Thurston

Cromwell's cook

Feb 05, 2024

Week 6: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 1)

Cromwell asks him to ignore Lent restrictions and prepare beef for Wolsey. Does his master look like a murderer?

‘'Not like a murderer, no. But if you will forgive me, master, you always look like a man who knows how to cup up a carcase.’

Week 9: Arrange Your Face (Part 2)

We meet him twice in this chapter: first, complaining about all the meat sent by gentlemen as gifts. “But it is the butchering! The skinning, the quartering!” Cromwell offers to lend a hand and Thurston insists that “you must forget you ever knew these businesses.”

Next month, Cromwell is sending beer and bread to the men at the gates. “Well, if you aim to be feeding the whole district.”

Thurston has taken on more kitchen boys. Cromwell says they should be taken care of: “One day they must be able to walk upstairs, as he did, and take a seat in the counting house.”

Week 12: Anna Regina (Part 1)

Cromwell at Easter, “to the kitchen first, to give his man a slap on the head and a gold piece.” Austin Friars is feeding the neighbourhood. “What comes out of this kitchen is so good, there are aldermen out there, with their hoods up so we don’t know them.”

Week 15: Supremacy

He tells Thurston of his promotion to Master Secretary. The council may meet at Austin Friars in future and, he, Thurston, will prepare them dinner.

Cromwell tells him he could “put on a gold chain, and strut about”, but Thurston says he will keep his hand in the kitchen, “in case things take a down-turn. Not that I say they will. Remember the cardinal, though.”

Week 19: Crows (Part 1)

They have busy, buzzing minds, the Londoners: minds like middens.

At Austin Friars, Thurston says they are feeding two hundred Londoners, twice a day. The gossip is Anne is sleeping with all the gentlemen of the privy chamber, and Thomas Wyatt and Henry Percy.

Week 22: The Black Book (Part 1)

What happened to Anthony’s teeth?

To Thurston: He had an enemoy was a cook. And this enemy painted a batch of stone to look like hazelnuts, and invited him to a handful.

Week 28: Master of Phantoms (Part 4/5)

After the trial, Thurston comes to see Cromwell. ‘Thurston has heard there were pies on stale,’ says Anthony.

Week 31: Salvage (Part 1/3)

Cromwell goes to see Thurston. He helps him prepare eels for Chapuys and asks him about what people are saying about Anne on the street.

Week 33: Salvage (Part 3/3)

Thurston, of course, is in charge of catering at Hackney when the king and his daughter come to be reconciled.

Week 37: The Five Wounds

Thurston is sent north. ‘His chief cook is resolved to go with Master Richard to pepper some traitors, but he is tearful as he stands polishing a knife, turning it about, a glint on the blade.’ He recalls Anne Cromwell coming into the kitchen asking for eggs to paint the cardinal.

Week 41: The Image of the King (Part 1/2)

Thurston is back from the north and complaining about Lent.

‘Englishmen were never made to eat fish. Salt water gets in your brain. A German can live on vegetables, he eats what he calls crowte. A Frenchman eats roots and herbs - if he’s famished you just turn him out to grass. But an Englishman is bred on bacon and beef.’

Thurston experiments with ‘a new cod dish’ but it ‘looks as if they’ve sicked it up.’

Week 43: Nonsuch

Cromwell torments Thurston with designs for a spit ‘driven by a system of gears and pulleys’, regulated action for impaling and roasting chicken. Burnings.

Week 48: Twelfth Night

Thurston tells Cromwell he has seen Wolsey’s cat Marlinspike, ‘with a piece of a rabbit under his paw.’ He looked ‘torn up a bit … But aren’t we all?’