–1—To souse a young pig
Pick a young pig that is scalded clean. Boil it in fair water and white wine, add some bay leaves, ginger, and some nutmegs that have been quartered. Also add a few whole cloves then boil it thoroughly and leave it in the same broth in an earthen pot.
–2—Aliter (another method)
Take a pig that has been cleaned, collar him up like above and wrap it in fair clothes. When the flesh is boiled tender take it out and put it in cold water and salt and that will make the skin white. Make sousing liquid for it with a quart of white wine and two quarts of the same broth.
{The following recipes on boiling various thing are mostly just for the liquid used to boil the protein.}
–3—To boil a flounder or pickerel in the French manner
Take a pint of white wine, the tops of young thyme, and rosemary, a little whole mace, a little whole peppercorn add verjus, salt, and a piece of sweet butter and so serve it thus. This broth will serve to boil fish two or three times.
–4—To boil sparrows or larks
Take two ladles full of mutton broth, a little whole mace and put into it a piece of sweet butter, a handful of parsley leaves just picked, season it with sugar, verjus, and a little pepper.
–5—To boil a capon in a white broth
Boil your capon by itself in fair water then take a ladle full or two of mutton broth and a little white wine, a little whole mace a bundle of sweet herbs, a little marrow. Thicken it with almonds {ground works best}. Season it with sugar and a little verjus. Boil a few currants by themselves and a date quartered lest you discolor your broth and put it on the breast of your capon, chicken, or rabbit. If you have no almonds thicken it with cream or with yolks of eggs. Garnish your dishes on the sides with sliced lemon and sugar
–6—To boil a mallard, teal or wigin
Take mutton broth and put it into a pipkin. Put into the belly of the fowl a few sweet herbs and a little mace, stick half a dozen cloves in his breast. Thicken the broth with toasts of bread steeped in verjus. Season it with a little pepper and a little sugar, also one onion minced small is very good in the broth of any waterfowl.
–7—To boil a leg of mutton in the French style
Take all the flesh out of your leg of mutton at the hind end at least preserving the skin whole and mince to meat small with ox suet and marrow. Then take grated bread, sweet cream, egg yolks, and diffuse sweet herbs then add currants and raisins. Season it with nutmeg, mace, pepper, and a little sugar. Then put it all back into the leg of mutton again where you took it out. Stew it in a pot with a marrow bone or two. Serve the marrow bones with the stewed broth and fruit and serve your leg of mutton dry with sliced carrots and cast coarsely ground pepper upon the roots.
–8—To boil pigs feet in the French style
Boil them and slice them after rolling them in a little batter made with the yolk of an egg, two spoonfuls of sweet cream, and one spoonful of flour, make a sauce for it with nutmeg, vinegar, and sugar
–9—To boil pigeons with rice
Boil them in mutton broth, putting sweet herbs in their bellies then take a little rice and boil it in cream with a little whole mace, season it with sugar, lay it thick upon their breasts squeezing also the juice of a lemon upon them and so serve them.
{Look for squab. It’s the modern fancy term for pigeon.}
–10—To boil a chine of veal, or a chicken in a sharp broth with herbs
Take a little mutton broth, white wine, verjus, and a little whole mace, then take lettuce, spinach, and parsley and bruise it and put it into your broth seasoning it with verjus, pepper, and a little sugar and so serve it.
–11—To make blancmanger
Take the cooked meat of a capon and shred it. Then boil it in sweet cream with the whites of two eggs, and after it is well boiled hang it in a cloth and let the liquid run from it. Then grind it all in an alabaster mortar with a wooden pestle and draw it through a thin strainer with the yolks of two eggs and a little rose water. Then set it on a chafing dish with coals. Mix four ounces of sugar with the blancmanger and when it is cold dish it up like almond butter and serve it.
–12—To make Polonian sausage
Take the filet (pork tenderloin) of a hog and chop it very small with a handful of red sage. Season it with ginger and pepper and then put it into a large sheep’s gut. Llet it lie three nights in brine then boil it and hang it up in a chimney where fire is usually kept and these sausages will last one whole year. they are good for salads or to garnish boiled meats or to make one relish a cup of wine.
–13—To make tender and delicate brawne.
Put layers of pork in kettles of water or other suitable vessels into an oven heated as you would for household bread. Cover the vessels and so leave them as long in the oven as you would do a batch of bread. A recent experience amongst gentle women far excelling the old manner of boiling brawne in great and huge kettles therefore if putting your liquid in hot into the vessels. A little boiled first if by this means you shall not give great expedition to your work.
–14—Paste made of fish
Mix the bodies of saltfish, stockfish, ling or any fresh fish that is not full of bones with crusts of bread, flour, isinglas etc and with proper spices agreeing with the nature of every one of these several fish. Mold shapes and forms of little fishes as of the rockfish, perch, etcetera and so by art you may make many little fishes out of one great and natural fish.
–15—How to barrel up oysters so they shall last for six months sweet and good and in their natural taste
Open your oysters and take the liquor out of them and mix a reasonable proportion of the best white wine vinegar you can get, a little salt, and some pepper and put the fish in barrels or small casks covering all the oysters in this pickle and they will last a long time. This is an excellent means to convey oysters into dry towns or to carry them on long voyages.
–16—How to keep fresh salmon a whole month in his perfect taste and delicacy
First simmer your salmon according to the usual manner, then put it in a proper vessel with a close fitting lid with wine vinegar and a branch of rosemary. By this means vintners and cooks may make profit when it is scarce in the markets. Salmon thus prepared may be profitably brought out of Ireland and sold in London or elsewhere.
–17—Fish kept long and yet to eat short and delicately
Fry your fish in oil, some commend canola oil and some the sweetest Seville oil that you can get, for the fish will not take at all the oil because it has a watery body and oil and water make no true unity. Then put your fish in white wine vinegar and so you may keep it for the use of your table any reasonable time.
–18—How to keep roasted beef a long time sweet and wholesome
This is also done in wine vinegar. Your pieces being not overly large and then packed tightly in barrels. This secret was fully proven in that honorable voyage unto Cadiz.
–19—How to keep powdered beef five or six weeks after it is sodden without any change
When your beef has been well and truly powdered by ten or twelve days space, then simmer it thoroughly dry it with a cloth and wrap it in dry cloths placing the same in a close vessel and cupboard and it will keep sweet and sound two or three months, as I am credibly informed from the experiences of a kind and loving friend.
{sodden in the title could mean boiling until the meat is dry and falls apart}
–20—A conceit of the author’s, how beef may be carried at sea without that strong and violent impression of salt which is usually made by long and extreme salting
Here with the good leave and favor of those courteous gentlewomen for whom I did principally, if not only intend this little treatise, I’ll make bold to launch a little from the shore and try what may be done in the vast and wide ocean and in long and dangerous voyages for the better preservation of such usual victuals as for want of this skill does oftentimes merely perish or else by the extreme piercing of salt do lose even their nutrient strength and virtue. If any future experience does happen to control my present conceit what this excuse a scholar quad in magnus este volis satis. But now to our purpose let all the blood be first well gotten out of the beef by leaving the same in some nine or ten days in our usual brine. Then barrel up all the pieces in vessels full of holes fastening them with ropes at the stern of the ship and so dragging them through the salt sea water which by his infinite change and succession of water will suffer no purification. As I suppose you may happily find your beef both sweet and savory enough when you come to use it and if this happens to fall out true upon some trial thereof had then either at my next book or when I shall be urged thereunto upon any necessity of service I hope to discover that means also whereby every ship may carry sufficient store of victual for herself in more close and convenient carriages than those loose vessels are able to perform but if I may be allowed to carry either roasted or boiled flesh to the sea then I dare adventure my poor credit therein to preserve for six whole months together either beef, mutton, capons, rabbits, etc both in cheap manner and also fresh as we do now usually eat them at our tables and this I hold to be a most singular and necessary secret for all our English Navy which at all times upon reasonable terms I will be ready to disclose for the good of my country.
–21—How to make sundry sorts of most dainty butter having a lively taste of sage, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, etc
This is done by mixing a few drops of the extracted oil of sage, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, etc. In the making up of your butter for oil and butter will incorporate and agree very kindly and naturally together. How to make the said oils with all necessary vessels instruments and other circumstances by a most plain and familiar description see my Jewel Housewife of Art under the title of Distillation.
