“And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.”
In Peele’s “Old Wives’ Tale,” it is said:
“Lay a crab in the fire to roast for lamb’s wool.”[464]
And in Herrick’s “Poems:”
“Now crowne the bowle
With gentle lamb’s wooll,
Add sugar, and nutmegs, and ginger.”
(d) The “codling,” spoken of by Malvolio in “Twelfth Night” (i. 5)—“Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is before ’tis a peascod, or a codling when ’tis almost an apple”—is not the variety now so called, but was the popular term for an immature apple, such as would require cooking to be eaten, being derived from “coddle,” to stew or boil lightly—hence it denoted a boiling apple, an apple for coddling or boiling.[465] Mr. Gifford[466] says that codling was used by our old writers for that early state of vegetation when the fruit, after shaking off the blossom, began to assume a globular and determinate form.
(e) The “leather-coat” was the apple generally known as “the golden russeting.”[467] Davy, in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 3), says: “There is a dish of leather-coats for you.”
(f) The “pippin” was formerly a common term for an apple, to which reference is made in “Hudibras Redivivus” (1705):
“A goldsmith telling o’er his cash,
A pipping-monger selling trash.”
In Taylor’s “Workes”[468] (1630) we read: