eaten till he hath been baited like a Bull to death and when he is dead you must beat the flesh in the skin after the French fashion of beating a Cow The She-goat being young is less hurtful but an old She-goat is worse and of a more sharp and corrupt juice rather provoking venery and sharpness of seed as also the Male doth then nourishing the body A gelded Goat was unknown unto ancient Physicians but questionless it is the best next to sucking Kid for it is more moist through abundance of fat and also of more temperate heat because it wanteth stones in which I certainly believe a more violent heat to be placed then in any part beside yea whereas the liver draweth onely from the stomack and guts by the meseraical veines and the heart only from the lungs and liver and the brain from all three the stones have a heat which draweth seed from the whole body yea from the bones and gristles as Hippocrates writeth and reason collecteth Furthermore the tollerable smell which a gelded goat hath sheweth that his flesh is far sweeter but He-goats and She-goats are so ranck that a Fencer of Thebes feeding much of them no man could endure his sweat Also the chief Priest of Rome did never so much as touch them saith Plutarch because they are subject to the falling sickness letcherous in life and odious in smell Pigg Sowe Bore and Hogg Piggs flesh by long and a bad custome is so generally desired and commended that it is credibly though falsly esteemed for a nourishing and excellent good meat Indeed it is sweet luscious and pleasant to wantons and earnestly desired of distempered stomacks but it is the mother of many mischiefs and was the bane of mine own Mother A sucking Piggs flesh is the moistest flesh simply of all other engendring Crudities Palsies Agues Gowts Apoplexies and the stone weakning the memory for it is moist in the third degree procuring fluxes of the belly and engendring most viscous flashy and corrupt humours Their flesh is hardly digested of a weak stomack and their leather-coat not easily of a strong The younger they are the worse they are yet some venture upon them yea covet them ere they be eight days old yea the Romans delicacy was such that they thought them dainty meat being taken blood and all out of the Sowes belly ere she was ready to farrow eating them after a little bruising in the blood no less greedily then some do the pudding of a bruised Deer We do well in roasting our Piggs at a blazing fire sprinkling them with salt on the outside but if we stuft their bellies with a good deal of salt as well as sage and did eat them with new sage and vinegar and salt they would be less offensive The Danes I remember when I was at Elsenore draw them with garlick as the French men do with lard which is no ill correcter of their sliminess and viscous humour The Bore-Pig is not preferred before the Sow-Pig because it is strong and ranck Bores flesh I mean of the tame Bore is never good but 〈◊〉 it is brawn'd which though Pliny avoucheth to be first invented by Servillus Rullus yet by Plautus it seemeth to be a more ancient meat The best way of brawning a Bore is this of all other which I learned first of Sir Thomas George and saw practised afterwards to good purpose Shut up a young Bore of a year and a half old in a little room about harvest time feeding him with nothing but sweet whey and giving him every morning clean straw to lye upon but lay it not thick So before Christmas he will be sufficiently brawned with continual lying and prove exceeding fat wholesome and sweet as for the common way of brawning Bores by stying them up in so close a room that they cannot turn themselves round about and whereby they are forced alwaies to lye on their bellies it is not worthy the imitation for they feed in pain lye in paine and sleep in pain neither shall you ever find their flesh so red their fat so white nor their liver so sound as being brawned otherwise accordingly as is before rehersed After he is brawned for your turn thrust a knife into one of his flanks and let him run with it till he dye others gently bait him with muzled Doggs The Roman Cooks thrust a hot Iron into his side and then run him to death thinking thereby that his flesh waxed tenderer and his brawn firmer Sows Flesh is reckoned of Isaac to engender good blood to nourish plentifully yea to be restorative if it be young But an old Sow breedeth ill juice is hardly concocted and begetteth most viscous humors The Heliopolitanes abstained from Sows flesh of all others First because contrary to the nature and course of all other beasts she admits the Bore not in the full but in the wane of the Moon Secondly they demand How can her flesh be wholsom whose milk being drunk filleth our bodies full of leprosie scurf tetters and scabs Yea a sow is one of the most filthy creatures in the world her belly is never void of scurf her throat of kernely imposthumes her brain so heavy and moist that she cannot look up to heaven or rather she dare not being the rooter up and so bad an inhabitant of the earth Nevertheless I am of Isaacs mind that a young Sow kept long from the Bore sweetly dieted with roots corn and whey and kept from filthy feeding and wallowing may be made good and tolerable meat for strong stomacks after it hath been powdered and well rosted Pork and Bacon Now concerning Pork and Hogs flesh made of a spaded Sow or a Hogg gelded verily let us say thereof as Theon said of all sorts of swine if it be not good for meat wherefore is it good his cry is most odious and harsh his smel loathsom his very shape detested at home he is ravening in the field rooting and every where filthy foul unhappy and unprofitable All which hurts he recompenceth in this only one that of all other beasts if Galen be not deceived he most nourisheth especially if he feed abroad upon sweet grass good mast and roots for that which is penn'd up and fed at home with taps drappings kitchin offal soure grains and all manner of draffe cannot be wholsom In Plinies time they were so far from fatting them with such refuse that considering they were to be eaten of themselves men usually fatted their hogs with milk and figgs But sith that course is more chargeable then necessary for Englishmen either let their hoggs feed themselves fat abroad with grass and mast or at home with only sweet whey and a little grounded corn then which they cannot have a more sweet meat Furthermore to use Galens encomium or phrase of a hogg whereby you may swear he was no Jew nor Lopus no good Physician
last What Souldier knoweth not that a roasted Pigg will affright Captain Swan more then the sight of twenty Spaniards What Lawyer hath not heard of Mr. Tanfiels conceit who is feared as much with a dead Duck as Philip of Spain was with a living Drake I will not tell what Physician abhorreth the sight of Lampres and the taste of hot Venison though he love cold nor remember a Gentleman who cannot abide the taste of a rab bet since he was once by a train beguiled with a young cat Nay which was more all meat was of an abominable taste to Heliogabulus if it were not far fetcht and very dearly bought even as some liquorish mouthes cannot drink without sugar nor Sinardus hot stomack could break wine without snow which dainty and foolish conceit though it picks a quarrel with God and reason after the nice fineness of Courtly dames that abhor the best meat which is brought in an earthen dish and maketh ulcers as it were in sound stomacks yet that there is a natural liking and disliking of meats and consequently of the tastes of meats both the examples of men and women forenamed do justly prove and even Spaniels and Hounds themselves I mean of the truer kind by refusing of Venison and wild-fowl in the cold bloud can sufficiently demonstrate Meats of ordinary tastes Now let us come to the ordinary tastes of meats which are especially seven in number Sweet Bitter Sharp Sowre Fatty Salt and Flash Sweet Meats Sweet Meats agree well with nature for they are of a temperate heat and therefore fittest for nourishment they delight the stomack and liver fatten the body encrease natural heat fill the veins digest easily soften that which is too hard and thicken that which is too liquid but if they be over-sweet and gluttish they soon turn into choler stop the liver puff up lungs and spleen swell the stomack and cause oftentimes most sharp and cruel fevers Bitter Meats If any thing be very bitter as asparagus hop-sprouts and broom-buds they cannot much nourish either man or beast unless they have first been boiled or infused in many waters for otherwise they may engender as they do some cholerick humors burning bloud killing worms opening obstructions and mundifying unclean passages of the body but their nourishment they give is either little or nothing and that only derived to some special part Sharp Meats Sharp Meats as onions skallions leeks garlick radish mustardseed cresses and hot spices dry the body exceedingly being also hurtful to the eyes and liver drawing down humors sending up vapors inflaming the bloud fretting the guts and extenuating the whole body Wherefore we must either taste them as they are or not feed upon them till their sharpness be delaid with washings infusions oilings and intermixtions of sweet things Soure Meats Soure meats as sorrel lemons oringes citrons soure fruit and all things strong of vinegar and verjuice albeit naturally they offend sinewy parts weaken concoction cool natural heat make the body lean and hasten old age yet they pleasure and profit us many waies in cutting phlegm opening obstructions cleansing impurities bridling choler resisting putrifaction extinguishing superfluous heat staying loathsomness of stomack and procuring appetite But if they be soure without sharpness as a rosted quince a warden cervises medlars and such like then they furthermore strengthen the stomack bind and corroborate the liver stay fluxes heal ulcers and give an indifferent nourishment to them that eat them Salt Meats Saltishness is thought to be an unnatural taste because it is found in no living thing For the very fishes are fresh so likewise is all flesh and every fruit and all herbs which grow not where the sea may wash upon them Wherefore howsoever salt hath the term of divinity in Homer and Plato calleth it Jupiters minion and the Athenians have built one Temple to Neptune and Ceres because even the finest cakes be unwholsom and unpleasant if they be not seasoned with salt yet I hold it to be true that salt meats in that they are salt nourish little or nothing but rather accidentally in procuring appetite strengthening the stomack and giving it a touch of extraordinary heat as I will more perfectly prove when I treat of sawces For salt meats especially if they be hot of salt engender cholor dry up natural moistures enflame blood stop the veins gather together viscous and crude humors harden the stone make sharpness of urine and cause leanness which I speak of the accidental salt wherewith we eat all meats and not of that inborn salt which is in all things Fat Meats Fattiness is sensibly found not only in flesh and fish of every sort but also in olives coco's almonds nuts pisticks and infinite fruits and herbs that give nourishment Yea in serpents snails frogs and timber-worms it is to be found as though nature had implanted it in every thing which is or may be eaten of mankind And verily as too much fattiness of meats glutteth the stomack decayeth appetite causeth belchings loathings vomitings and scourings choaketh the pores digesteth hardly and nourisheth sparingly so if it be too lean and dry on the contrary side for a mean is best of all it is far worse and nourisheth the body no more then a piece of unbuttered stockfish Unsavory or unrelished Meats Flashiness or insippidity which some call a maukish or senseless taste tasting just of nothing as in water the white of an egg mellons pumpions and pears apples berries and plums of no relish is of no taste but a deprivation or want of all other tastes besides which be it found in any thing that is dry as in spices or in things naturally moist as in fish flesh or fruit it alwaies argueth an ordinary weakness in nourishment howsoever extraordinarily I will not say unnaturally it may strongly nourish some Avicen saith truly in his Canons Quod sapit nutrit That which relisheth nourisheth yet not so but that unsavory things nourish likewise though not abundantly nor speedily for what is more unsavory then fresh water wherewith many fishes are only nourished what so void of relish as the white of an egg yet is it to aguish persons more nourishing then the yeolk yea and stockfish will engender as good humors in a rheumatick person as the best pigg or veal that can be brought him CHAP. VI. Of MEATS How they differ in preparation age and sex THe preparation of meats is threefold One before the killing or dressing of them another in the killing or dressing and the third after both Of which art Timochides Rhodius wrote eleven books in verse and Numenius Heracletus Scholler to Dieuches that learned Physician and Pitaneus Parodus and Hegemon Thasius compiled also divers Treatises of that argument which either the teeth of time or stomack of envy having consumed I must write of this argument according to mine own knowledg and collections Whether
an iron Ladle hinders Peas and Rice from seething Whether roast meat be best and best tasted larded barded scorch'd or basted Beasts killed at one blow are tenderest and most wholsom Why all broath is best hot all drink best cold Some fish flesh and fruits never good but cold some never good when they are cold and yet we have all but one instrument of tasting Of fatting of Meats Lean meat as it is unwholsom so it seemed also unsavory in ancient times in so much that Q. Curtius being sewer at Caesars table seeing a dish of lean birds to be set at the table was not afraid to hurl them out at the window Also the Priests of Israel yea the Heathen Priests also of Rome and Egypt touched no lean flesh because it is imperfect till it be fat fitter to feed hawks and vultures then either to be eaten of men or consumed in sacrifice to holy uses Hereupon came a trial how to fatten flesh and fish yea snails and tortesses as Macrobius writeth by feeding them with filling and forced meats casting not only livers and garbage into fishponds but also their slaves to feed their pikes as did Vidius Pollio and to make them more fat and sweet then ordinary Hence also came it that swine were fatned with whey and figgs and that Servilius Rullus devised how to make brawn and that the Aegyptians invented the fatting of geese because it was ever one diâ—h at their Kings table Amongst the Romans it was a question who first taught the art of fatning geese some imputing it to Scipio Metellus others to Marcus Sestius but without contradiction Marcus Aufidius Lucro taught first how to cram and fatten peacocks gaining by it threescore thousand sesterties which amounteth to 3000000 l. of our mony Cranes and swans were fatted in Rome with ox-bloud milk oatmeal barley curds and chaulk mingled to use Plutarch's phrase into a monstrous meat wherewithall they were cram'd in dark places or else their eyes were stitched up by which means their flesh proved both tenderer sweeter whiter and also as it is supposed far wholsomer Hens capons and cockrels and tinches were fatned by them of Delia with bread steep'd in milk and feeding in a dark and narrow place that want of scope and light might cause them to sleep and sit much which of it self procureth fatness In Varro's time men did not only fatten conies in clappers but also hares and made them of a melancholick a most white and pleasant meat according to that of Martial Inter aves princeps pinguis me judice turdus Inter quadrupedes gloria prima lepus Amongst the feathered knights fat thrushes do excel Amongst four-footed squires the hare deserves the bel But here a question may be moved Whether this penning up of birds and want of exercise and depriving them of light and cramming them so often with strange meat makes not their flesh as unwholsom to us as wel as fat To which I answer that to cramb Capons or any bird and to deprive them of all light is ill for them and us too for though their body be puffed up yet their flesh is not natural and wholsom witness their small discoloured and rotten livers whereas Hens and Capons feeding themselves in an open and clean place with good corn have large ruddy and firm livers So great is the diversitie betwixt a cramm'd I may say a strangled and captive Capon and betwixt a gentleman Capon feeding himself fat without art Wherefore the best fatning of all fowl is first to feed them with good meat for like food like flesh Secondly to give it them not continually as crammers do forcing one gobbet after another till they be fully gorg'd but as often as they themselves desire it that nature be not urged above her strength not in a coope or close roome for then the aire and themselves will smell of their own dung but in a cleane house spacious enough for their little exercise not in a dark place or stitching up their eyes for that will cause them to be timerous or ever sleepy both which are enemies to their bodies and consequently to ours for every man knows that fear marreth concoction and sleepiness bereaving us of exercise hindreth digestion Yea young Pigeons whilst they are in the nest be they never so fat are reckoned but an unwholsom meat but when they follow and fly a little after the dam then are they of great and good nourishment The like may be said of the fatting of beasts for they are not to be stied or stalled so close that they cannot stirr but to have sufficient room for to walk in as well as to feed in that they may be wholsom as well as fat and not corrupt our bodies with their own corruption So likewise fish kept in great ponds where they may rove at pleasure are better then such as be mewed in a narrow and shallow ditch which not only we shall find by inward digestion but also by outward tasting yea look what difference there is betwixt tame and wild Conies betwixt Deer fed by hand and Deer fatning themselves in the Chase and Copses the like shall you perceive betwixt forced fatness and fatness gotten by natural and good diet Another thing also is to be observed before the killing of any beast or bird namely how to make it tenderer if it be too old and how to make it of the best rellish Patrocles affirmed that a Lion being shewed to a strong Bull three or four hours before he be killed causeth his flesh to be as tender as the flesh of a Steer fear dissolving his hardest parts and making his very heart to become pulpy Perhaps upon the like reason we use to bait our Bulls before we kill them for their blood is otherwise so hard that none can digest it in the flesh but afterwards it is so far from being poisonable that it becometh tender and nourishing food Perhaps also for this cause old Cocks are coursed with little wands from one another or else forced to fight with their betters before they are killed Perhaps also for these causes so much filthy dung is brought from common lestals into great gardens namely to cause roots and herbs to be fatter and tenderer then they would be which intent I do not disallow onely I wish that no other soil were used then what proceeded from the earth or from brute beasts Concerning the manner of killing it is divers in divers Countries The Grecians strangled their Swine and did eat them with their blood The Romans thrust them through the body with a spit red hot whereby death ensuing without cooling and voiding of blood the flesh seemed far more sweet and tender But if a sow were ready to farrow they trampled upon her belly bruising her pigs and the kernells of her dugs with the milk and blood ot once eating them for the most delicate meat as some
that wanteth either fins as the Poulpe Periwinkles Lobsters and Crabs or scales as the Eele Lamprey Plaise Turbot and Conger c. doth he not expresly forbid them to eat of Poulps Periwinkles Lobsters Crabs Eeles Lampres Plaise Turbot and Conger and a hundred fish more wanting either scales or fins Fish is therefore no purer meat then flesh neither can a Carthusian eat a Sole being a meat forbidden the Israelites with a sounder conscience then a piece of Bief or Swines flesh Finally where he saith that the actions of Christ should be our instruction and his works our imitation Why do not those fishy Friars eat flesh every Maundy Thursday sith Christ himself did so whom we ought to imitate But let these alone to the conformity of their Church injunction remembring also with St. Paul to abstain from no meats which God hath created for our life and health It is recorded by St. Jerom in his Epistles that Seneca upon a foolish conceit abstained so long from flesh and fed only upon fruit and fish infected perhaps with the leaven of the Egyptian Priests that when upon Neroes commandment he was to bleed to death there did not spring from him a drop of bloud The like is written of St. Genovese the holy Maid of Paris who like the Egyptian Prophetess abstained wholly from flesh because it is the mother of lust she would eat no milk because it is white bloud she would eat no eggs because they are nothing but liquid flesh Thus pining and consuming her body both against nature and godliness she lived in a foolish error thinking flesh more ready to inflame lust then fruit or fish the contrary whereof is proved by the Islanders Groenlanders Orites and other Nations who feeding upon nothing but fish for no beast nor fruit can live there for cold yea having no other bread then is made of dried Stockfish grinded into powder are nevertheless both exceeding lecherous and also their women very fruitfull Yea Venus the mother of lust and lechery is said to have sprung from the fome of fish and to have been born in the Sea because nothing is more availeable to engender ust then the eating of certain fishes and sea-plants which I had rather in this lascivious age to conceal from posterity then to specifie them unto my Countrymen as the Grecians and Arabians have done to theirs What Nation more lascivious then the fenny Egyptians and the Poeonians yet their meat was only fish yea they fed their horses with them as Herodotus writeth Also in the Isle of Rhodes the Mother-seat of a strong and Warlike Nation the people heretofore fed chiefly of fish abhorring with such a kind of detestation from flesh that they called the eaters of it savages and bellies And verily if a strong lusty and Warlike Nation sprang from the eaters of fish alone why should we deny that fish is as much provoking to venery as any flesh So then I having fully proved that flesh is as lawfull as pure and as holy a meat as fish Now let us try which of them is the more ancient and best nourishment Did we but mark saith Plutarch the greasie fowlness of Butchers the bloudy fingers of Cooks and the smell of every beasts puddings and offal we must needs confess that first every thing was eaten before flesh which even still we naturally abhor to see whilst it is in killing and few touch without loathing when it is killed The Indian Philosophers called Brachmanes being at length induced to feed upon living creatures killed fish for their sustenance but abhorred from flesh And though the Babylonians delighted much after Nimrods example in hunting and killing of wild beasts yet as Herodotus reporteth they abstained from flesh and lived wholly upon fruit and fish For answer of which Objections I oppose to the Babylonians Abraham and the holy Scriptures which making mention of a Calf drest and eaten in Abrahams house before ever any mention is made of eating of fish it is very probable that flesh was foremost after the general permission to eat both To the Indian Sophisters I oppose Pythagoras and his Schollars who being perswaded at the length to eat of certain beasts and birds utterly yet abstained from eating of flesh perhaps upon these causes First because it is a cruel and unmanlike thing to kill those creatures which cannot possibly hurt the inhabitants of the earth Secondly what necessity is there to use them Nature having replenished the earth with fruit herbs grain beasts also and birds of all sorts Thirdly Had fish been eaten first no doubt it had been first eaten of the Islanders and Sea-borderers but neither the inhabitants of Hellespont nor the Islanders of Phoeacum nor the Wooers of Penelope bringing all manner of dainties to their feasts are ever read in Homer to have brought or eaten fish No nor Ulysses his companions are recorded to have made their Sea-provision of fish but of flesh fruit salt and meal neither used they any hook to catch fish withall till they were almost famished for want of victual as you may read at large in Homer his Ulysses which is a manifest argument That fish was not used or at the least not eaten of till men were unfurnished of other meats Last of all whereas Plutarch objecteth how loathsom a thing it is to see Butchers and Cooks sprinkled with bloud in killing and dressing flesh I answer him That the sight is not so loathsom to nature but to niceness and conceit For what God permits to be eaten nature permits to dress and kill neither rebelleth she more at the death of an Ox then at the cutting down of hay or corn Nay furthermore sith all was made for mans use and man for God she giveth us liberty to kill all things that may make for the maintenance of our life or preservation and restoring of our health Hippocrates most wittily having shewed that some men are deceitful by nature and that therefore nature taught them the art of making Dice the instruments of deceit he sheweth consequently that because nature is provident for mens health therefore she hath likewise invented the arts of building plaistering weavin g and tillage wherefore to imitate and urge Hippocrates argument if nature have provided flesh and fish that a substantial this a more light nourishment for our bodies how squemish soever we are to see them killed yet it is no unnatural thing to see it no not to do it our selves Concerning the last question Whether flesh or fish be the better nourishment I cannot answer better then as Galen did being asked the like question of wine and water For as wine is best for one man and water for another so likewise flesh is most nourishing to some constitutions and fish to others Timothie was young but yet sickly and weak stomacked his youth required water but his sickness wine wherefore Paul like a
will prove it true by age waxing mellower and softer and more pleasant of taste digesting whatsoever went before it yet it self not heavy of digestion Our Essex Cheese being well handled would in my judgement come next unto it especially if Goats were as plentifull there as sheep that there might be a proportion betwixt the three milks without which it is folly to attempt the like Now whereas the Placentians and Parmians add Asses milk and Mares milk and also Camels milk when they can get it to the making of their Cheese it is not for the Curds sake because they yield no hard Curd but for the butterish part that is taken out of them for indeed the butter made of them is most thin liquid moist and penetrating whereby such a suppleing is procured that their Cheeses do rather ripen then dry with long lying The Irish men like to Plinies Barbarians have not yet so much wit as to make Cheese of Milk and our Welshmen want cunnning to make it well French Cheese in Plinies time tasted like a medicine but now the Angelots of Normandy are counted restorative which many of our Gentlewomen and especially a Niece of mine own have so well counterfeited that they excell their first pattern Spain hath forgotten the art of Cheese making and Portugal makes them but indifferently well though sometimes the best in the world were made at Cuna near to Cape Vincent where they also made Cheeses of 1000 l. weight apiece As for our Country Cheeses Banbury and Cheshire yields the most and are best to which the Holland Cheeses might be justly compared if their makers could but soberly put in salt As for Butter milk and Whey I leave them to my Treatise of drinks because they are of a thinner substance than that conveniently and properly they may be numbred and accounted amongst Meats Now a word or two of Eggs and then to our variable and no less profitable Discourse of Fishes CHAP. XVI Of EGGS and BLOVD AS the Oonians live only of Eggs and Oatmeal so the Aegyptians for a great while durst not eat Eggs because they are unperfect or liquid flesh neither did they eat a long time any Milk because it is but discoloured bloud Certain Grecians abstained from them because they resemble a little world for the shell of them is like the earth cold and dry the white is like to water cold and moist the fome or froth in the white resembleth aire which is warm and moist the yolk agreeth with the fire which is hot and dry But to omit such frivolous reasons let us not doubt but an Egg is a lawfull and wholsom meat tempered so excellently well by nature it self that it must needs be accounted one of the best nourishments being eaten white and all For they which eat only the yolk as many do in a conceit to nourish more plentifully fall into many hot and dangerous diseases unless they have a very cold liver and watrish bloud Contrariwise the whites of Eggs are so cold that spongy wood being thoroughly overlaid with them will hardly or not at all be burnt in a glowing fire Both being taken together do so qualifie one another that generally they agree with all stomacks or at the least offend none if we chuse them that be best and prepare them well after they be chosen Now all Eggs being potential creatures no doubt but they are of like substance and temper with that which in time they shall be made Wherefore as the flesh of Pheasants Partridges and Hens be of best juice temper quality nourishment and digestion so likewise their Eggs are wholsomest of all others Contrariwise as the Greek Proverb saith Like Crow like Egg. Neither can we imagine how any Egg should be wholsom proceeding from an unwholsom or distempered creature Wherefore we condemn in the way of comparison all Eggs of Turkies Peacocks Geese Ducks and all water-fowl preferring Hens Eggs before all other because they are a most usual familiar and temperate meat What kind of Eggs be best In the choice of good Eggs observe these lessons First That they be rather Pullets Eggs then laid by an old Hen. Secondly That they be not self-begotten but gotten by the Cock upon the Hen. Thirdly That they be new white and long For such Eggs nourish plentifully and quickly clear the voice and breast strengthen the stomack recover men out of consumptions and encrease nature so much that in continuance of time they make us wantons They nourish quickly because they are nothing but liquid flesh They nourish much because their heat and moisture is proportionable unto ours They are wholsomest in the morning because they are then newest They are best in winter because Hens are then fattest strongest and best relished they are worst in summer because Hens feed then upon flies snails cadlocks and many ill weeds which rather scoures then nourishes their bodies They are best being eaten alone because being mingled with orher meat they corrupt in the stomack filling many mens faces full of pimples morphues and freckles They are ill for young children especially being often eaten for that their hot bodies turn them into over-hot nourishment whence itch scabs inflammations and corruptions do arise They are also as bad for old men because they are hardly digested of a cold stomack fittest they are for temperate young persons and such as are consumed without any notable fever Concerning the nature of other Birds Eggs besides Hens Epenaetus extolleth Peacocks Eggs before all other and then the Eggs of Berganders and lastly of Phesants Partridges and Turkies whose judgement I would have throughly confuted had not daily experience and Antonius Gazius his arguments done it already And verily whosoever will taste other eggs then which daily we use shall find none void of a strong savour and bad relish saving the eggs of Phesants Partridges Berganders Ostriches Turkies Ducks and Geese though the three last named be bad enough Yet if Ducks eggs be hatched under a Hen they eat more sweetly and Goose eggs also hatched under them are thought by Simeon Sethi no unwholsom meat Pigeons eggs are exceeding hot and of ill taste hardly hardning by long seething The eggs of Sparrows encrease lust strengthen the heart and nourish abundantly As for the eggs of other birds great and small howsoever they are eaten as Rhasis saith in the way of medicine yet they give either none or no good nourishment But Hens eggs are so temperate and nourishing that Galen himself in certain continual fevers gave them usually to his Patients to restore spirits and not without reason being of so fine a substance and freed in a manner from all hurtfulness for they moisten us in fever Hecticks they nourish us in consumptions they strengthen us in fluxes they bridle sharp humors when they gripe us restore spirits in weakness of heart they speedily pass from a clean stomack
pills made of dead mens brains Apollonius bad gums with dead mens teeth but far be it from any humane or Christian heart brag we of this foolish invention never so much to suck away one anothers life in the blood of young men wherein Charles the 9 King of France being but outwardly bathed for his leprosie died therefore and for other his cruel massacres a most bloody death wherefore let us content our selves with the blood of geese swans hoggs and sheep in our sawce and puddings which yet are but a gross and fulsome nourishment unless they meet with a strong and good stomack CHAP. XVII Of Fish generally and the difference thereof AS amongst Poets there is some called the Coryphaeus or Captain-poet so fareth it likewise amongst meats Some prefering fruit as being most ancient cleanly naturall and needing either none or very little preparation Others extoll flesh as most sutable to fleshy creatures and giving most and best nourishment But the finest feeders and dainty bellies did not delight in flesh with Hercules or in fruit with Plato and Arcesilaus but with Numa and Philocrates in variety of fish which Numa made a law that no fish without scales nor without finns should be eaten of the people whereupon I may justly collect and gather that he was not ignorant of Moses law Also according to the vain dream of Gregory the great Bishop of Rome and the author of the Carthusian order he put more holines in fish then in flesh falsly imagining flesh to be a greater motive to lust and lasciviousness then the use of fish which frivolous conceit is before sufficiently confuted in the seventh Chapter and needeth not to be shaken again in this place Now I will not deny that fish is a wholesome meat if such fish could be alwaies gotten as may sufficiently nourish the body but now a daies it so falleth out through iniquity of times or want of providence or that our Sea-coast and Rivers are more barren of fish then heretofore that in the Spring time when we ought to feed on the purest and most wholesome nourishment our blood is not cleansed but corrupted with filthy fish I mean saltherrings red-herrings sprats Haberdin and greenfish which are not amiss for Sailers and Ploughmen but yet most hurtful and dangerous for other persons Gatis Queen of Syria made a Law that no meal should pass through the year without fish which if it were as firmly made and executed in England no doubt much flesh would be spared and Navigation and fisher men maintained through the land neither should we need to imitate Gregory the Lent-maker perswading men to eat only fish at that time when it is most out of season most hardly gotten and most hurtfull to the bodies of most men Also in high Germany there is both fish and flesh continually set upon the table that every mans appetite humour and complexion may have that which is fittest for it in which Country though no Lent be observed except of a few Catholicks yet is there abundance of flesh all the year long restraint being onely made in Spring time of killing that which is young Differences of Fish in kind Concerning the kinds of Fishes Pliny maketh a hundred threescore and seventeen several sorts of them whereof some being never seen nor known of in our Country it were but folly to repeat them As for them which we have and feed on in England they are either scaled as Sturgian salmon grailings shuins carps breams base mullet barbel pike luce perch ruffs herrings sprats pilchers roch shads dorry gudgin and umbers or shell'd as scallopes oisters mustles cockles periwinckles or crusted over as crabs lobsters crevisses shrimps or neither scalld shell'd nor crusted as Tunny ling cod hake haberdine haddock seal conger lampreyes lamperns eeles plaise turbut flounder skate thorneback maides sole curs gildpoles smelts cuttles sleeves pouts dogfish poulps yards mackrels troutes tenches cooks whitings gournards and rochets To which also we may add Sticklebacks and minoes and spirlings and anchovaes because they are also neither scaled crusted nor defended with shells As for the goodness or badness of fish it is lessened or encreased upon three causes the place they live in the meat they feed on and their manner of dressing or preparation Concerning the first some live in the Sea some in Rivers some in Ponds some in Fenny creeks and meers Difference of Fish in respect of place Sea-fish as it is of all other the sweetest so likewise the least hurtfull for albeit they are of a thicker and more fleshy substance yet their flesh is most light and easie of concoction insomuch that Zeno and Crato two notable Physians in Plutarcks time commended them above all other to their sick patients and not without desert for as the Sea-aire is purest of all other because it is most tossed and purified with winds so the water thereof is most laboured and nourisheth for us the wholesomest and lightest meat lightest because continual exercise consumeth the Sea-fishes superfluities wholesomest because the salt water like to buck-lye washeth away their inward filth and uncleaness Of Sea fish those are best which live not in a calm and muddy Sea tossed neither with tides nor windes for there they wax nought for want of exercise but they which live in a working Sea whose next continent is clean gravelly sandy or rocky running towards the North-east wind must needs be of a pure and wholesome nourishment less moist and clammy then the others easier also of concoction sooner turn'd into blood and every way fitter for mans body This is the cause why the Oritae and Northern-people live as wel with fish alone as we do here with such variety of flesh even I say the goodness lightness and wholesomness of their fish which is not brought unto us till it be either so stincking or salt that all their goodness is gone or dryed up River-Fish likewise are most wholesome and light when they swim in rocky sandy or gravel'd Rivers runing Northward or Eastward and the higher they swim up the better they are Contrariwise those which abide in slow short and muddy Rivers are not onely of an excremental and corrupt juice but also of a bad smell and ill taste Pond-fish is soon fatted through abundance of meat and want of exercise but they are nothing so sweet as River-fish unless they have been kept in some River to scoure themselves especially when they live in little standing ponds not fed with continual springs nor refreshed from some River or Sea with fresh water Fenny-fish of all other is most slimy excremental unsavory last digested and soonest corrupted having neither free aire nor sweet water nor good food to help or better themselves such are the fish of that lake in Armenia where all the fish be black and deadly and albeit our English meers be not so bad yet verily their fish is bad enough especially
to stomachs of other Conntries unacquainted with such muddy and unwholsome meats Differences of Fish in respect of their feeding Concerning the meats which fishes feed on some feed upon salt and saltish mud as neer Leptis in Africa and in Eubaea and about Dyrrhachium which maketh their flesh as salt as brine and altogether unwholesome for most stomacks Others upon bitter weeds and roots which maketh them as bitter as gall of which though we have none in our Seas or Rivers yet in the Island of of Pene and Clazomene they are very common Also if Pliny may be credited about Cephalenia Anipelos Paros and the Delian rocks fish are not only of a sweet taste but also of an aromatical smell whether it is by eating of sweet roots or devouring of amber and ambre-grice Some also feed and fat themselves neer to the common-sewers sincks chanels and draughts of great Cities whose chiefest meat is either carrion or dung whereas indeed the proper meat for fish is either flies frogs grashoppers young fry and spawne and chiefly certain wholsom roots herbs and weeds growing in the bottom or sides of Seas and Rivers Caesar Crasus and Curius fed them with livers and flesh so also did the Hieropolitans in Venus lake In Champagny they fed them with bread yea Vidius Pollio fed them with his condemned Slaves to make them the more fat and pleasant in taste But neither they that are fed with men nor with garbage or carrion nor with citty-filth nor with any thing we can devise are so truely sweet wholsome and pleasant as they which in good Seas and Rivers feed themselves enjoying both the benefit of fresh aire agreeable water and meat cor respondent to their own nature Difference of Fish in respect of preparation Concerning their difference of goodness in preparation I must needs agree with Diocles who being asked whether were the better fish a Pike or a Conger That said he sodden and this broild shewing us thereby that all flaggy slimy and moist fish as Eeles Congers Lampreys Oisters Cockles Mustles and Scallopes are best broild rosted or bakt but all other fish of a firm substance and drier constitution is rather to be sodden as the most part of fish before named Last of all we are to consider what fish we should chiefly choose namely the best grown the fattest and the newest How to chuse the best Fish The best grown sheweth that it is healthy and hath not been sick which made Philoxenus the Poet at Dionisius table to request him to send for Aesculapius Priest to cure the little barbles that were served in at the lower Mess where he sat If a fish be fat it is ever young if it be new it is ever sweet if it be fed in muddy or filthy water keep it not till the next day for it soon corrupteth but if it be taken out of clean feeding it will keep the longer Rules to be observed in the eating of fish Sodden fish or broild fish is presently to be eaten hot for being kept cold after it but one day unless it be covered with wine pickle or vinegar it is corrupted by the aire in such sort that sometimes like to poison-full mushroms it strangleth the eaters also fish coming out of a pan is not to be covered with a platter lest the vapour congeled in the platter drop down again upon the fish whereby that fish which might else have nourished will either cause vomiting or scouring or else corrupt within the veins Finally whosoever intendeth to eat a fish dinner let him not heat his body first with exercise least the juice of his meat being too soon drawn by the liver corrupt the whole mass of blood and let no fish be sodden or eaten without salt pepper wine onions or hot spices for all fish compared with flesh is cold and moist of little nourishment engendring watrish and thinn blood And if any shall think that because Crabs Skate Cockles and Oisters procure lust therefore they are likewise of great nourishment The argument is denied for though they blow up the body with wine and make good store of sharp nature which tickleth and inciteth us to venery yet that seed is unfruitful and that lust wanteth sufficiency because it cometh not from plenty of natural seed but from an itching quality of that which is unnatural Thus much generally of fish in the way of a Preface now let us speak particularly of every fish eaten or taken by us in this Island CHAP. XVIII Of SEA-FISH SEa-fish may be called that sort of fish which chiefly liveth feedeth breedeth and is taken in salt water of which I will write according to the letters of the Alphabet that every man may readily find out the fishes name whose nature or goodness he desires to know of Encrasicholi Anchovaes are but the Sea minoes of Provence and Sardinia which being poudred with salt wine-vinegar and origanum and so put up into little barrels are carried into all Greece and there esteemed for a most dainty meat It seemeth that the people of those hot Countries are very often distempered and distasted of their meat wherefore to recover their appetite they feed upon Anchovaes or rather taste one or two of them whereby not onely to them but also to us appetite is restored I could wish that the old manner of barrelling them up with origanum salt and and wine-vinegar were observed but now they taste onely of salt and are nothing so pleasant as they were wont to be They are fittest for stomachs oppressed with fleam for they will cut ripen and digest it and warm the stomack exceeding well they are of little nourishment but light enough if they were not so over-salted they are best drest with oil vinegar pepper and dryed origanum and they must be freed from their outward skin the ridge-bone be washt in wine before they be laid in the dish Variatae Alburni marini Bleaks of the Sea or Sea-bleaks called of Dr Cajus Variatae or Sea-cameleons because they are never of one colour but change with every light and object like to changeable silk are as sound firm and wholesome as any Carp there be great plenty of them in our Southern Seas betwixt Rye and Exceter and they are best sodden because they are so fine and so firm a meat Abramides marinae Breams of the Sea be of a white and solid substance good juice most easie digestion and good nourishment Piscis Capellanus Asellus medius Cod-fish is a great Sea-whiting called also a Keeling or Melwel of a tender flesh but not fully so dry and firm as the Whiting is Cods have a bladder in them full of eggs or spawne which the Northern men call the kelk and esteem it a very dainty meat they have also a thick and gluish substance at the end of their stomach called a sowne more pleasant in eating then good of nourishment for the toughest fish-glue is made
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 MVFFETT Doctor in PHYSICK Corrected and Enlarged BY CHRISTOPHER BENNET Doctor in Physick and Fellow of the Colledg of Physitians in London LONDON Printed by Tho Newcomb for Samuel Thomson at the sign of the white Horse in Pauls Churchyard 1655. Imprimatur FRANCIS PRUJEAN President BALDUINUS HAMEY GEORGE ENT EDMUND WILSON CHRISTOPH BENNET Censors The Table CHAP. I. 1. WHat Diet is 2. Who were the Authors of it 3. What good it bringeth 1 Chap. 2. 1 How many sorts of Diet there be 2. Wherein Diet consisteth materially 3. Wherein Diet consisteth formally 2 Chap. 3. and 4. Of Aire 1. How it is to be chosen 12 2. How it is to be prepared 20 3. How it is to be used 20 Chap. 5. Of Meat and the differcnces thereof in Kind Substance Temperature and Taste 29 Chap. 6 Of Meats How they differ in Preparation Age and Sex 41 Chap. 7. 1 How many sorts of flesh there be 2. Whether flesh or fish were first eaten of and whether of them is the purest and best nourishment 50 Chap. 8. Of the flesh of tame Beasts 58 Chap. 9. Of the Flesh of wild Beasts or Venison 71 Chap. 10. Of the Flesh of tame Birds 79 Chap. 11. Of the Flesh of wild Foul abiding and feeding chiefly upon the Land 90 Chap. 12. Of the flesh of wild Foul abiding and feeding chiefly upon the waters 106 Chap. 13. Of the Inwards and Outwards both of Beasts and Birds 110 Chap. 14. Of Milk 119 Chap. 15. Of Butter Cream Curds Cheese and Whey 128 Chap. 16. Of Egs and Blood 134 Chap. 17. Of Fish generally and the difference thereof 141 Chap. 18. Of Sea-fish 147 Chap. 19. Of fresh-water fish 175 Chap. 20. Of such living Creatures and Meats as be neither Flesh nor Fish and yet give good nourishment to the Body 190 Chap. 21. Of Fruit and the differences thereof 194 Chap. 22. Of all Orchard Fruit. 195 Chap. 23. Of such Fruits of the Garden as are nourishing 215 Chap. 24. Of such Fruits of the Field as are nourishing 231 Chap. 25. Of the Variety Excellency Making and true use of Bread 235 Chap. 26. Of Salt Sugar and Spice 245 Chap. 27. Of the necessary use and abuse of Sawces and whereon they consist 253 Chap. 28. Of variety of Meats that it is necessary and convenient 258 Chap. 30. Of the quantity of Meats 273 Chap. 31. Of the quality of Meats 285 Chap. 32. Of the Time Order and Manner of Eating 289 To the Reader T Is not an itch to be in print but my Profession to keep men alive and when gone to recover and revive them that hath induced me to this undertaking Blame me not therefore for using means to raise our Author out of the dust and long oblivion wherein he was buried T is true his own relations and their interests much sollicited my help but the merits of the man were my greatest motives and his Old Fame most quickned me to restore him Seriously upon perusal I found so much Life and Pulse in his dead Works that it had not been charity in me to let him dye outright specially when t is for the worlds good and your Healths Improvement This is all only if it may be any advantage to have my Judgement t is a Piece for my palate not likely to dis-relish any where so much pleasure is interlarded with our profit I may safely say upon this subject I know none that hath done better and were Platina Apicius or Alexandrinus with all the rest of Dietetick writers now alive they would certainly own and highly value this Discourse Accept then kindly his endevors that strives to do you good both in publick and private Farewell Chr. Bennet CHAP. I. 1. What Diet is 2. Who were the authors of it 3. What good it bringeth DIet is defined by very learned Scholars an exact order in Labour Meat Drink Sleep and Venery For they are thought to be Pythagoras his pentangle or five squar'd figure wherein as Hipocrates saith of mans body there be several confluences and concurrences yet but one general Sympathy through all Nevertheless Labor was appointed for most to invite meat and drink they to draw on sleep for the ease of our labours and all four to perfit generation which is not onely essendi sed semper essendi causa not onely the cause of being but of ever being for indeed after we are dead in our selves we recover in our posterity another life But in this Treatise I define Diet more particularly as it is usually taken both by the vulgar and also the best Physitians to be an orderly and due course observed in the use of bodily nourishments for the preservation recovery or continuance of the health of mankind Which how and when it was first invented and by whom collected neither Cardan nor Scaliger nor Virgil nor Montuus nor Biesius nor Jason Pratensis nor Psellus nor any in my judgement have more truely declared then Hippocrates himself avouching that Necessity was the mother and Reason the father of Diet. For when sickness crept into the world and men gave the same meats to sick folks which they did to the healthful they perceived them to be so far from recovery that they rather wax'd worse and worse Hereupon being enforced to alter either the kind or the preparation or the quantity or the quality and order of nourishments they knew by diligent observation what was fittest for every disease for every sexe age and complexion and accordingly committed them to memory or set them down in writing Plutarch thinks that we first learned this knowledg of brute Beasts For Pigeons and Cocks before they fight will eate store if they can get it of cummin seed to lengthen their breath and Nightingales eate spiders to prevent stoppings and Lions having surfeited on flesh abstaine from all meat til it be digested So the Marlin taught tender persons first to keep warm their feet the Storkes to remedy costiveness of body by the use of glisters the Hedghog to avoid walking in windy seasons the little Birds to bathe in Summer the Flies and Bees to keep home in Winter For there is no doubt but the natures of men were in former ages so strong that they did eate and digest every thing as it grew Neither were Mills Boulters Ovens and artificial preparations from the beginning but as sickness of the body encreased so the mind devised remedies teaching men how to thrash and grind corne to make bread to boil roast and bake meat to give thinne and liquid meats to weak stomacks and grosser cates to them that be strong after the example of every Bird who first softneth and boileth the meat in their mawes before they give it to their young ones neither should we marvail hereat For as ignorant
good Physician advised him to drink no longer water but a little wine for his stomacks sake and his often infirmities So likewise Severus the Emperor being sick at York of a hot gout his Physicians forbad him all flesh especially of the stronger sort but he refusing their councel nourished his disease with forbidden meats and soon died Contrariwise Seneca was forbidden by Serenus the Physician to eat any more of fish being too too watrish a nourishment for his weak body which whilst he refused to do and forbare to eat flesh his bloud was all turned to a gellied water So then in respect of particular persons neither flesh nor fish be of better nourishment but both alike yet generally flesh engendreth the better purer and more perfect bloud as the very colour and face of men which use either of them apart doth perfectly declare and consequently for sound men it is and ought to be accounted the best sustenance CHAP. VIII 1. Of the Flesh of tame Beasts VEAL CAlves Flesh is of a temperate constitution agreeing with all ages times and temperatures Calves are either Sucklings or Wainlings The first are of easier digestion making good bloud and driving choler from the heart So likewise is the Wainlings but somewhat harder either of them agree with hot and dry persons howsoever it is drest but to flaggy and moist stomacks Veal is unwholsom unless it be dry roasted for roasted meats give drie nourishment and boil'd meats moist as Galen writeth The Italians are so in love with Veal that they call Veal Vitellam that is to say their little life as though it gave not only nourishment but also life to their dry bodies which albeit I confess to be true by reason neither their Calves flesh nor their own bodies be so moist as ours yet in our Country it falls out otherwise through abundance of moisture so that howsoever sound bodies do well digest it yet languishing and weak stomacks find it too slimy and can hardly overcome it Did we not kill them so soon as commonly we do namely before they be fully a month old they would give the more sound and wholsome nourishment for till they be five or six weeks old their flesh is but a gelly hardened afterwards it is firm flesh void of superfluous moisture and most temperate of constitution Likewise in the choice of Veal the Bull Calf is thought the sweeter and better flesh whereas in all other beasts for the most part the female is preferred BEEF Ox-beef the older it is after his full growth the worse it is engendring as Galen dreamed of all beef quartane agues leprosies scabs cankers dropsies stoppings of the spleen and liver c. but whilst it is young or growing forwards in flesh and fatness it is of all meats by nature complexion and custome most nourishing unto English bodies which may easily appear in the diffecence of their strength and clean making which feed chiefly upon it and betwixt them that are accustomed to finer meats Chuse we therefore the youngest fattest and best grown Ox having awhile first been exercised in wain or plough to dispel his foggie moisture and I dare undertake that for sound men and those that labour or use exercise there is not a better meat under the Sun for an English man so that it be also corned with salt before it be roasted or well and sufficiently poudred before it be sod for so is it cleansed from much impurity and made also more savory to the stomach but if it be over salted poudred or dried as commonly it happeneth in Ship provision and rich Farmers houses that keep beefe a whole twelve-month till they eat it it is tough hard heavy and of ill nourishment requiring rather the stomach of another Hercules who is said to have fed chiefly of Bulls flesh then of any ordinary and common ploughman Wherefore howsoever we may taste of it to bring on appetite let it be but a touch and go for being eaten much and often it will heat and corrupt our blood dry up our bodies choke the mesaraical veins and bring forth many dangerous inward and outward griefs The Romans when they first ventured to dress an Oxe fearing belike what event might follow the eating of an unknown meat roasted the Oxe all at once and stuft his belly with all sorts of sweet hearbs and good flesh that the season yeelded making no small pudding in his belly which the people called Equm Trojanum the Trojan horse because it contained no fewer kinds of meats then that did Soldiers but had they known the wholesomness of the meat and our manner of dressing they needed not to have mingled so many antidotes and to have corrupted rather then corrected so good a nourishment Cow Biefe Cowbiefe is supposed by the Irish people and also by the Normans in France to be best of all neither do they account so much of Oxen either because they think the unperfit creatures or rather as I take it because they know not how to use and diet them in the gelding But were they as skilful in that point as also in the killing and dressing of Oxen as was Prometheus no doubt they would make higher estimation of one Oxe then of all the fat Cowes in Ceres stall Nevertheless I deny not yea I affirm with Galen that a fat and young Heifer kept up a while with dry meat will prove a convenient temperate and good nourishment especially if it be kil'd after the French fashion as I saw the Norman butchers kill them in our Camp whilst I lay there in Camp with that flower of Chivalry the Earl of Essex When the Cow is strook down with the axe presently they lay her upon her back and make a hole about the navel as big as to receive a swans quill through which the butcher blowes wind so long till the whole skin swell round about like a bladder in such sort that the beast seems of a double bigness then whilst one holdeth the quill close and bloweth continually two or three others beat the Cow as hard as they can with cudgils round about which beating never bruseth the flesh for wind is ever betwixt it and the skin but maketh both the hide to prove better Leather and the flesh to eat better and tenderer then otherwise it would Bull Beife Bull Beife unless it be very young is utterly unwholesome and hard of digestion yea almost invincible Of how hard and binding a nature Bulls blood is may appear by the place where they are killed for it glaseth the ground and maketh it of a stony hardness To prevent which mischief either Bulls in old time were torne by Lions or hunted by men or baited to death by dogs as we use them to the intent that violent heat and motion might attenuate their blood resolve their hardness and make their flesh softer in digestion Bulls flesh being thus prepared strong stomachs
may receive some good thereby though to weak yea to temperate stomachs it will prove hurtful Lambs Flesh Galen Halyabbas and Isaac condemn Lambs flesh for an over phlegmatick and moist meat breeding ill nourishment and through excessive watrishness slipping out of the stomach before it be half concocted in cold stomacks it turns all to slime in a hot stomack it corrupts into choler in aged persons it turns to froth and flegm in a young person and temperate it turns to no wholesome nourishment because it is of so flashy and moist a nature all which I will confess to be true in sucking Lambs who the nearer they are killed to their birth day the worse they are but when they are once weaned and have fed half a year upon short and tender grass I think that of all other flesh it is simply the best as I will prove by divine and humane reason For as in the new Testament the Lords Supper materially consisteth of two such things as there cannot be any drink or meat devised more comfortable nor more strenthening to the nature of man namely Bread and Wine so likewise the blessed Sacrament of the old Testament could not conveniently be so well expressed as in the eating of that which was the purest most temperate and most nourishing of all meats and what flesh is that I pray you Veal Pig or Goats flesh or the flesh of wild beasts or the flesh of Birds no but the flesh of a sound weaned Lamb of a year old whose flesh is neither too cold and moist as is a sucklings nor too dry and hot as when it hath strength to know the Ewe but of a most temperate constitution fittest to resemble the thing signified who is of all other our best nourishment Philochorus is recorded to have made a law that the Athenians should eat no more Lambs flesh not because they thought it too tender a meat for mens stomacks as some foolishly have conceived but because the people found it so wholesome pleasant and nourishing that every man desired it above all meats in such sort that had not the eating of them been restrained by a severe law the whole race of Sheep would have decayed amongst them Upon the like reason Valens the Emperour made a law that no Veal should be eaten which was counted in old time a princely meat for alwaies it was one dish at the Kings table in Egypt though they never had but two howsoever through God his singular blessing it is an ordinary meat amongst us in mean households The best way to prepare Lambs flesh is sufficient roasting for boyling makes it too fleshy and phlegmatick and by over-rosting the sweetness thereof is soon dried up Yea all Mutton contrary to the nature of Pork Pig and Veal should rather be too raw then too much roasted according as the French men find by experience who slash and cut a giggot of Mutton upon the spit and with the bloody juice thereof tempered with crums of bread and a little salt recover weak stomacks and persons consumed Wherefore howsoever some naturally abhor it as my honest friend Signor Romano and strong stomacks prove better with harder meat yet without all question a Lamb chosen and drest in manner aforesaid is for most men a very temperate nourishing and wholesome meat agreeing with all ages times regions and complexions Arnoldus Freitagius in his natural history saith that the hinder quarters of a Lamb being drawn with rosemary and garlick first steept in milk and moderately rosted at the fire is a meat most acceptable to the taste and also profitable to moist stomacks for which it is else commonly thought to be hurtful Also he assureth that Lambs flesh being well beaten with a cudgel before it is roasted eateth much better and is far wholesomer which I leave to be judged by the Cooks experience Mutton Mutton is so generally commended of all Physicians if it be not too old that itis forbidden to no persons be they sick or sound The best Mutton is not above four years old or rather not much above three that which is taken from a short hilly and dry feeding is more sweet short and wholesome then that which is either fed in ranck grounds or with pease-straw as we perceive by the taste great fat and ranck fed sheep such as Somerset shire and Linconshire sendeth up to London are nothing so short nor pleasant in eating as the Norfolk Wiltshire and Welsh Mutton which being very young are best rosted the elder sort are not ill being sodden with bugloss borrage and persly roots Now if some shall here object that gelding and spading be unnatural actions and that Eunuchs are subject to more diseases then perfect men inferring thereupon a reason or likelihood that the like may be also in all gelded ware and consequently in Muttons contrary to that which Galen hath affirmed I will deny all their positions upon good grounds For even nature hath deprived some things of that which gelders cut away and that Eunuchs are freed from many diseases as Gouts Baldness Leprosies whereunto other men are subject experience in all ages truely avoucheth Last of all it is generally confessed of all skilful Shepherds and namely by Charles Steven and John Liebault that Ewes and Rams are subject to far more maladies then Muttons requiring greater cost care skill and providence to maintain them in health Rams flesh and Ewes flesh As for Rams flesh and Ewes flesh that being too hot and dry this too excremental and soon corrupted I commend neither of them especially in this Country of ours where there is God bethanked such choice of wholesome Wethers Kid and Goat As Lambs flesh is lighter and moister then other Mutton so is Kid more light and moist then Goats flesh because as Hippocrates reasoneth it is less bloody and the blood which it hath is very moist liquid and fine The black and red Kids are better then the white and the younger they are so they be above a fortnight old the more wholesome and nourishing they are esteemed Their flesh is soon and quickly digested of excellent nourishment and restorative after a great sickness especially for young persons and hot stomacks but naught for them which are old phlegmatick It is better rosted then sod and the hinder parts are to be prefered because they are dryer and less excremental They are temperately hot and moist whilst they are under six weeks age for afterwards they grow to such heat and lasciviousness that before they are wained they will after they have suckt cover their own dam after they are once wained their flesh may be fit for strong labouring men which would not so well brook a tender suckling but for the most part of men it is unwholesome and of bad juice The Old He-goat is suitable to an old Ram save that it is more tough hard and unpleasant his flesh is not to be
catchers Might I be a sufficient Arbitrator between two so Learned men I would determine the truth to be on either side For indeed young Venison whilst it is sucking is very restorative neither do I think old Isaac in his declining age to have delighted more in it in respect of taste then in respect of wholsomness and goodness Also a gelded Deer is neither too dry nor too cold but of a temperate constitution and so void of superfluous or excrementitious humors that his horns never grow again after he is gelt which Aristotle and all Philosophers impute to superfluity of heat and moisture Nay young Bucks and Does Hinds and Staggs whilst they are in season are a wholsom and delicate meat breeding no bad juice of themselves yet bearing often the faults of bad Cooks which know not how to dress nor use them aright but more often the deserved reproaches of greedy Gourmands that cannot moderately use the good creatures of God either eating venison when they should not or more liberally and usually then they should The Italians also have this opinion of Venison that eaten in the morning it prolongeth life but eaten towards night it hasteneth death Contrariwise old Venison indeed is dry and perhaps too cold likewise full of gross clammy and incorrigible humors So that the same meat may be wholsom at some age in some times and for some certain complexions which otherwise in contrary circumstances is unwholsom yet is it never so pretious as that a man should venture his life to get it by stealth as many doe and have done in Noble mens Parks yea perhaps in their Princes Forrests and chief Chases Cardan affirmeth that Bucks and Does have no Galls in their bodies which is rather a signe of good temperature and lightness then of any dull dry or heavy meat This one thing only I will add That Keepers of Parks or at the least their servants and young children have upon my knowledge fed all the year long of little meat else and yet remained as strong healthfull and active as any persons could be Finally admit Deer be dry doth not butter amend them Suppose they be cold doth not pepper and salt and baking give them sufficient heat Thus howsoever it falleth out they are either by preparation which none can deny or by nature as I verily believe a good nourishment so that they be chosen in their due season just age and moderately fed upon Neither have we any reason from their unwholsomness to dispark our Parks or to câ—t down Forrests provided for their succour nay rather we ought to cherish them for the maintenance of Hunting whereunto if young Gentlemen were addicted as their Fathers were heretofore they would be more ready whereof Hunting is a resemblance to Warlike purposes and exploits Roebuck and Capreol But of all Venison Roebuck and Capreol bareth away the bell for whereas the forenamed beasts are discredited for their grosness of blood the Capreol his blood is exceeding fine through his swift running and continual frisking and leaping from place to place whereby his pores are ever opened and all bad humours consumed by exercise so that the very smell of his flesh is not heavy nor fulsome as in other Deer but fragrant quick and delightful neither hath his flesh the ordinary taste of Venison but a peculiar and more pleasant taste neither lyeth it heavy upon any stomack but is digested as soon as Kid curing also as Isaac writeth the falling sickness colick dropsie and abundance of fleam collected in any part It is permitted to all indifferent stomacks and forbidden onely to Children colerick constitutions lean and consumed bodies shrunck sinews and burning agues The Alpes are full of them in high Germany and some of our mountains of Wales are not without them They are good roasted sodden or baked as red Deer but you need not to pepper or salt them half so much for their flesh even when they are old is easily digested and scarce needeth a cup of wine which other Venison necessarily requireth to hasten their concoction Furthermore where all kinds of other Venison are not good but at certain seasons yet the Capreol is never out of season being alike wholesome in Sommer and Winter and alike toothsome as the borderers of the Alpes do best know and our owne Country men might perceive if they made trial Hares Hares or Leverets the beloved meat of Alexander Severus taken in hunting roasted with fresh lard and eaten with Venison sawce cannot offend a reasonable stomack Galen saith that the flesh of a Hare prevents fatness causeth sleep and cleanseth the blood how be it in another place he saith that it breedeth gross blood and melancholick humours which unless he understand only of old lean and unseasonable Hares experience it self will overthrow him For take a young Leveret and let it blood as you do a Pigeon the flesh of it will be very white tender and well rellishing yea little inferiour to a midsoâ—mer Rabbet Yet I deny not with Hippocrates that it dryeth more then ordinary meats for it provoketh much urine and so accidentally moistneth little though it be moist enough of its own nature Pissanellus writeh and the Italians generally believe it that eating of much hares flesh maketh a man fair and merry seven dayes after For which purpose perhaps they were so much in request amongst the Romans who fatned young Hares in clappers as we do Connies finding them so dieted to be a delicate and wholesome meat tame Hares so prepared are good at all times but wild Hares are best and fattest in the hardest time of Winter Certain it is that much eating of Hares flesh procureth leanness because it is very diuretical and common sence teacheth that a man pissing much cannot be fat because the wheyish part of blood called of Hippocrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sled of nourishment is sooner expelled then that it can carry nourishment throughout the body The neither Germans hang their Hares six or seven daies in the cold and shadowy aire before they flay or dress them whereby they prove exceeding tender though a night or two nights hanging were sufficient We do usually boil the foreparts in broth and rost only the hinder parts and not without reason for as in Kid and Lamb the hinder parts are driest and therefore we seeth them the fore-parts over-moist and therefore we roast them so contrawise a Hare is driest before and moistest behind Now concerning such Medicins as Matthiolus avoucheth to be taken from a Hares harsenet from his skin gall kidneys bones stones haire blood and dung I think it impertinent to the treatise of Diet which sheweth not how to give Medicines but to use nourishments Connies It is not to be thought strange that Hippocrates and Galen and all the Grecians wrote so little of Connies which with us above all other Nations is so common a meat For