–22—How to make a larger and daintier cheese of the same proportion of milk than is commonly used or known by any of our best dairy women at this time.
Having brought your milk into curds by ordinary rennet, either break them with your hands according to the usual manner of other cheeses and after with a sieve take away as much of the whey as you can or else put in the curds without breaking into your cheese vessel and let them rest for one to three hours. For a cheese made from two gallons of milk add a weight of ten or twelve pounds which we must rest upon a cover that is fit with the cheese press wherein it must truly descend by degrees as you increase your weight or as the curds do sink and settle. Let your curds remain so all that day and night following until the next morning, and then turn your cheese or curds over and place your weight again adding from time to time some more small weight as needed. Note that you must lay a cloth both under and over your curds at the least if you will not wrap them all over as they do in other cheeses, changing your cloth at every turning. Also, if you will work in any ordinary cheese vessel you must place a round and broad hoop upon the vessel being itself being just of the same size or circumference or else you will make a very thin cheese. Turn the cheese every morning and evening or as often as needed until the whey is all run out and then proceed as in ordinary cheeses. Note that the cheese vessel will be full of holes both in the sides and bottom that way the whey may drain faster. You may also make them in square boxes full of holes, or else you may devise vessels of wicker either round or square with wicker covers maybe some slight be so stayed as that you shall need only morning and evening turn to the other side upward both the bottoms being made loose and so close fitting as they may sink within the vessel or mold by reason of the weight that rests on them. Note that in other cheeses the cover of the vessel covers over the vessel but in these the covers descend and fall within the vessel. Also, your ordinary cheeses are more spongey and full of holes than these by reason of the violent pressing of them. Whereas these cheeses settling gently and by degree to cut as close and firm as marmalade, also in those cheeses which are pressed out after the usual manner the whey that cometh from them if it stands awhile will carry a cream upon it whereby the cheese must of necessity be much less and as I guess by a 4th part whereas the whey that cometh from these new kind of cheeses is like fair water in color and carry no strength with it. Note also that if you put in your curds unbroken not taking away the whey that issues with the breaking of them that the cheese will be so much greater but it is a more troublesome way because the curds being tender will hardly endure the turning unless you are very careful. I suppose that the angelates in France may be made in this manner in small baskets and so likewise the Parmesan and if your whole cheese consists of curdled milk. They will be full of butter and eat most daintily being taken in their time before they be too dry for which purpose you may keep them when they begin to grow dry upon green rushes or nettles. I have robbed my wife’s dairy of this secret who has previously refused all recompenses that have been offered her by gentlewomen for the same and had I loved cheese myself so well as I like the recipe I think I should not so easily have imparted the same at this time and yet I must needs confess that for the better gracing of the title where which I have fronted this pamphlet I have been willing to publish this with some other secrets of worth for the which I have many times refused good store of both crowns and angels and therefore let no gentlewoman think that this book too dear at what price so ever it shall be valued upon the sale thereof neither can I esteem the work to be of less than twenty years gathering.
—23—Clotted Cream
Take your fresh milk from the morning and set it upon the fire from morning until the evening but let it not simmer and this is called My Lady Young’s Clotted cream.
–24—Flesh kept sweet in summer
You may keep veal, mutton, or venison in the heat of summer nine or ten days good like it was newly and fair killed by hanging the same in a high and windy room (and therefore a plate cupboard full of holes so as the wind may have through passage and would be placed in such a room to avoid the offense of flies). This is an approved secret easy and cheap and very necessary to be known and practiced in hot and tainting weather. Veal may be kept ten days in bran.
–25—Mustard meal
It is usual in Venice to sell the ground mustard seed in their markets as we do flour and meal in England. This meal by the addition of vinegar in two or three days becomes exceedingly good mustard, but it would be much stronger and finer if the husks or hulls were first divided by sieve or bolter which may easily be done if you dry your seeds against the fire before you grind them. Dutch iron hand mills or an ordinary pepper mill may serve for this purpose. I thought it very necessary to publish this manner of making up your sauce because our mustard which we buy from the Chandler’s currently is many times made up with vile and filthy vinegar such as our stomach would abhor if we should see it before the mixing thereof with the seeds.
{sifting out the hulls of the seeds takes the mustard from whole grain to regular}
-26—How to avoid smoke in broiling of bacon, carbonado, etc.
