Item, I have seen blankets placed on the straw and on the bed and when the black fleas jumped upon them they were the sooner found and killed upon the white.

But the best way is to guard oneself against those which are within the coverlets and furs and the stuff of the dresses wherewith one is covered.

For know that I have tried this, and when the coverlets, furs or dresses in which there be fleas are folded and shut tightly up, in a chest straitly bound with straps or in a bag well tied up and pressed, or otherwise compressed so that the said fleas are without light and air and kept imprisoned, then they will perish and die at once.[17] A similar war had also to be waged against flies and mosquitoes, which rendered summer miserable.

"I have sometimes," says the Menagier, "seen in several chambers that when one has gone to bed in them, they were full of mosquitoes, which at the smoke of the breath came to sit on the faces of those who slept and sting them so that they were fain to get up and light a fire of hay to smoke them off." Against such pests he has also six infallible recipes--to wit, a mosquito net over the bed; sprigs of fern hung up for the flies to settle on; a bowl filled with a mixture of milk and hare's gall, or with the juice of raw onions, which will kill them; a bottle containing a rag dipped in honey, or else a string dipped in honey to hang up; fly whisks to drive them away; and closing up windows with oiled cloth or parchment.[18] The section on cookery, which contains the Menagier's injunctions for "feeding the brute", is the longest in the book, and gives an extraordinarily interesting picture of the domestic economy of our ancestors.[19] The Menagier must have been brother to Chaucer's Franklin, 'Epicurus owene sone': An housholdere, and that a greet, was he: Seint Julian he was in his contree; His breed, his ale, was alwey after oon; A bettre envyned man was nowher noon.
Withoute bake mete was never his hous, Of fissh and flessh, and that so plenteuous It snewed in his hous of mete and drynke.
Of alle deyntees that men koude thynke.
After the sondry sesons of the yeer, So chaunged he his mete and his soper.
Ful many a fat partrich had he in muwe And many a breem and many a luce in stuwe.
Wo was his cook but if his sauce were Poynaunt and sharpe and redy al his geere.
His table dormant in his hal alway Stood redy covered al the longe day.
In this, as in all other medieval cookery books, what strikes the modern reader is the length and elaboration of the huge feasts, with their many courses and dishes, and the richness of the highly spiced viands.

There are black puddings and sausages, venison and beef, eels and herrings, fresh water fish, round sea fish and flat sea fish, common pottages unspiced, spiced pottages, meat pottages and meatless pottages, roasts and pastries and entremets, divers sauces boiled and unboiled, pottages and 'slops' for invalids.