Robert May

“ After the hogs Umbles are tender boil’d, take some of the lights with the heart, and all the flesh about them, picking from them all the sinewy skins, then chop the meat as small as you can, and put to it a little of the liver very finely searsed, some grated nutmeg, four or five yolks of eggs, a pint of very good cream, two or three spoonfuls of sack, sugar, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cinamon, caraway-seed, a little rose-water, good store of hogs fat, and some salt: roul it in rouls two hours before you go to fill them in the guts, and lay the guts in steep in rose-water till you fill them. ”

“ Strain the liquor from the oysters, wash them, and parboil them in a kettle, then dry them and roul them in flour, or make a batter with eggs, flour, a little cream, and salt, roul them in it, and fry them in butter. For the sauce, boil the juyce of two or three oranges, some of their own liquor, a slic’t nutmeg, and claret; being boil’d a little, put in a piece of butter, beating it up thick, then warm the dish, rub it with a clove of garlick, dish the oysters, and garnish them with slices of orange. ”

“ Take a live carp, draw and wash it, and take away the gall, and milt, or spawn; then make a pudding with some grated manchet, some almond-paste, cream, currans, grated nutmeg, raw yolks of eggs, sugar, caraway-seed candied, or any peel, some lemon and salt, make a stiff pudding and put it through the gills into the belly of the carp, neither scale it, nor fill it too full; then spit it, and roust it in the oven upon two or three sticks cross a brass dish, turn it and let the gravy drop into the dish ”

“ It is impossible for any Author to please all People, no more than the best Cook can fancy their Palats whose Mouths are always out of taste. As for those who make it their business to hide their Candle under a Bushel, to do only good to themselves, and not to others, such as will curse me for revealing the Secrets of this Art, I value the discharge of my own Conscience, in doing Good, above all their malice ”

“ To be confined and limited to the narrowness of a Purse, is to want the Materials from which the Artist must gain his knowledge. Those Honourable Persons, my Lord Lumley, and others, with whom I have spent a part of my time, were such whose generous cost never weighed the Expence, so that they might arrive to that right and high esteem they had of their Gusto’s. ”

“ Split the head as to boil, and take out the brains washing them very well with the head, cut out the tongue, boil it a little, and blanch it, let the brains be parbol’d as well as tongue, then mince the brains and tongue, a little sage, oysters, beef-suet, very small; being finely minced, mix them together with three or four yolks of eggs, beaten ginger, pepper, nutmegs, grated bread, salt, and a little sack, if the brains and eggs make it not moist enough. ”