Make a little dripping pan of paper pasting up the corners with starch or paste. Wet them a little in water but Pope Pius Quintus’ cook will have them touched over with a feather first dipped in oil or molten butter. Lay them on your gridiron and place your slices of bacon in them turning them as needed. This is a clean way and avoids all smoke. In the same manner you may also broil thin slices of Polonian sausages or great oysters. The Pope’s oysters were prepared this way. You must be careful that your fire under the gridiron doesn’t flares lest you happen to burn your drippings pans therefore all coals are here kept seperate.
–27—The true bottling of beer.
When your beer is ten or twelve days old or it has grown reasonably clear, then bottle it making your corks very tight to the bottles and stop them tightly but drink not of this beer till they begin to ferment again. Then you shall find the same most excellent and sprightly drink and this is the reason why bottle ale is both so highly carbonated and muddy, thundering and smoking upon the opening of the bottle because it is commonly bottled the same day that is laid into the cellar. Its yeast being an exceedingly windy substance being also drawn with the ale not yet fined does incorporate with the drink and make it also very carbonated. This is all the lime and gunpowder with bottle ale has been a long time so wrongfully charged.
–28—How to help your bottles when they are musty
Some put them in the oven when the bread is freshly removed closing up the oven and so let them rest until morning. Others content themselves with scalding them in hot water only until they are sweet.
–29—How to break whites of eggs speedily
A fig or two {probably the branch} shred in pieces and then beaten amongst the whites of eggs will bring them into an oil speedily some break them with a stubbed rod and some by ringing them often through a sponge.
–30—How to keep flies from oil pieces (Paintings)
A line stretched over and strained above the top of oil paintings or pictures will catch the flies that would otherwise deface the pictures. But this Italian conceit both for the rareness and use thereof does please us above all others, IE to stick a cucumber full of barleycorns with the small spring ends outwards make little holes in the cucumbers first with a wooden or bone bodkin, and after put the grains in these being placed tightly will in time cover all the cucumber so no man can discern what strange plant the same should be. Such cucumbers are to be hung up in the middle of summer rooms to draw all the flies into them which otherwise would fly upon the pictures or hangings.
–31—To Keep Lobsters, crabs etc sweet and good for a few days
These kinds of fish are noted to be of no durability or lasting in warm weather. Yet to prolong their days a little though I fear I shall raise the price of them by this discovery among the fishmongers, who only in respect of their speedy decay do now and then afford a penny worth in them. If you wrap them in sweet and coarse rags first moistened in brine and then bury these cloths in Calais {Noted for being coarse grained} sand that is also kept in some cool and moist place. I know by my own experience that you shall find your labor well rewarded and the rather if you lay them in several layers so as one does not touch the other.
–32—Diverse excellent kinds of bottle ale
I cannot remember that ever I did drink the light sage ale at any time as that which is made by mingling two or 3 drops of sage oil with a quart of ale. The same being well brewed out of one pot into another and this being a whole stand of sage ale is very speedily made. The same can be done with oil of mace or nutmeg. But if you will make a right gossip’s cup that shall far exceed all the ale that ever mother bunch made in her lifetime, then in the bottling of your best ale barrel on half a pint of white hypocras that is newly made and after the best is received with two quarts of the of ale stoper your bottle tightly. Drink it when it is stale. Some commend the hanging of roasted oranges pricked full of cloves in the vessel of ale till you find the taste to your own liking.
–33—How to make wormwood wine very speedily and in great quantity
Take small Rochelle or cognac wine and put a few drops of extracted oil of wormwood into it. Brew it together as before as set down in bottle ale out of one pot into another and you shall have a more neat and wholesome wine for your body than that which is sold at the stilliard {Steelyard, an area north of the Thames} for right Wormwood wine.
–34—Rosewater and rose vinegar the color of the rose and of the cowslip and violet vinegar.