them Galli Cocks Flesh the more old it is the less it nourisheth but if they be young and kept from their Hens and dieted with white bread and milk or wheat steept in milk they recover men out of Consumptions and Hectick fevers and then their stones livers and loyns are of excellent good nourishment being sodden they are nothing worth for their goodness is all in the broth as for their flesh it is good for nothing but to dry and bind the stomack Galen saith that as the broth of a Hen bindeth the body and the flesh loosneth the same so contrariwise the broth of a Cock loosneth and the flesh bindeth They of the game are esteemed most wholsom called of the Romans Medici galli Cocks of Physick because the Physicians most commended them Amongst which if I should prefer the Kentish kind for bigness and sweetness I suppose no injury to be done to any Shire of England Chuse the youngest as I said for nourishment for if once he be two years old his flesh waxeth brackish tough and hard of digestion fitter to be sodden in broth for the loosning of the belly then any way to be dressed for encrease of nourishment Gallinae Hens are best before they have ever laid and yet are full of eggs they also are best in January and cold months because long rest and sleep in the long nights makes them then fattest Their flesh is very temperate whilst they are young of good juice and large nourishment strengthening natural heat engendring good blood sharpning a dull appetite quickning the eysight nourishing the brain and seed and agreeing with all ages and complexions for they are neither so hot as to turn into choler nor so cold as to turn into fleagm nor so dry as to be converted into melancholie and yet Rhasis imagineth them to have a secret property of breeding the Gout and Hemorrhoids but turn wholly or for the most part into blood making a lively colour in the face and quickning both the eyesight and every sense Pullets flesh saith Avicen helpeth the wit cleareth the voice and encreaseth the seed which is a manifest argument that it nourisheth greatly which also Gallen confirmeth by many other arguments but that argument of encreasing seed is the chiefest of all seed being the superfluity or abundance of nourishment Hens flesh is sweetest when they are not too much fed but dig out their meat with their heels in a clean flour for exercise consumeth the superfluous moisture which else cannot but make them more unpleasant Nevertheless the Delians used to fat them with bread steept in milk and Platina Apicius and Stendelius shew many waies to fatten them but the best way is to let them fat themselves with pure corne cast amongst chaff that by exercise of their legs in shufflâ—ng and scraping they may make their flesh to eat better and prove more wholesome and yet by your leave Mr. Poulter the fattest Hen or Capon is not wholesomest but that which is of a middle fatness for as in a man too much fatness is both a cause of diseases and a disease it self so falleth it out in their bodies which how can they be wholesome meat unto others when they are diseased in themselves Of a black Hen the broath is whitest and of a black Goat the milk is purest the most part of Hens and Hares are scurvy and leprous CAPI Capons of seven or eight months age fatned in an open air on a clean flour with pure meat are preferred by all Physitians old or modern Greeks or Latins before all meats And to say the truth what dish can any Cooks-shop afford that can be compared with a boild or rosted Capon which helpeth appetite openeth the brest cleareth the voice fatneth lean men nourisheth all men restoreth sickmen hurteth none but the idle tasteth pleasantly digesteth easily which is also more solid then the flesh of Pullets more tender then Cocks more familiar to our nature then Phesants or Partridges not so dry as a Cock to be slowly digested not so moist as a chicken to be soon corrupted but equally affected and tempered in all qualities engendring much blood and yet unoffensive engendring much seed without unnatural sharpness or heat finally the flesh of Capons is so mild temperate and nourishing that Faventinus fears not to make it the ground of his restorative electuary yea Aloisius Mundella thinketh him to be desperately consumed whom Capon-gellies and cullises cannot recover Concerning the preparation of them I commend them roasted for moist stomacks but beeing boild with sweet marrow in white broth they are of speedier though not of stronger nourishment Now if a Capon be so wholesome a meat why should we not also by stitching up some veins or searing them in the loins try whether we may not likewise make Hen-capenets which the Italians practise to good purpose and make them exceeding fat but yet in Pisanels judgment they eat too moist One word more of the Etymology of a Capon which some derive from the English by an Irony Capon because he hath not his cap on others from the Italian Capone that is to say qua pone set it hither because it is an excellent dish but I like Fritagius his Etimologie best of all Caponem dicimus quasi caput omnium We call it a Capon saith he in thâ— Latin because it is Caput omnium the head or chief of all other meats And thus much of a Capon whose excellencies had the heralds known when Dr. Capon bought his arms of them I see no reason why they should have preferred into his Scutchions three Cocks all being nothing equivalent to one Capon Galli Africani Meleagrides Turkies though they be very hardly brought up and require great cost for their feeding yet their flesh is most dainty and worthy a Princes Table They were first brought from Numidia into Turky and thence to Europe whereupon they were called Turkies There are some which lately brought hither certain checkred Hens and Cocks out of new Guiny spoted white and black like a Barbers apron whose flesh is like to the flesh of Turkies both of them like the flesh of our hens cockchickens but that they be two parts hotter and moister then ours The youngest fatted in the fields or at the barn door killed also in Winter rather then in Sommer and hanged a day and night before they be drest are wholesomest to be eaten and of best nourishment Their flesh recovereth strength nourisheth plentifully kindleth lust agreeth with every person and complexion saving such as be of too hot a temper or enclined to rhumes or gouts it must be throughly roasted and if it be sticked full of cloves in the roasting or when it is to be baked which are the two best waies to cook a Turky it will soke up the watrishness and make it of speedier digestion PAVONES Peacocks are as Poets fain the beloved Birds of Juno which
wax both white fat and soft in flesh giving much good nourishment clearing the colour of ones face amending hoarsness of throats encreasing seed and dispelling wind wherein we may see that art and diet can make that wholsome which nature of it self hath made hurtful Pipiones Columbae Tame Pigeons are of two sorts the one great and very tame breeding monthly kept and fed continually at home the other fed never at home but in Cadlock time and the dead of Winter when they can get no meat abroad breeding onely but twice a year namely at the first and later seed-time They are of a very hot complexion and dry when they are old but whilst they are young they are hot and moist the wilder sort is most wholesome being killed after it hath flown a while up and down the Dove-house for then they give a purer juice by reason that their foggy moisture is lessened by exercise also they must be let blood to death under the wing which though Dr. Hector assumed to himself as his own invention yet it is of no less antiquity then Plinies writings Being thus newly killed and forthwith rosted at a blasing fire their flesh engendreth great store of blood recalling heat unto weak persons clensing the kidneys quickly restoring decayed spirits especially in phlegmatick and aged persons for whom they are most proper In Galens time saith Rhasis they onely pluckt off their heads and cast them away but bleeding under the wing is far better and maketh their flesh more cold and whiter in so much that Galen is not afraid to commend them to persons sick of agues Nay the Italians do as usually give them in agues as we do Chickens Pigeons of the first flight are counted better because the latter flight is after they have eaten cadlocks which maketh them neither to eat so sweet nor to prove so white and wholesome when they cannot be had home Pigeons I mean of the greater sort are to be taken and to be used in the like manner CHAP. XI Of the flesh of wild fowl ahiding and feeding chiefly upon the Land THere is no small difference of Land fowl according to the meat they feed on and the place they live in for the purer their meat the better meat they are themselves they that feed upon flesh or garbage are not so wholesome as they that feed upon good corn bents or wholesome seeds less wholesome are they which feed upon worms and fish on the Sea shore or rivers banks but worst of all other they that feed upon Serpents Spiders and Venemous beasts which no doubt may prove very medicinable to cure diseases but they cannot prove nourishing keeping their natural diet to restore flesh Concerning the place wherein they live and feed it is certain that high and dry Countries have the wholesomest Birds for they which sit in low and moist places are of no sweet nor wholesome complexion Furthermore their manner of taking alters their flesh for a Partridge taken in flight or a Larke dared with a Hawke is worth ten taken with nets springes and trammels the reason whereof is already set down in my Chapter of Preparation Finally look what Bird is whitest flesht that Bird is easiest to be digested what Bird is reddest of flesh is strongest of nourishment whatsoever is black of flesh is heavy to be digested and of slow nourishment yea so much the heavier and slower by how much his skin and flesh appeareth blacker This shall suffice to be generally spoken of land fowl yea of all fowl now let us descend to their particulars beginning with birds of greater volume Tardae Bistards or Bustards so called for their slow pace and heavy flying or as the Scots term them Gusestards that is to say Slow Geese feed upon flesh Livers and young Lambs out of sowing-time and in harvest time then they feed upon pure corn In the Summer towards the ripening of corn I have seen half a dozen of them lie in a Wheat-field fatting themselves as a Deer will doe with ease and eating whereupon they grow sometimes to such a bigness that one of them weigheth almost fourteen pounds Now as they are of an extraordinary bulk so likewise are they of rare nourishment to indifferent strong stomacks rellishing finely restoring bloud and seed offending no part of the body but strengthening all Chuse the youngest and fattest about Allhalontide for then are they best and diet him a day or two with a little white bread or rather keep him altogether fasting that he may scour away his ordure then let him bleed to death in the neck-veins and having hanged three or four daies in a cool place our of the Moon-shine either rost it or bake it as you do a Turkie and it will prove both a dainty and wholsome meat Grues Cranes breed as old Dr. Turner writ unto Gesner not only in the Northern Countrys amongst the Nation of Dwarfs but also in our English Fens Pliny saith that in Italy they feed much upon Grapes but with us they feed chiefly upon corn and fenny seeds or bents Theodosius esteemeth them of a cold temperature but all the Arabians judge them to be hot and dry Certain it is that they are of themselves hard tough gross sinewy and engendring melancholique bloud unfit for sound mens tables usually to be eaten of and much more unmeet for them that be sick yet being young killed with a goshawk and hanged two or three daies by the heels eaten with hot galentine and drowned in Sack it is permitted unto indifferent stomacks In Plutarch's time Cranes were counted a dainty and good meat fatted after this manner First they stitched up their eyes and fed them in the dark with wholsom mixtures of corn milk and seeds to make them white tender and pleasant of taste A day before they were killed they tempered their meat with the juice of that herb or with a good quantity of that seed whereof they would have their flesh especially to relish were it Mints Basil Time Rosemary Commin Coriander Fennel-seed or Annis-seed Which course if we likewise observed in the cramming of Capons and fatning of our houshold birds without question they would taste far more delicately Ciconiae Asteriae Ardeolae Storks Bittors and Herons neither do breed nor can breed any good nourishment feeding chiefly upon little fishes frogs and worms yea the Stork delighteth in newts water-snakes adders and sloeworms but except it be almost famished it will not venture upon a Toad as Casparus Heldelinus writeth It was my chance in my first travel into Germany to meet one Godfrey Achtius chief Physitian of Aquisgrane at Francfort Mart whose Triacle was there sold and esteemed better then the Triacle of Venice whereinto he put not the flesh nor the salt of Adders but the flesh of a Heronshaw fed a long time with nothing but such Adders as Galen wisheth us to chuse Verily his conceit was not ill
