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

with all the clotted thick blood, under it, upon it, and hanging about it. You may season the blood with Pepper and Salt, before you lay the meat in it. But though you do not, it will not be amiss, so as the meat be seasoned high enough. Then bake it as you do an ordinary Pasty; and you may put gravy of Mutton or strong broth into it. You may do it in a dish with past; as My Lady of Newport doth Her Venison. This way of steeping in blood before you bake it, is very good also for Venison.


TO MAKE AN EXCELLENT HARE-PYE

Hash the flesh of as many Hares, as you please, very small. Then beat them strongly in a Mortar into a Paste, which season duly with Pepper and Salt. Lard it throughly all over with great Lardons of Lard well rowled in Pepper and Salt. Put this into a straight earthen pot, to lye close in it. If you like Onions, you may put one or two quartered into the bottom of the Pot. Put store of Sweet-butter upon the meat, and upon that, some strong red Claret-wine. Cover the pot with a double strong brown paper, tyed close about the mouth of it. Set it to bake with houshold-bread (or in an oven, as a Venison pasty) for eight or ten hours. Then take out the pot, and thence the meat, and pour away all the Liquor, which let settle. Then take all the congealed Butter, and clarifie it well. Put your meat again into the pot, and put upon it your clarified Butter, and as much more as is necessary. And I believe the putting of Claret-wine to it now is better, and to omit it before. Bake it again, but a less while. Pour out all the Liquor, when it is baked, and clarifie the Butter again, and pour it upon the meat, and so let it cool; The Butter must be at least two or three fingers breadth over the meat.


TO BAKE BEEF

Bone it, and beat it exceeding well on all sides, with a roling pin, upon a table. Then season it with Pepper and Salt, (rubbing them in very well) and some Parsley, and a few Sweet herbs (Penny-royal, Winter-savoury, Sweet-marjoram, Limon Thyme, Red-sage, which yet to some seems to have a Physical taste) an Onion if you will. Squeese it into the pot as close as you can. Put Butter upon it, and Claret-wine, and covered all as above. Bake it in a strong oven eight or ten hours. Take it out of the oven, and the meat out of the pot, which make clean, from all settlings; and squeese all the juyce from it (even by a gentle press.) Then put it in again hard pressed into the pot. Clarifie the Butter, that you poured with the Liquor from the meat out of the pot; and pour it again with more flesh, to have enough to cover it two or three fingers thick.


TO BAKE PIDGEONS, (WHICH ARE THUS EXCELLENT, AND WILL KEEP A QUARTER OF A YEAR) OR TEALS, OR WILD-DUCKS

Season them duly with Pepper and Salt; then lay them in the pot, and put store of Butter, and some Claret-wine to them. Cover and bake as above: but a less while according to the tenderness of the meat. In due time take out your pot, and your birds out of it, which press not, but only wipe off the Liquor. Pour it out all. Clarifie the Butter; put in the birds again, and the clarified butter, and as much more as needs (all melted) upon them, and let it cool. You may put a few Bay-leaves upon any of these baked meats, between the meat and the Butter.


GREEN-GEESE-PYE

An excellent cold Pye is thus made. Take two fat Green-geese; bone them, and lay them in paste one upon the other, seasoning them well with Pepper and Salt, and some little Nutmeg, both above and below and between the two Geese. When it is well-baked and out of the oven, pour in melted Butter at a hole made in the top. The crust is much better than of a Stubble-goose.


TO BOIL BEEF OR VENISON TENDER AND SAVOURY

The way to have Beef tenderest, short and best boiled, as my Lord of Saint Alban's useth it, is thus. Take a rump or brisket of beef; keep it without salt as long as you may, without danger to have it smell ill. For so it groweth mellow and tender, which it would not do, if it were presently salted. When it is sufficiently mortified, rub it well with Salt; let it lie so but a day and a night, or at most two nights and a day. Then boil it in no more water then is necessary. Boil it pretty smartly at first, but afterwards but a simpring or stewing boiling, which must continue seven or eight hours. Sometimes he boileth it half over night, and the rest next morning. If you should not have time to Salt it, you may supply that want thus; When the Beef is through boiled, you may put so much Salt into the pot as to make the broth like brine, and then boil it gently an hour longer; or take out the Beef, and put it into a deep dish, and put to it some of his broth made brine, and cover it with another dish, and stew it so an hour. A hanch of Venison may be done the same way.