If you would make your rose water and rose vinegar a Ruby color, then choose the crimson velvet colored petals clipping away the whites with a pair of shears and being thoroughly dried put a good large handful of them into a pint of damask or red rose water. Seal your glass jar well and set it in the sun until you see that the leaves have lost their color, or for a more expeditious method you may do this in a hot water bath in a few hours and when you take out the old leaves you may put in fresh until you find the color to please you. Keep this rose water in glass vessels very well stoppered, the fuller the better. What I have said of rose water the same may also be intended of rose vinegar, violet, marigold, and cowslip vinegars but the white vinegar you choose for this purpose will be brighter and therefore distilled vinegar is best for this purpose so as the same be warily distilled with a true division of parts according to the manner expressed in this book in the distillation of vinegar.
–35—To keep the juice of oranges and lemons all year long for sauce, juleps and other purposes
Express their juice and pass it through a hypocras bag/strainer to clarify it from its impurities. Then fill your glass bottle almost to the top, cover it tightly and let it stand until it has done boiling {not mentioned but probably in a hot water bath setup} then fill up your glass with good salad oil and set it in a cool closet or buttery where no sun gets in. The best glass bottles for this purpose are straight upright ones like our long beer bottles which would be made with little round holes two inches from the bottom to receive good faucets and so the grounds or leaves would settle to the bottom and the oil would sink down with the juice so closely that all purification would be avoided. Or instead of holes if there were glass pipes, it would be better because it is hard to fasten a faucet well in the hole. You may also in this manner preserve many juices of herbs and flowers.
And because that profit and skill united does grace each other, if courteous ladies you will lend ears and follow my direction I will here furnish a great number of you (I would that I could furnish you all) with the juice of the best Seville oranges at an easy price about All Hallows Tide or soon after. You may buy the inward pulp of Seville oranges where the juice resides from the comfit makers for a small amount (who do only or principally use their rinds) to preserve and make orange juice with the juice you may prepare and reserve as before.
–36—How to purify and give and excellent smell and taste to salad oil
Put salad oil in a vessel of wood or earthenware that has a hole in the bottom. For every four quarts of water add 1 quart of oil, with a wooden spoon or spatula beat them well together for fifteen minutes then let out the water preventing the oil from following by stopping up the hole. Repeat this procedure two or three times and at the last you shall find your oil well cleansed or clarified. In this manner you may also clarify capon’s grease being first melted and worked with warm water. All this is borrowed of M Bartolomeo Scappi the master cook of Pope Pius Quintus in his private kitchen. I think if the last agitation were made in rosewater that also had cloves and nutmegs soaked in it that the oil would be more pleasing.
Or, if you set a glass jar in a water bath that is full of sweet oil with some bruised cloves and rinds of Seville oranges or lemons added and so continue your fire for two or three hours then letting the cloves and rinds remain in the oil till both the scent and taste do please you, I think many men which at this day do loathe oil as I myself did not long since would be easily drawn to sufficient liking thereof.
–37—How to clarify, without any distillation, both white and claret wine vinegar for jellies and sauces.
To every six pints of good wine vinegar put the whites of two new laid eggs well beaten. Then put all into a new leaden pipkin and cause the same to boil a little over a gentle fire and then let it run through a coarse jelly bag two or three times and it will be very clear and keep good one whole year. {do not use a lead pipkin}
–38—To make most delicate white salt for the table.
First calcinate or burn your white salt then dissolve it in clear conduit water let the water stand without stirring for eight hours then carefully draw away all the clearwater Only then filter it and after evaporate the filtered water reserving the salt some leave out the calcination.
–39—A delicate candle for a ladies table.
Cause your Dutch candles to be dipped in virgin wax so that their last coat may be merely wax and by this means you may carry them in your hand without melting and the scent of the tallow will not breakthrough to give offense. But if you would have them to resemble yellow wax candles then first let the tallow be colored with turmeric and strained after your candles have been dipped to a sufficient size, let them take their last coat from yellow wax this may be done in a great round can of tin plate having a bottom and being somewhat deeper than the length of your candles and as the wax gets used you may refill the barrel.
–40—How to hang your candles in the air without candlesticks
This will make a strange show to the beholders that know not the method. It is done in this manner, let a fine virginal wire be concealed in the midst of every wick and left of a good length up above the candle to fasten the same to the posts in the roof of your house and if the room is high roofed it will be hardly discerned and the flame though it consumed the tallow will not melt the wire.
–41—Rose vinegar made in a new manner.
Macerate or steep rose petals in fair water, let them lie there until they smell sour and then distill the water.
Æduin of Skye 