-white which is the true Talbot, are best for the string or lyam, for > they do delight most in blood, and have a natural inclination to hunt dry- > foot, and of these the largest are ever the best and most comely.
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