TO BAKE WILDE-DUCKS OR TEALS

Season your Duck and Teal with Pepper and Salt, both within and without, so much as you think may season them; then crack their bones with a roling pin; then put them into an earthen pot close, and cover them with Butter, and bake them in an oven as hot as for bread, and let them stand three or four hours; when you take them out of the oven, pour out all the Liquor from them, then melt so much Butter as will cover them; when you have melted your Butter, let it stand a while, until all the dross be settled to the bottom, and put in the clear Butter, which must cover the Fowl.


TO SEASON HUMBLE-PYES: AND TO ROST WILDE-DUCKS

Bake Humble-Pyes without chapping them small in a Pye, seasoned with Pepper and Salt, adding a pretty deal of Parsley, a little sweet-marjoram and Savoury, and a very little Thyme.

Rost wilde Ducks putting into their Bellies some Sage and a little Onion (both well shreded) wrought into a lump with butter, adding a little Pepper and Salt. And let their sauce be a little gravy of Mutton, to enlarge the seasoned gravy, that comes from the Ducks when they are cut up.


TO SOUCE TURKEYS

Take a good fat Turkey or two; dress them clean, and bone them; then tye them up in the manner of Sturgeon with some thing clean washed. Take your kettle, and put into it a pottle of good White-wine, a quart of Water, and a quart of Vinegar; make it boil, and season it with Salt pretty well. Then put in your Turkeys, and let them boil till they be very tender. When they are enough boiled, take them out, and taste the Liquor; if it be not sharp enough, put more Vinegar, and let it boil a little; then put it into an earthen pot, that will hold both Turkeys. When it is cold enough, and the Turkeys through-cold, put them into the Liquor in the Pot, and be sure they be quite covered with the Liquor; Let them lye in it three weeks or a month; Then serve it to the table, with Fennel on it, and eat it with elder Vinegar.

You may do a Capon or two put together in the same manner: but first larding it with great Lardons rowled in Pepper and Salt. A shorter time lying in the pickle will serve.


AN EXCELLENT MEAT OF GOOSE OR TURKEY

Take a fat Goose, and Powder it with Salt eight or ten days; Then boil it tender, and put it into pickle, like Sturgeon-pickle. You may do the like with a very fat Turkey; but the best pickle of that is, the Italian Marinating, boiling Mace, Nutmeg, &c. in it. You may boil Garlick in the belly of the fouls, if you like it, or in the pickle.


TO PICKLE AN OLD FAT GOOSE

Cut it down the back, and take out all the bones; Lard it very well with green Bacon, and season it well with three quarters of an Ounce of Pepper; half an Ounce of Ginger; a quarter of an Ounce of Cloves, and Salt as you judge proportionable; a pint of white wine and some Butter. Put three or four Bay-leaves under the meat, and bake it with Brown-bread in an earthen pot close covered, and the edges of the cover closed with Paste. Let it stand three or four days in the pickle; then eat it cold with Vinegar.


ABOUT ORDERING BACON FOR GAMBONS, AND TO KEEP

At Franckfort they use the following cautions about the Bacon they salt for Gambons or sides to keep. The best is of male Hogs of two year old, that have been gelt, when they were young. They kill them in the wane of the Moon, from a day or two after the full, till the last quarter. They fetch off their hair with warm-water, not by burning (which melteth the fat, and maketh it apt to grow resty), and after it hath lain in the open air a full day, they salt it with dry Salt, rubbing it in well: Then lay what quantity you will in a tub for seven or eight days (in which time the Salt dissolveth to water); then take it out, and wipe it dry, and hang it in a room, where they keep fire, either on a hearth, or that smoak cometh out of a stove into the room (as most of those rooms do smoak) but hang them not in the Chimney, that the hot smoak striketh upon them; but if you have a very large Chimney, hang them pretty high and aside, that the smoak may not come full upon them. After a while, (when they are dry) take them thence, and hang them from the smoak in a dry warm room. When the weather groweth warm as in May, there will drop from them a kinde of melted oyly grease, and they will heat, and grow resty, if not remedied. Take them down then, and lay them in a cold dry place, with hay all about them, that one may not touch another. Change the Hay every thirty, or twenty, or fifteen days, till September, when the weather groweth cool; then hang them up again in the free air, in a dry Chamber. If you make the shoulders into Gambons, you must have a care to cut away a little piece of flesh within, called in Dutch the Mause; for if that remain in it, the Bacon will grow resty.


TO MAKE A TANSEY

Take Spinage, Sorrel, Tansey, Wheat, a quart of Cream; bread (the quantity of a two peny loaf) twenty Eggs, and half the whites, one Nutmeg, half a pound of Sugar, and the juyce of a couple of Limons. Spinage is the chief herb to have the juyce; Wheat also is very good, when it is young and tender. You must not take much Sorrel, for fear of turning the Cream; but less Tansey, so little that it may not taste distinctly