A Book of Simples

by Unknown

404. To order Venison to keep it cold a year round w^th y^e Gravey in it.

Take when your venison is boned and good Sweet and fat bacon thin sliced and y^r seasoning spices ready by you about a pint of claret wine and a clean bunch of feathers then slit all the lean parts of your venison about the length of your finger dip your feathers in the wine and wet the slit then put in some of the seasoning of the Sweet Spices made of nutmegs cloves Jamacoe pepper and a little ginger and Salt and then to that a slice of thin sliced bacon and thus do in all the lean parts of your venison slitting it and weting the slits with the wine and then filling up the slits with the Seasonings and sliced bacon then put into the bottom of the pot you bake and keep it in some good beef sewit and your ordinary of Seasoning pepper and salt among your sewit & all over your venison and sit your venison to the side of your pot and put good Sweet butter also at the bottom of your pot and round the sides and some of your seasoning and the remainder of your wine then turn down the best and top of your venison the flatest part to the bottom of the pot in the baking and keeping it so till you come to spend it seting it into the oven with some brown bread and when you draw it forth press out the gravie as well as you can and as hot with a trencher and a great weight on it washing your weight and trencher clean ere used then put all the gravie you strain out into a larger skillet then it will hold that you may also put to it the gravie of the bones baked and broken ere you bake them with wine and seasoning of Sweet Spices which when you have drain’d from the baked bones add to the former gravie and then take a faggot of Sweet marjerom bay leaves a little pennyroyall and a little rosemary ty’d up in a fagot and put into your gravie and then take a clean stick and measure the depth of your gravie in your skellet and make a nick in the stick at the middle of depth, that you may be sure to boyle half away by the measure of your stick then take it off the fire and pour it as hot as you can into your pot of venison and so let it stand till it be cold gently pressing down your venison before it be quite cold that the meat may be cover’d and sink down to bottom and the gravie cake over it Remember to take out the fagot of herbs ere you put your gravie to your meat if it cake hard over then noe butter need be aded to keep it the year round but if it be thin you must add butter melt’d up to cover it but pour it not to your gravie till it be cold and head’d pour your melt’d butter on it no warmer than just to run all over it and when quite cold cover up your pot with a board and paper that no air nor vermine as rats or mice come to it and it will keep a year round very good but when you come to spend it take off the stale butter and set it in a Kettle of water to melt it off and let none of the water get in but when throughly hot take your pot out pour off the stale butter and turn out your venison the bottom upwards as being the best and put fresh butter to it and when cold it will eat as if new done but while it is spending wherever cut it must be cover’d again with butter or it will turn vinie if it stand to take air where cut the pot you turn it into ought to be a sweet and well seasoned pot w^th some fresh butter in it.

405. To make Wigs.

Take 3 pound and a half of fine flour a pound of butter melt’d in a pint of milk and a quart of good ale yest half a pound of Sugar mix’t in your butter milk and yest halfe an ounce of cloves mace and nutmegs a quarter of an ounce of carraway seeds a little salt mingle all these well together in your flour working them all into a pretty stiff paste w^th your hands & weigh out about 4 ounces to a wig and So rowle them up into wigs and bake them upon paper or tin plates butter.

406. To dry Goosberryes Plummes or Angelicoe.

Take your goosberries the fairest you can get or your plummes and slit them on the side with a penknife or on the top and lay them in hot water and so let them lay in the hot water till they be tender as you will have them at all then take them out and put them into cold water your goosberrys or plummes and let them lay a week or 10 days till the water be very sharpe of the taste but the angelicoe must lay in water but 4 days then make a very strong sirrop and so boyle them up you must keep your angelicoe a fortnight in your sirrop then take it out of your sirrop and lay it on a confectioners wyer to dry over a charcole fire throughly kindled that there be no smoake in the kindled coales of either wood or cole if you have occasion to dry oringes or lemons keep y^m in a strong sirrop till a day or 2 before you use them and dry them after the same manner they will be dry in half an hour or Less, dry without & moist within and this way will make your fruit green enough without any peeling and also your angelicoe.

407. To Roste a Haunch of Venison.

Skin and bone your venison beat it and season it as you like best sweet or hot spices salt and herbs such as please your taste best then coller it as you do beef with some butter or bacon with your Seasoning tyeing it hard with pack thread wraping it up first in the caul or skin of the venison so tye it on to your spit Save what drops from it in rosting for your Sauce rosting it very well and so Serve it up.

408. To make the Cockleshell Sweetmeat.

Take some double refined Sugar and search it very fine through a fine sive and beat it into a stiff paste with a white of an egg and rowle it very thin and put it on your shells and dry it in a stove or in the sun you may colour y^m as you please.