The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened by Sir Kenelm Digby (best e reader for epub .txt) 📖

Sugar; you must mingle them before you put in your Suet. Fat double tripes boiled tender, then minced, make very good Pyes.


TO MAKE A FRENCH BARLEY POSSET

Take two quarts of Milk to half a pound of French-barley; boil it, until it is enough; when the Milk is almost boiled away, put to it three Pintes of good Cream. Let it boil together a quarter of an hour; then sweeten it; and put in Mace, Cinnamon in the beginning, when you first put in your Cream. When you have done so, take White-wine a Pint, or Sack and White-wine together, of each half a Pint; sweeten it, as you love it, with Sugar; pour in all the Cream, but leave your Barley behind in the Skillet. This will make an Excellent Posset; nothing else but a tender Curd to the bottom; let it stand on the Coals half a quarter of an hour.


TO MAKE PUFF-PAST

Take a Gill of cold-water; two whites of Eggs, and one yolk; to a quart of Flower one pound of Butter; so rowl it up, but keep out of the Flower so much as will rowl it up.


TO MAKE A PUDDING WITH PUFF-PAST

Take a new French peny-loaf, and slice it very thin, and lay it in a dish; and take three pints of Cream, and boil it with a little Mace and Nutmeg grated; sweeten it with a little Sugar, and add to it a little Salt. Then let it stand till it be cold. Then take ten yolks of Eggs; and beat them very well with two or three spoonfuls of the Cream; then put it into the Cream, and stir them well together: Take the Marrow of three bones; lay half the Marrow upon the bread in good big lumps, and some Citron, and Candid Limon, and what other sweet meats you like. Then pour it all upon the bread; then put the rest of your Marrow on the top with Citron and Candid Limon. I forgat to tell you, that you must lay a Puff-paste at the bottom of the dish, before you put in the bread, and cover it with the same.


TO MAKE PEAR-PUDDINGS

Take a cold Turky, Capon or cold Veal. Shred it very small; and put almost as much Beef-suet as your meat, and mince it very small. Then put Salt and Nutmeg grated, half a pound of Currants; a little grated-bread, and a little Flower. Then put in three yolks of Eggs, and one of the whites, beaten very well. Then take so much Cream, as will wet them, and make them up as big as a Bon-christian pear; and as you make them up, take a little flower in your hand, that they may not cling. Then put in little sticks at the bottom like the stems of Pears; or make them up in Balls. Butter the dish very well, and send them up in the same dish you bake them in. They will be baked in about half an hour: I think the dish needeth not to be covered, whiles it baketh. You may make minced Pyes thus: and bake them with Puff-past in a dish like a Florenden, and use Marrow instead of Suet.


MARROW-PUDDINGS

Take the pith of Beeves; a good spoonful of Almonds very small beaten with Rose-water: beat the pith, when the skin is taken off very well with a spoon; then mingle it with the Almonds, and put in it six yolks of Eggs well beaten, and four spoonfuls of Cream boiled and cold, it must be very thick; put in a little Ambergreece, and as much Sugar, as will sweeten them; a little Salt, and the Marrow of two good bones, cut in little pieces. When your Beefs-guts are seasoned, fit them up and boil them.


TO MAKE RED DEAR

Take a piece of the Buttock of Beef, the leanest of it, and beat it with a rowling-pin the space of an hour, till you think you have broken the grain of it, and have made it very open both to receive the sowsing-drink, and also to make it tender. Then take a pint of Vinegar, and a pint of Claret-wine and let it lie therein two nights, and two days. Then beat a couple of Nutmegs, and put them into the sowsing-drink; then Lard it. Your Lard must be as big as your greatest finger for consuming. Then take Pepper, Cloves, Mace and Nutmegs, and season it very well in every place, and so bake it in Pye-paste, and let it stand in the oven six or seven hours. And when it hath stood three hours in your oven, then put it in your sowsing-drink as is aforesaid; and you may keep it a quarter of a year, if it be kept close.


TO MAKE A SHOULDER OF MUTTON LIKE VENISON

Save the blood of your sheep, and strain it. Take grated bread almost the quantity of a Peny loaf, Pepper, Thyme, chopp'd small; mingle these Ingredients with a little of the blood, and stuff the Mutton. Then wrap up your shoulder of Mutton, and lay it in the blood twenty four hours; prick the shoulder with your Knife, to let the blood into the flesh, and so serve it with Venison Sawce.


TO STEW A RUMP OF BEEF

Take a Rump of Beef, and season it with Nutmegs grated, and some Pepper and Salt mingled together, and season the Beef on the Bony-side; lay it in a pipkin with the flat-side downward. Take three pints of Elder-wine-vinegar, and as much water, and three great Onions, and a bunch of Rosemary tyed up together. Put them all into a Pipkin, and stew them three or four hours together with a soft fire being covered close. Then dish it up upon sippets, blowing off the fat from the Gravy; and some of the Gravy put into the Beef, and serve it up.


