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Healths improvement: or, rules comprizing and discovering the nature, method, and manner of preparing all sorts of food used in this nation / Written by that ever famous Thomas Muffett ... Corrected and enlarged by Christopher Bennet.

Moffett, Thomas, 1553-1604.

Date:: 1655

Credit: Healths improvement: or, rules comprizing and discovering the nature, method, and manner of preparing all sorts of food used in this nation / Written by that ever famous Thomas Muffett ... Corrected and enlarged by Christopher Bennet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$flow? Meats (tij^er in preparaiion^d^c* Whether an iron Ladle hinders Peas and Rice front feething •t W hether roaft meat be beft, and beft tafted, larded, barded, fcorch’d or bafted ^ Bcafts killed at one blow are tendereft and moft wholfom. Why all broath is beft hot, all drink beft cold. Some fi(h, flerti, and fruits never good but cold •, fome never good when they are cold j and yet we have all but one inftrumentof tafting. 0fal.].4.antiq. led. Plut.in quarft. Ro.i). Sat:g.c:i3« $uef:in vit: Aujufti; Plin:I.8.c. $i: I>iod;l:i c; 6: Plin ];i«:c.2o & aa: ic eCxarn; of fatting of Meats. Lean meat as it is unwholfom, fo it feemed alfo unfa- vory in ancient times-, info much that Q. be¬ ing fewer at Cafars table, feeing a difti of lean birds to be fet at the table, was not afraid to hurl them out at the window. Alfo the Priefts of Ifraef yea the Heathen Priefts alfo of Rome and Bgj ft touched no lean flefli ^ becaufe it is imperfeft till it be fat, fitter to feed hawks and vultures, then either to be eaten of men, or confum- ed in facrifice to holy ufes. Hereupon came a trial how to fatten flefh and fifli (yea fnails and torteftes, as Macrobins writeth) by feeding them with filling and forced meats; calling not only livers and garbage into fiflipondSjbutalfo their flaves to feed their pikes(as did Vidius Pollio)3XiA to make them more fat and fweet then ordinary. Hence alfo came it that fwine were fatned with whey and figgs, and t\\ztSer'vilius Rullus devifed how to make brawn, and that the JEgyftians invented the fatting of geefe, becaufe it was ever one difh at their Kings table. Amongft the Romans it was a queftion, who firft taught the art of fat- ning geefe; fome imputing it to Scipio MeteSus, others to Marcus Sefiius- but without contradiftion, Marcus K^ufidius Lucro taught firft how to cram and fatten peacocks , gaining by it threefcore thoufand fefterties, which amounteth to 3000000 /.of our mony.Cranes and fwans were fatted in it(?wwidaox-bloud, milk, oacmeaf, barley, cords and cboolk mingled (to ufe Plutarch^ s phrafe)$