The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, Sir Kenelm Digby [books to read in a lifetime .txt] 📗

Eggs raw; work all these very well together, seasoning it with Salt. Spread it thick upon slices of light white-bread cut like tosts. Then fry them in Butter, such quantity as may boil over the tops of the tosts.


TO MAKE MUSTARD

The best way of making Mustard is this: Take of the best Mustard-seed (which is black) for example a quart. Dry it gently in an oven, and beat it to subtle powder, and searse it. Then mingle well strong Wine-vinegar with it, so much that it be pretty liquid, for it will dry with keeping. Put to this a little Pepper beaten small (white is the best) at discretion, as about a good pugil, and put a good spoonful of Sugar to it (which is not to make it taste sweet, but rather quick, and to help the fermentation) lay a good Onion in the bottom, quartered if you will, and a Race of Ginger scraped and bruised; and stir it often with a Horse-radish root cleansed, which let always lie in the pot, till it have lost it's vertue, then take a new one. This will keep long, and grow better for a while. It is not good till after a month, that it have fermented a while.

Some think it will be the quicker, if the seed be ground with fair water, in stead of vinegar, putting store of Onions in it.

My Lady Holmeby makes her quick fine Mustard thus: Choose true Mustard-seed; dry it in an oven, after the bread is out. Beat and searse it to a most subtle powder. Mingle Sherry-sack with it (stirring it a long time very well, so much as to have it of a fit consistence for Mustard. Then put a good quantity of fine Sugar to it, as five or six spoonfuls, or more, to a pint of Mustard. Stir and incorporate all well together. This will keep good a long time. Some do like to put to it a little (but a little) of very sharp Wine-vinegar.


TO MAKE A WHITE-POT

Boil three pints of sweet Cream with a very little Salt and some sliced Nutmeg. As soon as it begins to boil, take it from the fire. In the mean time beat the yolks of twelve or fifteen new-laid Eggs very well with some Rose or Orange-flower-water, and sweeten the Cream to your taste with Sugar. Then beat three or four spoonfuls of Cream with them, and quickly as many more; so proceeding, till you have incorporated all the Cream and all the Eggs. Then pour the Eggs and Cream into a deep dish laid over with sippets of fine light bread, which will rise up to the top for the most part. When it is cooled and thickened enough to bear Raisins of the Sun, strew all over the top with them (well-washed.) Then press a little way into it with great lumps of raw Marrow. Two bones will suffice. Cover your dish with another, and set it upon a great pot of boiling water, with a good space between the water and the dish, that there be room for the hot steam to rise and strike upon the dish. Keep good fire always under your pot. In less then an hour (usually) it is baked enough. You will perceive that, if the Marrow look brown, and be enough baked. If it should continue longer on the heat, it would melt. You may bake it in an oven if you will; but it is hard to regulate it so, that it be not too much or too little: whereas the boiling water is certain. You may strew Ambred Sugar upon it, either before you set it to bake, or after it is done.


FOR ROSTING OF MEAT

To rost fine meat (as Partridge, Pheasant, Chicken, Pigeon) that it be full of juyce; baste it as soon as it is through hot, and time to baste, with Butter. When it is very moist all over, sprinkle flower upon it every where, that by turning about the fire, it may become a thin crust. Then baste it no more till the latter end. This crust will keep in all the juyce. A little before you take it up, baste it again with Butter, and this will melt away all the crust. Then give it three or four turns of the spit, that it may make the outside yellow and crisp.

You may also baste such meat with yolks of new-laid Eggs, beaten into a thin oyl. But with this you continue basting all the while the meat rosteth.


TO STEW A RUMP OF BEEF

Take a rump of Beef, break all the bones; season it with Pepper and Salt to your liking; Take three or four Nutmegs, and a quantity of Mace, beat them grossly; Then take a bunch of very good sweet herbs, and one good Onion cut in quarters, or Garlike, as you like it. Put in half a pint of White-wine Vinegar, and one pint of good Claret, one handful of Sugar; and a piece or two of beef Suet or Butter: shred some Cabbage under and over, and scrape in a pound of good old Cheese. Put all these into an earthen pot, and let it stand in an oven with brown-bread four or five hours; but let the pot be covered close with paste.