TO BOIL SMOAKED FLESH

Mounsieur Overbec doth tell me, that when He boileth a Gambon of Bacon, or any salted flesh and hanged in the smoak (as Neats-tongues, Hung-beef, and Hogs-cheeks, &c.), He putteth into the Kettle of water to boil with them three or four handfuls of fleur de foin , (more or less according to the quantity of flesh and water,) tyed loosly in a bag of course-cloth. This maketh it much tenderer, shorter, mellower, and of a finer colour.


A PLAIN BUT GOOD SPANISH OGLIA

Take a Rump of Beef, or some of Brisket or Buttock cut into pieces, a loin of Mutton, with the superfluous fat taken off, and a fleshy piece of the Leg of Veal or a Knuckle, a piece of enterlarded Bacon, three or 4 Onions (or some Garlike) and if you will, a Capon or two, or three great tame Pigeons. First, put into the water the Beef and the Bacon; After a while, the Mutton and Veal and Onions. But not the Capon or Pigeons till only so much time remain, as will serve barely to boil them enough. If you have
Garavanzas , put them in at the first, after they have been soaked with Ashes all night in heat, and well washed with warm water, after they are taken out; or if you will have Cabbage, or Roots, or Leeks, or whole Onions, put them in time enough to be sufficiently boiled. You may at first put in some Crusts of Bread, or Venison Pye crust. It must boil in all five or six hours gently, like stewing after it is well boiled. A quarter or half an hour before you intend to take it off, take out a porrenger full of broth, and put to it some Pepper and five or six Cloves and a Nutmeg, and some Saffran, and mingle them well in it. Then put that into the pot, and let it boil or stew with the rest a while. You may put in a bundle of Sweet-herbs. Salt must be put in as soon as the water is skimmed.


VUOVA LATTATE

Take a quart of good, but fine broth; beat with it very well eight New laid-eggs (whites and all) and put in a little Sugar, and if you will a little Amber, or some Mace, or Nutmeg. Put all this into a fit Pipkin, and set this in a great one, or a kettle of boiling water, till it be stiffened like a Custard.


VUOVA SPERSA

When some broth is boiling in a Pipkin, pour into it some Eggs well beaten, and they will curdle in a lump, when they are enough; take them out with a holed ladle, and lay them upon the bread in the Minestra.


TO MAKE EXCELLENT BLACK-PUDDINGS

Take a quart of Sheeps blood, and a quart of Cream; ten Eggs, the yolks and the whites beaten well together; stir all this Liquor very well, then thicken it with grated Bread, and Oat-meal finely beaten, of each a like quantity; Beef-suet finely shred and Marrow in little lumps: season it with a little Nutmeg and Cloves and Mace mingled with Salt, a little Sweet-marjoram, Thyme and Peny-royal shred very well together, and mingle them with the other things: Some put in a few Currants; then fill them in cleansed guts, and boil them carefully.


A RECEIPT TO MAKE WHITE PUDDINGS

Take a fillet of Veal, and a good fleshy Capon; then half rost them both, and take off their skins: which being done, take only the wings and brawns with an equal proportion of Veal, which must be shred very small as is done for Sassages. To this shred half a pound of the belly part of interlarded Bacon, and half a pound of the finest leaf ( la panne ) of Hog cleared from the skin; then take the yolks of eighteen or twenty Eggs, and the whites of six well beaten with as much Milk and Cream, as will make it of convenient thickness; and then season it with Salt, Cloves, Nutmeg, Mace, Pepper, and Ginger, if you please. The Puddings must be boiled in half Milk and half water. You are to use small-guts, such as for white-Marrow-puddings, and they are to be cleansed in the Ordinary manner; and filled very lankley; for they will swell much in the boiling, and break if they be too full.


TO MAKE AN EXCELLENT PUDDING

Take of the Tripes of Veal the whitest and finest you can find; wash them well, and let them lie in fair Fountain or River water, till they do not smell like Tripes. This done, cut them so small as is necessary to pass through a Funnel. Take also one or two pounds of Pork, that hath not been salted, and cut it as small as the Tripes, and mingle them altogether; which season with Salt, White-pepper, Anis-seeds beaten and Coriander-seeds; Then make a Liaison with a little Milk and yolks of Eggs; and after all is well mingled and thickned, as it ought to be, you must fill with it the greatest guts of a Hog, that may be had, with a Funnel of White iron, having first tyed the end of the gut below. Do not fill it too full, for fear they should break in the boiling, but leave room enough for the flesh to swell. When you are going to boil them, put them into a Kettle with as much Milk as will cover and boil them, being boiled, let them lie in the liquor till they are almost cold, then take them out and lay them in a basket upon a clean linnen cloth to cool.