Part 18

Buckorne is to be watered a good hour before you put it to the fire. Then boil it till it be tender, which it will be quickly. Then Butter it as you do Ling; and if you will, put Eggs to it.

THE WAY OF DRESSING STOCK-FISH IN HOLLAND

First beat it exceedingly well, a long time, but with moderate blows, that you do not break it in pieces, but that you shake and loosen all the inward Fibers. Then put it into water (which may be a little warmed) to soak, and infuse so during twelve or fourteen hours (or more, if it be not yet pierced into the heart by the water, and grown tender.) Then put it to boil very gently, (and with no more water, then well to cover it, which you must supply with new hot water as it consumeth) for six or seven hours at least, that it may be very tender and loose and swelled up. Then press and drain out all the water from it; and heat it again in a dish, with store of melted Butter thickened; and if you like it, you may season it also with Pepper and Mustard. But it will be yet better, if after it is well and tender boiled in water, and that you have pressed all the water you can out of it, you boil it again an hour longer in Milk; out of which when you take it, to put it into the dish with butter, you do not industriously press out all the Milk, as you did the water, but only drain it out gently, pressing it moderately. In the stewing it with butter, season it to your taste, with what you think fitting.

ANOTHER WAY TO DRESS STOCK-FISH

Beat it exceeding well with a large woodden Mallet, till you may easily pluck it all in pieces, severing every flake from other, and every one of them in it so being loose, spungy and limber, as the whole fish must be, and plyant like a glove, which will be in less then an hour. Pull then the bones out, and throw them away, and pluck off the skin (as whole as you can; but it will have many breaches and holes in it, by the beating) then gather all the fish together, and lap it in the skin as well as you can, into a round lump, like a bag-pudding, and tye it about with cords or strings (like a little Collar of Brawn, or souced fish) and so put it into lukewarm water (overnight) to soak, covering the vessel close; but you need not keep it near any heat whiles it lyeth soaking. Next morning take it out that water and vessel, and put it into another, with a moderate quantity of other water, to boil; which it must do very leisurely, and but simpringly. The main care must be, that the vessel it boileth in, be covered so exceeding close, that not the least breath of steam get out, else it will not be tender, but tough and hard. It will be boiled enough, and become very tender in about a good half hour. Then take it out, unty it, and throw away the skin, and lay the flaky fish in a Cullender, to drain away the water from it. You must presently throw a little Salt upon it, and all about in it, to season it. For then it will imbibe it into it self presently; whereas if you Salt it not, till it grow cold in the air, it will not take it in. Mean while prepare your sauce of melted well thickened butter (which you may heighten with shreded Onions or Syves, or what well tasted herbs you please) and if you will, you may first strew upon the fish some very small shreded young Onions, or Sibbouls, or Syves, or Parsley. Then upon that pour the melted butter to cover the fish all over, and soak into it. Serve it in warm and covered.

TO DRESS PARSNEPS

Scrape well three or four good large roots, cleansing well their outside, and cutting off as much of the little end as is Fibrous, and of the great end as is hard. Put them into a possnet or pot, with about a quart of Milk upon them, or as much as will cover them in boiling, which do moderately, till you find they are very tender. This may be in an hour and half, sooner or later, as the roots are of a good kind. Then take them out, and scrape all the outside into a pulpe, like the pulpe of roasted apples, which put in a dish upon a chafing dish of Coals, with a little of the Milk, you boiled them in, put to them; not so much as to drown them, but only to imbibe them: and then with stewing, the pulpe will imbibe all that Milk. When you see it is drunk in, put to the pulpe a little more of the same Milk, and stew that, till it be drunk in. Continue doing thus till it hath drunk in a good quantity of the Milk, and is well swelled with it, and will take in no more, which may be in a good half hour. Eat them so, without Sugar or Butter; for they will have a natural sweetness, that is beyond sugar, and will be Unctuous, so as not to need Butter.

Parsneps (raw) cut into little pieces, is the best food for tame Rabets, and makes them sweet. As Rice (raw) is for tame Pigeons, and they like it best, varying it sometimes with right tares, and other seeds.

CREAM WITH RICE

A very good Cream to eat hot, is thus made. Into a quart of sweet Cream, put a spoonful of very fine powder of Rice, and boil them together sufficiently, adding Cinnamon, or Mace and Nutmeg to your liking. When it is boiled enough take it from the fire, and beat a couple of yolks of new-laid Eggs, to colour it yellow. Sweeten it to your taste. Put bread to it, in it's due time.