TO STEW A RUMP OF BEEF

Take a fat rump of young Beef, as it comes from the Butcher, and take out all the bones, excepting the tip of it towards the tail that is all fat, which you cannot take out, without spoiling or defacing or breaking it. But take out all the thick bones towards the Chine, and the thick Sinews, that are on the outer sides of the flesh; (which will never become tender with boiling) so that you have nothing but the pure flesh and fat, without any bony or tough substance. Then beat well the lean part with a woodden roling pin, and when you have beaten well one side, turn the other. Then rub it well with Pepper grosly beaten, and salt; just as you would do, to season a Venison pasty, making the seasoning higher or gentler according to your taste. Then lay it in a fit vessel, with a flat bottom (pipkin or kettle as you have conveniency) that will but just contain it, but so that it may lye at ease. Or you may tye it up in a loose thin linnen cloth, or boulter, as they do Capons à la mode , or Brawn, or the like. Then put water upon it, but just to cover it, and boil it close covered a matter of two hours pretty smartly, so that it be well half boiled. Then take it out of that, and put it into another fit vessel, or the same cleansed, and put upon it about two quarts of good strong deep well bodied Claret-wine, and a good bundle of sweet-herbs, (Penny-royal, Sweet-Marjoram, Winter-savory, Limon Thyme, &c.) and a good large Onion peeled, and stuck as close with Cloves, as you can stick it, if you like the taste of Onions. They must be the strong biting Onions, that are round and red: a little Nutmeg, and some Mace. Put to the wine about a pint of the Liquor that you have already boiled the Beef in; and if you would have it strong of the seasoning of Pepper, and Salt; take the bottom of this Liquor. Thus let it boil very gently, simpringly, or rather stew with Char-coal over a little furnace, or a fit Chafing-dish, a matter of three hours, close covered. If the Liquor waste too much, you may recruit it with what you have kept of that, which your beef was boiled in. When it is near time to take it up, stew some Oysters in their own Liquor (to which you may add at the latter end, some of the winy Liquor, that the Beef is now stewing in, or some of the first Beef-broth, or use some good pickled Oysters) and at the same time make some thin tostes of Kingstone manchet, which toste very leisurely, or rather dry them throughly, and very hard, and Crisp, but not burned, by lying long before the fire. And if you have fresh Champignons, dress a good dish full of them, to be ready at the same time, when all the rest is ready; If not, use pickled ones, without further dressing. When you find your Beef is as tender as can be, and will scarcely hold together, to be taken up together, and that all the other things are ready, lay the tostes in the dish, where the Beef is to lye; pour some of the Liquor upon it. Then lay the Beef upon the tosts; throw away the bundle of Herbs and Onions; and pour the rest of the Liquor upon the Beef, as also the Oysters, and the Mushrooms, to which add a pretty deal, about half a pint of Broom-buds: and so let it stand a while well covered over coals to Mittoner; and to have all the several substances communicate their tastes to one another, and to have the tostes swell up like a gelly. Then serve it up. If you want Liquor, you may still recruit your self out of the first Beef-broth, which you keep all to supply any want afterwards. Have a care, whiles it is stewing, in the Winy-liquor, to lift the flesh sometimes up from the bottom of the vessel, least if it should lye always still, it may stick to the bottom, and burn; but you cannot take it out, for it would fall in pieces. It will be yet better meat, if you add to it, at the last (when you add all the other heightnings) some Marrow, and some Chess-nuts, and some Pistachios, if you will. Put to your Broom-buds (before you put them in to the rest) some elder Vinegar, enough to soak them, and even to cover them. If you find this make your composition of the whole too sharp, you may next time take less. When you put the Beef to stew with the wine (or a while after) you may put to it a pretty quantity (as much as you can take in both hands at once) of shreded Cabbage, if it be the season; or of Turneps, if you like either of these. Carrots make it somewhat flat. If the wine be not quick enough, you may put a little elder Vinegar to it. If you like Garlike, you may put in a little, or rub the dish with it.


PICKLED CHAMPIGNONS

Champignons are best, that grow upon gravelly dry rising Grounds. Gather them of the last nights growth; and to preserve them white, it is well to cast them into a pitcher of fair-water, as you gather them: But that is not absolutely necessary, if you will go about dressing them as soon as you come home. Cut the great ones into halves or quarters, seeing carefully there be no worms in them; and peel off their upper skin on the tops: the little ones, peel whole. As you peel them, throw them into a bason of fair-water, which preserves them white. Then put them into a pipkin or possnet of Copper (no Iron) and put a very little water to them, and a large proportion of Salt. If you have a pottle of Mushrooms, you may put to them ten or twelve spoonfuls of water, and two or three of Salt. Boil them with pretty quick-fire, and scum them well all the while, taking away a great deal of foulness, that will rise. They will shrink into a very little