It was almost Christmas, and Renzo was preparing all the delicacies Florentines must eat at the festival: roast eels, goose, fancy cakes with marzipan frills, and a kind of minced pie they call Torta di Lasagna, stuffed with meats and raisins and nuts.

Signor Renzo's lodge stood on a grassy knoll near the crest of the hill. It was a modest place, just a low stone hut, before which stretched a woven ceiling of vines. My dinner was cooked on an open fire by the table. This was no banquet, but what the cook called a pique-nique, a meal for hunters to take outdoors. After Renzo had chosen two fat ducklings from his larder, he spitted them over the fire. Then he made a dish of buttery rice crowned with speckled discs of truffle that tasted powerfully of God's own earth.
'Come sit with me,' I begged, for I did not like him to wait on me. So together we sat beneath the vines as I savored each morsel and guessed at the subtle flavorings. 'Wild garlic?' I asked, and he lifted his brows in surprise as he ate. 'And a herb,' I added, 'sage?'
'For a woman, you have excellent taste.'
For a woman, indeed! I made a play of stabbing him with my knife. It was most pleasant to eat our pique-nique and drink the red wine, which they make so strong in that region that they call it black or nero. I asked him to speak of himself, and between a trial of little dishes of wild leaves, chestnut fritters, and raisin cake, Signor Renzo told me he was born in the city and had worked at a pastry's cook shop as a boy, where he soon discovered that good foods mixed with ingenious hands made people happy and free with their purses.

I wanted to try dainty Italian fare, and bought spicy Bologna sausage, pink papery hams, hard white bread, and chalky cheeses. I also bought the makings of a Mackeroni Pie I had seen made at an inn, and a new sort of green stuff named brockerly that proved a great deal tastier than cabbage.

So on Christmas morning I was up at five o'clock, making the fire as bright as a furnace, baking minc'd pies and boiling plum puddings the size of Medici cannonballs, and setting three sides of roast beef to turn on the spits. Soon I breathed again that steam that tells the soul it is Christmas, and all the year' work done, and time for feasting; the smell of oranges, sugarplums and cloves, all mingled with roasting meats.

Once inside the confectioners, she was spellbound by sugared fruits hung in garlands and glass bottles sparkling with morsels of sugar. While Loveday spoke to the shop girl, Biddy trailed the shelves slowly, looking inside the glass jars, mouthing the words on the Bill of Fare.
'Look Mr Loveday, "Macaroons- As Made In Paris"', she sighed, staring at a heap of biscuits made in every color from blue to shiny gold.
Carefully he ordered his goods from the jars of herbs behind the counter. First, there was Mr Pars' packet of coltsfoot that he smoked to ease his chest. Then a bag of comfrey tea for his mistress's stomach. Finally, boxes of the usual violet pastilles.
Biddy came up behind him while the girl tied the parcel with ribbon.
'Begging your pardon, miss. Is it right you're selling that Royal Ice Cream?'
The girl shrugged. 'That's what it says on the board if you can read it.'
'Aye, I've been studying it all right. I've only ever read of ices before. So I'll have a try of it.'
When the girl reappeared Biddy sniffed at the glass bowl, and then cautiously licked the ice cream from the tiny spoon.
'Why, it is orange flowers.' She looked happy enough to burst. 'And something else, some fragrant nut- do you put pistachio in it too?

The Cocoa-Nut Tree at Covent Garden? Why it's the finest confectioner in the capital and sells bonbons, macaroons, candied fruits, and ices,' I said in my proper reading voice. I had long studied their advertisement in Mr Pars' London Gazette after he'd left it by the kitchen fire. It was a beautiful advertisement, with little drawings of sugar cones, ice pots, and tiny men attending wondrous stoves.