GREWEL OF OAT-MEAL AND RICE

Doctor Pridion ordered my Lord Cornwallis, for his chief diet in his looseness, the following grewel, which he found very tastefull.

Take about two parts of Oat-meal well beaten in a Mortar, and one part of Rice in subtile powder. Boil these well in water, as you make water-grewel, adding a good proportion of Cinnamon to boil also in due time, then strain it through a cloth, and sweeten it to your taste.

The yolk of an Egg beaten with a little Sherry-sack, and put to it, is not bad in a looseness. At other times you may add Butter. It is very tasteful and nourishing.

SAUCE FOR A CARP OR PIKE. TO BUTTER PEASE

Take two or three spoonfuls of the Liquor the Carp was boiled in, and put it into a pipkin; There must be no more, then even to cover the bottom of the pipkin. Make this boil by itself; as soon as it doth so, put to this half a pound of sweet butter, let it melt gently, or suddenly, it imports not, so as the liquor boiled, when you did put the butter in; when the butter is melted, then take it from the fire, and holding the handle in your hand, shake it round a good while and strongly, and it will come to be thick, that you may almost cut it with a Knife. Then squeese juyce of Limon into it, or of sharp Orange, or Verjuyce or Vinegar; and heat it again as much as you please upon the fire. It will ever after continue thick, and never again, upon any heating, grow oily, though it be cold and heated again twenty times. Butter done with fair water, as is said above, with the other Liquor, will be thick in the same manner, (for the liquors make no difference in that:)

Put of this butter to boiled Pease in their dish, which cover with another; so shake them very strongly, and a good while together. This is by much the best way to butter pease, and not to let the butter melt in the middle of them, and then stir them long with a spoon. This will grow Oily (though it be good at the first doing) if you heat them again: The other, never; and therefore, is the best way upon all occasions to make such thickened melted Butter. You may make sauce for a Pike in the same manner you did for a Carpe; putting Horse-radish to it if you please.

A HERRING-PYE

Put great store of sliced Onions, with Currants and Raisins of the Sun both above and under the Herrings, and store of Butter, and so bake them.

A SYLLABUB

Take a reasonable quantity (as about half a Porrenger full) of the Syrup, that hath served in the making of dryed plums; and into a large Syllabub-pot milk or squirt, or let fall from high a sufficient quantity of Milk or Cream. This Syrup is very quick of the fruit, and very weak of Sugar; and therefore makes the Syllabub exceeding well tasted. You may also use the Syrup used in the like manner in the drying of Cherries.

BUTTER AND OIL TO FRY FISH

The best Liquor to fry Fish in, is to take Butter and Salet Oyl, first well clarified together. This hath not the unsavoury taste of Oyl alone, nor the blackness of Butter alone. It fryeth Fish crisp, yellow, and well tasted.

TO PREPARE SHRIMPS FOR DRESSING

When you will Butter Shrimps, first wash them well in warm Milk and Water equally mingled together, and let them soak a little in it; then wash them again in fresh Milk and Water warmed, letting them also soak therein a while. Do this twice or thrice with fresh Milk and Water. This will take away all the rankness and slimyness of them. Then Butter them, or prepare them for the table, as you think fit.

TOSTS OF VEAL

My Lady Lusson makes thus her plain tosts of kidney of Veal: Cut the kidney with all the fat about it, and a good piece of the lean flesh besides. Hash all this as small as you can. Put to it a quarter of a pound of picked and washed Currants, and as much Sugar, one Nutmeg grated, four yolks and two whites of new-laid Eggs raw; work all these very well together, seasoning it with Salt. Spread it thick upon slices of light white-bread cut like tosts. Then fry them in Butter, such quantity as may boil over the tops of the tosts.

TO MAKE MUSTARD

The best way of making Mustard is this: Take of the best Mustard-seed (which is black) for example a quart. Dry it gently in an oven, and beat it to subtle powder, and searse it. Then mingle well strong Wine-vinegar with it, so much that it be pretty liquid, for it will dry with keeping. Put to this a little Pepper beaten small (white is the best) at discretion, as about a good pugil, and put a good spoonful of Sugar to it (which is not to make it taste sweet, but rather quick, and to help the fermentation) lay a good Onion in the bottom, quartered if you will, and a Race of Ginger scraped and bruised; and stir it often with a Horse-radish root cleansed, which let always lie in the pot, till it have lost it's vertue, then take a new one. This will keep long, and grow better for a while. It is not good till after a month, that it have fermented a while.

Some think it will be the quicker, if the seed be ground with fair water, in stead of vinegar, putting store of Onions in it.

