The receipt for making farsed browet, or browet farsyn, is literally as follows:—
Take almonds and pound them, and mix with beef broth, so as to make it thick, and put it in a pot with cloves, maces, and figs, currants, and minced ginger, and let all this seethe; take bread, and steep it in sweet wine, and “draw it up,” and put it to the almonds with sugar; then take conyngs (rabbits), or rabbettes (young rabbits), or squirrels, and first parboil and then fry them, and partridges parboiled; fry them whole for a lord, but otherwise chop them into gobbets; and when they are almost fried, cast them in a pot, and let them boil altogether, and colour with sandal-wood and saffron; then add vinegar and powdered cinnamon strained with wine, and give it a boil; then take it from the fire, and see that the pottage is thin, and throw in a good quantity of powdered ginger.
It is repeated, at the end of this receipt, that, for a lord, a coney, rabbit, squirrel, or partridge, should be served whole in this manner. The other pottage in this course, charlet, was less complex, and was made thus:—
Take sweet cow’s milk, put it in a pan, throw into it the yolks and white of eggs, and boiled pork, pounded, and sage; let it boil till it curds, and colour it with saffron.
The following was the syrup for a capon:—
Take almonds, and pound them, and mix them with wine, till they make a thick “milk,” and colour it with saffron, and put it in a saucepan, and put into it a good quantity of figs and currants, and add ground ginger, cloves, galingale (a spice much used in the middle ages), and cinnamon; let all this boil; add sugar, and pour it over your capon or pheasant.
The leche in this first course was, perhaps, the dish which is called in the receipts a leche lumbarde, which was made thus:—
Take raw pork, and pull off the skin, and pick out the skin sinews, and pound the pork in a mortar with raw eggs; add to it sugar, salt, raisins, currants, minced dates, powdered pepper, and cloves; put it in a bladder, and let it seethe till it be done enough, and then cut it into slips of the form of peas-cods: grind raisins in a mortar, mix them with red wine, and put to them almond-milk, coloured with sandal-wood and saffron, and add pepper and cloves, and then boil the whole; when it is boiled, mix cinnamon and ginger with wine and pour on it, and so serve it.
Browet of Almayne, which comes in with the second course of this dinner, was a rather celebrated pottage. It was made in the following manner:—
Take coneys, and parboil them, and chop them in gobbets, and put them with ribs of pork or kid into a pot, and seethe it; then take ground almonds, and mix them with beef broth, and put this in a pot with cloves, maces, pines, minced ginger, and currants, and with onions, and boil it, and colour it with saffron, and when this is boiled, take the flesh out from the broth, and put it in it; and take “alkanet” (alkanet is explained in the dictionaries as the name of a plant, wild buglos; it appears to have been used in cookery to give colour), and fry it, and press it into the pot through a strainer, and finally add a little vinegar and ground ginger mixed together.