My Lady Holmeby makes her quick fine Mustard thus: Choose true Mustard-seed; dry it in an oven, after the bread is out. Beat and searse it to a most subtle powder. Mingle Sherry-sack with it (stirring it a long time very well, so much as to have it of a fit consistence for Mustard. Then put a good quantity of fine Sugar to it, as five or six spoonfuls, or more, to a pint of Mustard. Stir and incorporate all well together. This will keep good a long time. Some do like to put to it a little (but a little) of very sharp Wine-vinegar.

TO MAKE A WHITE-POT

Boil three pints of sweet Cream with a very little Salt and some sliced Nutmeg. As soon as it begins to boil, take it from the fire. In the mean time beat the yolks of twelve or fifteen new-laid Eggs very well with some Rose or Orange-flower-water, and sweeten the Cream to your taste with Sugar. Then beat three or four spoonfuls of Cream with them, and quickly as many more; so proceeding, till you have incorporated all the Cream and all the Eggs. Then pour the Eggs and Cream into a deep dish laid over with sippets of fine light bread, which will rise up to the top for the most part. When it is cooled and thickened enough to bear Raisins of the Sun, strew all over the top with them (well-washed.) Then press a little way into it with great lumps of raw Marrow. Two bones will suffice. Cover your dish with another, and set it upon a great pot of boiling water, with a good space between the water and the dish, that there be room for the hot steam to rise and strike upon the dish. Keep good fire always under your pot. In less then an hour (usually) it is baked enough. You will perceive that, if the Marrow look brown, and be enough baked. If it should continue longer on the heat, it would melt. You may bake it in an oven if you will; but it is hard to regulate it so, that it be not too much or too little: whereas the boiling water is certain. You may strew Ambred Sugar upon it, either before you set it to bake, or after it is done.

FOR ROSTING OF MEAT

To rost fine meat (as Partridge, Pheasant, Chicken, Pigeon) that it be full of juyce; baste it as soon as it is through hot, and time to baste, with Butter. When it is very moist all over, sprinkle flower upon it every where, that by turning about the fire, it may become a thin crust. Then baste it no more till the latter end. This crust will keep in all the juyce. A little before you take it up, baste it again with Butter, and this will melt away all the crust. Then give it three or four turns of the spit, that it may make the outside yellow and crisp.

You may also baste such meat with yolks of new-laid Eggs, beaten into a thin oyl. But with this you continue basting all the while the meat rosteth.

TO STEW A RUMP OF BEEF

Take a rump of Beef, break all the bones; season it with Pepper and Salt to your liking; Take three or four Nutmegs, and a quantity of Mace, beat them grossly; Then take a bunch of very good sweet herbs, and one good Onion cut in quarters, or Garlike, as you like it. Put in half a pint of White-wine Vinegar, and one pint of good Claret, one handful of Sugar; and a piece or two of beef Suet or Butter: shred some Cabbage under and over, and scrape in a pound of good old Cheese. Put all these into an earthen pot, and let it stand in an oven with brown-bread four or five hours; but let the pot be covered close with paste.

TO STEW A RUMP OF BEEF

Take a fat rump of young Beef, as it comes from the Butcher, and take out all the bones, excepting the tip of it towards the tail that is all fat, which you cannot take out, without spoiling or defacing or breaking it. But take out all the thick bones towards the Chine, and the thick Sinews, that are on the outer sides of the flesh; (which will never become tender with boiling) so that you have nothing but the pure flesh and fat, without any bony or tough substance. Then beat well the lean part with a woodden roling pin, and when you have beaten well one side, turn the other. Then rub it well with Pepper grosly beaten, and salt; just as you would do, to season a Venison pasty, making the seasoning higher or gentler according to your taste. Then lay it in a fit vessel, with a flat bottom (pipkin or kettle as you have conveniency) that will but just contain it, but so that it may lye at ease. Or you may tye it up in a loose thin linnen cloth, or boulter, as they do Capons _à la mode_, or Brawn, or the like. Then put water upon it, but just to cover it, and boil it close covered a matter of two hours pretty smartly, so that it be well half boiled. Then take it out of that, and put it into another fit vessel, or the same cleansed, and put upon it about two quarts of good strong deep well bodied Claret-wine, and a good bundle of sweet-herbs, (Penny-royal, Sweet-Marjoram, Winter-savory, Limon Thyme, &c.) and a good large Onion peeled, and stuck as close with Cloves, as you can stick it, if you like the taste of Onions. They must be the strong biting Onions, that are round and red: a little Nutmeg, and some Mace. Put to the wine about a pint of the Liquor that you have already boiled the Beef in; and if you would have it strong of the seasoning of Pepper, and Salt; take the bottom of this Liquor. Thus let it boil very gently, simpringly, or rather stew with Char-coal over a little furnace, or a fit Chafing-dish, a matter of three hours, close covered. If the Liquor waste too much, you may recruit it with what you have kept of that, which your beef was boiled in. When it is near time to take it up, stew some Oysters in their own Liquor (to which you may add at the latter end, some of the winy Liquor, that the Beef is now stewing in, or some of the first Beef-broth, or use some good pickled Oysters) and at the same time make some thin tostes of Kingstone manchet, which toste very leisurely, or rather dry them throughly, and very hard, and Crisp, but not burned, by lying long before the fire. And if you have fresh Champignons, dress a good dish full of them, to be ready at the same time, when all the rest is ready; If not, use pickled ones, without further dressing. When you find your Beef is as tender as can be, and will scarcely hold together, to be taken up together, and that all the other things are ready, lay the tostes in the dish, where the Beef is to lye; pour some of the Liquor upon it. Then lay the Beef upon the tosts; throw away the bundle of Herbs and Onions; and pour the rest of the Liquor upon the Beef, as also the Oysters, and the Mushrooms, to which add a pretty deal, about half a pint of Broom-buds: and so let it stand a while well covered over coals to Mittoner; and to have all the several substances communicate their tastes to one another, and to have the tostes swell up like a gelly. Then serve it up. If you want Liquor, you may still recruit your self out of the first Beef-broth, which you keep all to supply any want afterwards. Have a care, whiles it is stewing, in the Winy-liquor, to lift the flesh sometimes up from the bottom of the vessel, least if it should lye always still, it may stick to the bottom, and burn; but you cannot take it out, for it would fall in pieces. It will be yet better meat, if you add to it, at the last (when you add all the other heightnings) some Marrow, and some Chess-nuts, and some Pistachios, if you will. Put to your Broom-buds (before you put them in to the rest) some elder Vinegar, enough to soak them, and even to cover them. If you find this make your composition of the whole too sharp, you may next time take less. When you put the Beef to stew with the wine (or a while after) you may put to it a pretty quantity (as much as you can take in both hands at once) of shreded Cabbage, if it be the season; or of Turneps, if you like either of these. Carrots make it somewhat flat. If the wine be not quick enough, you may put a little elder Vinegar to it. If you like Garlike, you may put in a little, or rub the dish with it.

PICKLED CHAMPIGNONS

Champignons are best, that grow upon gravelly dry rising Grounds. Gather them of the last nights growth; and to preserve them white, it is well to cast them into a pitcher of fair-water, as you gather them: But that is not absolutely necessary, if you will go about dressing them as soon as you come home. Cut the great ones into halves or quarters, seeing carefully there be no worms in them; and peel off their upper skin on the tops: the little ones, peel whole. As you peel them, throw them into a bason of fair-water, which preserves them white. Then put them into a pipkin or possnet of Copper (no Iron) and put a very little water to them, and a large proportion of Salt. If you have a pottle of Mushrooms, you may put to them ten or twelve spoonfuls of water, and two or three of Salt. Boil them with pretty quick-fire, and scum them well all the while, taking away a great deal of foulness, that will rise. They will shrink into a very little room. When they are sufficiently parboiled to be tender, and well cleansed of their scum, (which will be in about a quarter of an hour,) take them out, and put them into a Colander, that all the moisture may drain from them. In the mean time make your pickle thus: Take a quart of pure sharp white Wine Vinegar (elder-Vinegar is best) put two or three spoonfuls of whole Pepper to it, twenty or thirty Cloves, one Nutmeg quartered, two or three flakes of Mace, three Bay-leaves; (some like Limon-Thyme and Rose-mary; but then it must be a very little of each) boil all these together, till the Vinegar be well impregnated with the Ingredients, which will be in about half an hour. Then take it from the fire, and let it cool. When the pickle is quite cold, and the Mushrooms also quite cold, and drained from all moisture: put them into the Liquor (with all the Ingredients in it) which you must be sure, be enough to cover them. In ten or twelve days, they will have taken into them the full taste of the pickle, and will keep very good half a year. If you have much supernatant Liquor, you may parboil more Mushrooms next day, and put them to the first. If you have not gathered at once enough for a dressing, you may keep them all night in water to preserve them white, and gather more the next day, to joyn to them.

TO STEW WARDENS OR PEARS