the scent thereof Merulae Blackbirds are preferred by Baptist Fiera farre before Thrushes Throstels or Feldefares as being nothing so strong hot nor bitter Trallianus commendeth all alike Their feed is on little grashoppers worms hurtle-berries juniper-berries ivy-berries bay-berries and hawes they are suspected to be a melancholick meat because they be never found but alone and solitary whereupon the Latines call them Merulas that is to say Solitarians Sturni Stares-flesh is dry and sanery and good against all poyson if Kiranides be not mistaken Galen in one place compares them for goodness with Partridg Thrush and Blackbirds in another place he dispraiseth them as much for their ill juce hard digestion and bad nourishment which nevertheless are both true that being understood of young Stares fed with wholesom meat this of old stares who delight to feed of unwholesom meat as well as wholesome namely hemlocks dwale and such llke Amongst this treatise of the greater sort of Land-birds I had almost forgotten Owles Rookes Crowes and Cadesses Noctuae Concerning Owles when they be once old they feed upon Mice Frogs Grashoppers and all kind of flesh Rabbi Moses in his Aphorisms saith that the flesh of young Owles is dainty and good strengthening the mind and diverting melancholie and madness yea I have heard certain noble men and gentlemen avouch that no young Cuckoe or Partridge is a finer meat Corvi Leguminales Rooks cannot be ill meat when they are young for they feed chiefly upon pure corn but their skin is tough black and bitter Corvus The carrion Crow is generally condemned and worthily despised of all men As also the Cadesse or Jacdaw which is not more unhappy in conditions then bad of nourishment Now we are come to treat of small Birds of the land which we will divide according to the order of the Alphabet having first admonished you that no small Birds must be overmuch sodden or dry roasted for then their nourishing moisture is soon taken out neither are they to be given to strong stomacks lest they be converted into choler whenelse they would wholly turn into good blood Finally young Birds must not hang long before they be dressed for they are of an airy substance which will soon be evapourated But let us consider every one particularly in his place Montifringillae Bramblings are a kind of small Birds feeding chiefly upon seeds sloes and hawthorne kernels Rubetrae Buntings feed chiefly upon little worms Pyrrhacia Bulfinches feed not onely upon little worms but also upon hempseed and the blossoms of peare-plums and apple-trees Citrinellae Citrinels or straw-coloured Finges be very small Birds feeding chiefly of white and black poppy seed but especially of the wild-poppy called Red-weed Certhiae Creepers seem to be a kind of Titmise living upon the worms which engender in and betwixt the barks of Trees Fringillae Finches for the most part live upon seeds especially the Goldfinch which refuseth to eat of any thing else Acanthis Atlantica So also doth the Canarie Finch or siskin yet the Bullfinch in hunger feeds upon small worms and the Greenfinch upon horsedung and nuts in frosty weather Alandae Larkes are of three sorts Field Larks Wood Larks and Heath Larks The first sort feeds upon corn seeds and worms The second chiefly upon worms The third upon worms and heath seed Some of each sort are high crested like a lapwing others uncrested which are counted the more wholesom Their temperament is hot and dry in the second degree unless they be young and fat and then they scarce exceed the first degree Galen and Rhasis write that as their broth looseneth so their flesh bindeth the belly Linariae Linnets feed chiefly upon flax seed but for a need they eat also the seed of hemp and thistles Apodes Martinets are either smooth or hairy legg'd for neither of them have perfect feet but stumps instead of feet Baptista Fiera in his treatise of Birds exclaimeth against them and calleth them beggers meat engendring most hot and feverous blood fitter to be eaten as a medicin to quicken eyesight and memory then as a wholesome or nourishing meat but being taken when they are new fledg'd experience warranteth them a dainty and good meat except they be over roasted Luseiniae Nightingales as Martial said are nothing worth when their breath is departed for as they feed filthily in the fields upon spiders and ants so their flesh is unwholesome at the table Pari majores Oxeys or great Titmise feed as ordinary Titmise do upon caterpillers blossoms of Trees bark worms and flies but their flesh is unwholesome Rubeculae Robin-red-brests feed upon bees flies gnats walnuts nuts and crums of bread and are esteemed a light and good meat Passeres Sparrows of the house feed commonly on the best Corn. They are hot and dry almost in the third degree engendring hot and aguish blood The best are the youngest fattest and wildest Trallianus commends leane Sparrows only to such as are sick of the Tympanie and young Cock-sparrows flesh as well as their stones and brains to such as be cold of nature and unable to Venus sports Haly abbas willeth such men to mince young cock-sparrows with egs and onions and to eat them in a gally-mawfry which perhaps you may find a better medicin then Dr. Iulius his bottle that is said to have cost twenty pound a pint but the red and hedg Sparrows feed ill and are both unwholesome Hirundines Swallows be they either house Swallows or banck Swallows are of the nature and operation of Martlets but that they are esteemed the hotter of both Curruca The Titling Cucknel or unfortunate Nurse for the Cuckoe ever lays his egg in the Titlings nest feeds upon gnats flies and worms it is a very hot bird coming in and going out with the Nightingale but of a delicate taste Pari. Titmise are of divers shapes with us in England some be long others be very short taild some have black heads some blew some green some plain and some copped all of them feed but ill and nourish worse Motacillae Wagtailes live upon flies worms and fat earth being no bad meat whilst they are young unless some because their tail is ever trembling shall therefore divine that they are ill for the shaking Palsey Reguli Wrens feed finely sometimes fill themselvs so full of little flies that their bellies are like to burst Their flesh being salted cureth Strangullions and the stone not confirmed but no man ever wrote that they give good nourishment Galguli Yellow Hammers feed as the most part of Titmise of seeds and grain namely the seeds of white and red roses poppy burs thistles succory and endiff c. In the winter time being fat they are counted wholesome at other times they are lean and also bitter CHAP. XII Of the flesh of wild Fowl abiding and feeding chiefly upon the waters Cygni Sylvestres OF all water fowl the wild Swan is the biggest and fairest
about the rump on either side thereof and are as many take it very restorative The Matrix The matrix of beasts yea of a barren Doe so highly esteemed is but a sinewy and hard substance slow of digestion and little nourishment Eyes Eyes of young beasts and young birds are not unwholesome being separated from their skins fat balls and humours for then nothing remaineth but a sweet tender and musculous flesh which is very easie of digestion Ears Snouts and Lips The Ears Snouts and Lips of beasts being bloudless and of a sinewy nature are more watrish viscous and flegmatick then that they may be commended for any good or indifferent nourishment Pinions and Feet The Pinions of birds and the feet of beasts are of like disposition yet the pinions of geese hens capons and chickens are of good nourishment and so are the feet of young hogs pigs Lambs and Calves yea also a tender Cow-heel is counted restorative and Heliogabalus the Emperour amongst his most dainty and lustful dishes made Pies of Cocks-combs Cock-stones Nightingales tongues and Camels heels as Lampridius writeth Galen also for men sick of agues boil'd Piggs-pettitoes in barly water whereby each was bettered by the other the Ptisan making them the more tender they makeing the Ptisan more nourishing and agreeable to the stomack That sodden Geese feet were restorative Messalinus Cotta by trial found out if Pliny may be credited The Tails or Rumps of Beasts are counted by certain unskilful Physitians yea of Dr. Isaac himself to be hard of digestion First because they are so far distant from the fountain of heat Secondly because they are most of a sinewy constitution to which if a third had been added that they are but covers of a close-stool perhaps is arguments would have been of some indifferent weight For indeed the farther any part is from the heart it is fed and nourished with the more fine and temperate blood also the extremities or ends of sinews are of strong wholesome and good nourishment but as for the Tails and Rumps of Beasts it is indifferently mingled of flesh sinews and fat so that the very Anatomy of them shews them to be a meat agreeable to all stomacks and verily whosoever hath eaten of a pye made onely of Mutton Rumps cannot but confess it a light wholesom and good nourishment The Rumps of Birds are correspondent having kernels instead of flesh but when they are too fat they overclog and cloy the stomack Udders The Udders of milch beasts as Kine Ewes Does and She-goats are a laudable taste and better then Tripes because they are of a more fleshy nature Lean Udders must be sod tender in fat broth fat Udders may be sod alone each of them need first a little corning with salt being naturally of a flegmatick and moist substance Stones The Stones of a Bore work marvails saith Pissanellus in decayed bodies stirring up lust through abundance of seed gathered by superfluous and ranck nourishment Indeed when Bucks and Stags are ready for the rut their stones and pisels are taken for the like purpose as for the stones of young Cocks Pheasants Drakes Partridges and Sparrows it were a world to write how highly they are esteemed Averrhois thinks that the stones of a young Cock being kept long in good feeding and separated from his Hens do every day add so much flesh unto our bodies as the stones themselves are in weight Avicen as much esteemeth Cock-sparrowes stones or rather more But the Paduan Doctors but especially Doctor Calves-head giveth that faculty to the stones of Pheasants and Partridges above all others Skin The Skins of Beasts yea of a roasted Pig is so far from nourishing that it can hardly be well digested of a strong stomack Some Birds are sodden or roasted without their skins because they are black and bitter as Rooks Dawes Cootes and Moor-hens and howsoever others are spared yet the skin of no Bird turneth to nourishment but rather to ill humours or filthy excrements Nay the very skin of an egg of a nut an almond a prune a raisen or a corrin and generally of all fruit is so far from nourishing that it cometh out of the strongest mans body either whole or broken as it went in CHAP. XIIII Of Milk FOrasmuch as childrens stomacks and old mens bodies and consumed mens natures be so weak that not onely all flesh and fish but also the fruits of the earth are burdensome to their tender and weak bowels God tendring the growing of the one the preservation of the other and the restoring of the third hath therefore appointed Milk which the youngest child the weariest old man and such as sickness hath consumed may easily digest If we would define or describe what Milk is it seemeth to be nothing but white blood orrather the abundant part of blood whited in the breasts of such creatures as are ordained by nature to give suck appointed properly for children and sucking little ones but accidentally for all men sick either of consuming diseases or old age That womens Milk is fittest for young children it may easily be proved by the course of nature which converteth the superfluity of blood in a woman bearing her child within her to the brests for no other purpose then that she should nourish her own babe For truly nothing is so unperfect defectuous naked deformed and filthy as a man when he is newly born into the world through a straite and outstreatched passage defiled with blood replenished with corruption more like to a slain then a living creature whom no body would vouchsafe to take up and look on much less to wash kiss and embrace it had not nature inspired an inward love in the mother towards her own and in such as be the mothers friends Hence it cometh that mothers yet hot sweating with travail trembling still for their many and extream throws forget not their new-born Babes but smile upon them in their greatest weakness heaping labour upon labour changing the nights trouble with the dayes unquietness suffering it to taste no other milk then that wherewith in their bellies it was maintained This doth a kind and natural mother if she be of a sound and indifferent strong constitution for her child and thus did Eve Sara Rebecca and Rachel yea all women which truely loved their children and were both able and willing to feed their own There be many reasons why mothers should be afraid to commit their children to starnge women First because no Milk can be so natural unto them as their own Secondly because it is to be feared lest their children may draw ill qualities from their Nurses both of body and mind as it fell out in Iupiter whom whilst his Mother committed to Aega Olens daughter and Pans wife to be nursed by her the Country woman living only upon goats milk could not but be of a strong lascivious nature which left such an impression in the child
not curdle season it with salt suger or hony and neither drink any wine or soure thing upon it nor mingle it with other meats but eat it upon an empty stomack and fast an hour after it Thirdly exercise not presently upon it neither sleep upon any milk taken from beasts chewing the cud and when you have eaten it wash your teeth clean for there is no greater enemy unto them then milk it self which therefore nature hath chiefly ordained for them who never had or have lost their teeth And truely as Marcilius Ficinus noteth Milk is not to be used of young men who have sound teeth given them for stronger meat but of such as either have none at all or very few and weak ones or though they have strong teeth want ability and strength to set them a grinding as it falleth out in them that are fallen into Fever Hecticks Wherefore when Poppaea wife to Domitius Nero carried 500 she Asses shod with gold continually about with her to bath her body in their milk once a week and to drink of it every day to make her skin clear and smooth without wrinckles she left it rather a monument of her pride then a memorial of her wisdome for nature taught her a better meat though Art could not appoint her a finer Bath If she had taken it as the Arcadians do Cow-milk in the spring time onely for a month or six weeks together once in the morning to cleanse and purge the body of bad humours it had been good and warrantable by physick but to use it continually in health could not less corrupt her then Goats milk did my Lady Penruddock of whose cruel and terrible end caused by the lest worms of all other perpetually engendred betwixt the skin and the flesh through superfluity of nourishment arising from the long continuance of Goats milk I will not here reherse it being fresh enough in their memories that best knew her most loved her The like may I say of Cow milk so generally used of us that being now and then taken of sound men not subject nor distempered with hot diseases it nourisheth plentifully encreaseth the brain fatneth the body restoreth flesh asswageth sharpness of urine giveth the face a lively and good colour encreaseth lust keepeth the body soluble ceaseth extream coughing and openeth the brest as for children and old men they may use it dayly without offence yea rather for their good and great benefit What Milk is best in sickness and consumptions Concerning them that be sick There are few diseases to which milk is not offensive being inwardly taken except the Consumptions of the solid parts called Marasmus the Consumption of flesh called Atrophia and the Consumption of the lungs and breathing parts called Phthisis For recovery of the first Cammels milk is preferred before all others because it is most moist and thin The second sort is best recovered by sucking milk from a womans brest as most familiar to our livers and blood needing no preparation for it is onely blood discoloured but onely application unto the flesh The chusing of a good Nurse The Nurse must be young clear of skin of a kindly smell pure complexion good temperature wholesom and moderat diet much sleep little anger neither too idle nor too toiling no wine bibber no eater of hot spices no ordinary wanton and void of all diseases such a nurse is sooner wished for then found yet such a one is to be chosen either for sound children or sick Persons lest drawing corruption in so fine a meat as milk is our consumptions be encreased so much the more by how much poison given with drink is more dangerous Asses milk The third sort of Consumptions wherein the flesh accidentally decayeth through exulceration of the lungs and breathing parts is especially to be cured by Asses milk for which Cammels milk is unfit because it is too thin and moist as also womans milk because it wholly nourisheth and nothing cleanseth whereas Asses milk is both meat and medicin cleansing and nourishing alike not so thin as to hinder expectoration not so thick as to cause condensation of the matter putrified but being of a middle temper and consistence and consequently most proper for that disease Neither are all Asses of alike goodness for a young Asses milk is of the thinnest an old Asses milk is too thick and dry but one of a middle age is best for that purpose Having gotten such a one every morning four or five hours before you use her milk shut her from her foal and curry her well and clean lest her skin growing scurvy and foul ill vapours be augmented inwardly for want of expiration then feed her with grinded malt straw-dryed mingled with a little sweet fennel seed aniseed or carraway seed which she will eat with great pleasure and digest into a sweet and wholesome blood an hour after that milk her as neer the patient as conveniently you can that he may drink her milk ere the air hath altered it for if it be once cold it is never wholesome this is to be done twise a day morning and evening upon an empty stomach neither eating nor drinking ought after it for two hours you may sweeten it also with sugar-candy sugar of roses or fine maiden hony and it will be the more effectual Assoon as the Ass is milked turn her and her foal into fine leaze wherein store of Cowslaps Trifoil Cinqfoil Elecampana Burnet Filipendula Meadtansy Horsetail Plantain Lambs-tongue Seabiouse and Lung-wort groweth In winter feed her with the sweetest hay growing in the finest and best meddows If Asses milk cannot be conveniently obtained for the Lung-consumption nor womens milk for the Liver-consumption before specified use the milk of a meetly young reddish and sound Cow feeding in the like leaze or upon the sweetest hay but beware as commonly fools do not that you feed them not with new and much less with soure grains for it maketh their milk strong windy and unwholesome especially for such as be weak and much consumed likewise remember to rub and stroke down your Cow every morning and her milk will be both sweeter and more nourishing Thus much of Milk what it is how it is made for whom and for what diseases it is convenient how it is to be prepared and used how many kinds thereof are wholesome for mans body what milk is fittest for sound men and what for them that be sick so there resteth no more but to wonder at Plinies credulity who as constantly upon hear-say avoucheth mares feeding neer the river Astaces in Pontus to give all black Milk as Cardan reporteth blew snows to be common near the Straits of Magellane CHAP. XV. Of Butter Cream Curds Cheess and Whey THe milks of horned beasts as Cows Ewes and Goats do consist of three substances Cream Curds and Whey Of Cream The first being compared to the rest is hot and unctuous the second flegmatick and
neither are they forbidden in a strait and thin diet did they not nourish oversoon Gesner sheweth a good reason why new white and long eggs be the best of all other First because new eggs are ever full but old eggs lose every day somewhat of their substance and in the end waxing addle stink like urine whereupon they were called of the Latins Ova urinae Secondly the whitest eggs have the palest yolks and most thin fine little bloody strings swiming upon them Thirdly the longest eggs are commonly cock-eggs and therefore of better nourishment Some eggs are almost all yolk and no white yea some have two yolks in them others have in a manner no yolk at all or at the most nothing proportionable the former sort nourish most the other are fittest for hot stomacks The dressing of Eggs. Concerning the preparation of them a rare egg any way drest is lightest of digestion a hard egg is most rebellious an egg betwixt both is of strongest nourishment Brassavola reporteth a Monk to have been made so costiff with hard eggs that no art was available to give him on stool Furthermore all hard eggs especially hardened by frying get from the fire a smoky and hot nature and from the frying-pan and burnt butter a maligne quality not onely as offenssive to the stomack as rotten eggs but also sending up bad vapours to the brain and heart Eggs potcht into water or verjuce are fittest for hot complexions or men distempered with agues sodden rare in the shell they are soonest converted into blood but being rare-roasted in embers they make thickest and strongest blood and are fittest for weak cold and watrish stomachs Thus much of Birds eggs which in a little quantity nourish much and are called of Ficinus the quintescence of flesh because they yeild so speedy and fine nourishment Now it resteth to discourse something of Tortesses eggs which be not poisonable nor hurtful as the eggs of Snakes Lizards and Chamaeleons but very fit to nourish men in hot agues when all birds eggs may be suspected of inflaming the blood for they are of a more flegmatick nature tempering hot humours procuring sleep to the watchful moisture to the dryed person and inspiring as it were a second life to such as seem desperately consumed of hot fevers Sir Wil. Pelham that worthy valiant Knight kept them in his garden at the Minories by the Tower of London where I wondred much at the beast and more at her eggs for contrary to the nature of hens eggs the most spotted were the best and the hardest of shell the best likewise and they are worst when they are newest best when they are three months old Last of all as touching that question made by Plutack and disputed of him more wittily then wisely of either side Whether the Hen or the Egg be first in nature I omit it as a foolish and superfluous doubt sith common sence and reason telleth us that the perfecter creatures were first made and the whole is more ancient then that which is gotten of the whole Of Blood Blood being the charet-man or coacher of life was expresly forbidden the Israelites though it were but the blood of beasts partly because they were naturally given to be revengeful and cruel hearted partly also because no blood is much nourishing out of the body albeit in the body it is the onely matter of true nourishment Nevertheless the Laconians black broth so highly commended of Dionysius was made of kidds blood sodden with water vinegar and salt yea the Bisalta of Scythia make pottage of horses blood milk accounting it their best and strongest meat Also in Aegira Bulls blood is so far from being poisonable as it is in all other places that it is held both delicate and restorative so likewise is the blood of a Mare that was never covered for if she once have taken horse her bloud is dangerous Drusus the Tribune purposing to accuse Quintus Caepio of giving him poison drank Goats blood a good while before whereby he waxed so pale and colourless that many indeed suspected him to have been poisoned by Caepio whereby it is manifest that bloud hath been a very ancient nourishment and not lately devised by our country pudding writes or curious sawce makers as Iason Pratensis and other foolish dietists have imagined Nay which is more not onely the blood of beasts hath been given for meat but also the blood of men and striplings hath been drunk for a restorative yea in Rome the seat and nurse of all inhumanity Physicians did prescribe their patients the blood of Wrestlers causing them to suck it warm breathing and spinning out of their veins drawing into their corrupt bodies a sound mans life and sucking that in with both lips which a dogg is not suffered to lick with his tongue yea they were not ashamed to prescribe them a meat made of mans marrow and infants brains The Grecians afterwards were as bold and impious as the Romans tasting of every inward and outward part of mans body not leaving the nails unprosecuted But of all other I wonder most at Marsilius Ficinus a most famous Scholer and accounted for a good Catholick who hath thus written of the use of mans blood No doubt saith he the milk of a young and sound woman is very restorative for old men but the liquor of mans blood is far better which old women-witches knowing to be true they get young children unto them and prick or wound them and suck their blood to preserve their own health and life And why may not then old men I pray you for a need suck likewise the blood of a young man or maid which is merry lusty sound and willing to spare some of his superfluous blood for another mans life wherefore I advise them to suck an ounce or two of blood fasting out of the veine of the left arm at a little orifice towards the full of the moon drinking presently upon it some wine and sugar c. Which though he protesteth himself to have uttered as a great secret though the Prince of Abohaly writ as much before in his Old-mans diet and to be as lawful as it is helpful in Physicks practise yet by his leave I dare again protest and prove the contrary for it is unlawful to gaze upon a mans carcase and is it lawful to eat or drink his blood what remedy call you that which is more savage and abominable then the grief it self what law what reason nay what conjecture found out this canibals diet well let it proceed from the Americans and Barbarians nay from the Grecians that were counted civil Let Democritus dream and comment that some diseases are best cured with anointing the blood of strangers and malefactors others with the blood of our friends and kinsfolks let Miletus cure sore eyes with mens galls Artemon the falling sickness with dead mens sculls Antheus convulsions with
a Bream are most esteemed for their tenderness shortness and well rellishing Some bake a Carp with spice fruit and butter but in my judgment being sodden like a Bream it is of as good a taste and better nourishment A red Cavialie is made of their spawne in Italy much eaten and desired of the Iewes for that they dare not eat of the Cavialie of Sturgians Seales and Tunny because they are onely to feed upon scaled fish and such as carry fins above all things see that your Carps stink not of mud nor fenny filth for they cannot then be wholesome for mans body Locustellae Astaci Carabi Crevisses and Shrimps were appointed by God saith Dorion as Athenaeus writeth for quezy stomachs and give also a kind of exercise for such as be weak for head and brest must first be divided from their bodies then each of them must be dis scaled and clean picked with much pidling then the long gut lying along the back of the Crevisse is to be voided Lastly the small clawes are to be broken wherein lyeth part of the best meat Crevisses feed upon fish water-herbs and sweet clay but most gladly upon the livers of young beasts before we are to use them it were good to diet them in a cistern with crumbs of white bread for three or four dayes together so will they be cleans`d of all impurities and give a more strong and fine nourishment They should be sodden in the water whence they were taken with a little salt and never kept above a day after for they will soon smell and putrifie we do foolishly to eat them last being a fine temperate and nourishing meat They are best from the Spring until Autumn and at the full of the Moon they are most commendable The Females likewise are better then the Males which a wise man will soon discern for consumed persons they are first to be washed in barly water and then to be sodden in milk being first dis-caled till they be tender according as before I wrote of Shrimps Leucisci Daces or Darts or Dares be of a sweet taste a soft flesh and good nourishment either sod or broild or pickled like Anchovaes after the Italian manner Anguillae Eeles have so sweet a flesh that they and Lampreyes were dedicated to that filthy Goddess Gula or gluttony yet withall it is so unwholesome that some Zoilus or Momus would have accused nature for putting so sweet a taste into so dangerous a meat for Eeles as Hippocrates writeth live most willingly in muddy places and in his Epidemiques he rehearseth many mischiefs to have happened to divers through eating of Eeles they give much nourishment but very corruptible they loosen the belly but bring fluxes they open the wind-pipes but stop the liver they clear the voice but infect the lungs they encrease seed but yet no good seed finally they bring agues hurt the stomach and kidneys engender gravel cause the strangury sharpen the gout and fill us full of many diseases they are worst in Sommer but never wholesom the elder ones are least hurtful and if any be harmless it is the silver-bellied and the sandy Eele Arnoldus de villa nova saith that no Eele is free from a venemous malignity and a kind of gluish suffocating juice But Jovius reporteth that some Eeles are engendred in a little River by Cremona less a great deal then our little griggs hurtful in no disease but of a pure wholesome and good nourishment which I will believe because so grave a Chronicler reporteth it otherwise I should think ill with Hippocrates of all Eeles even of those little ones as well as the Eeles in Ganges which are thirty foot long as Pliny writeth Verily when Eeles only sink to the bottom and all other fishes float after they are dead it cannot but argue them to be of a muddy nature little participating of that aâ—ereal substance which moveth and lightneth other fishes Again sith like an Owle it never comes abroad to feed but in the night time it argueth a melancholick disposition in it self and a likelihood to beget the like in us Great Eeles are best roasted and broild because their maligne humour lieth more next under the skin then in their flesh which is corrected or evapourated by the fire Next of all they are best poudred and sowced and baked with butter salt and pepper but worst being sodden in water ale and yeast as commonly they are for the yeast addeth one maglinnity to another and doth more hurt then I can express to the stomach liver and blood Rhombi fluviatiles Flounders if they be thick and well grown are a most wholesome and light meat being sod with water and verjuice or fried with vinegar and butter but the little Flounders called Dabs as they are little esteemed of so their watrish and flaggy flesh doth justly deserve it Thymi Grailings called both of Greeks and Latins Thymi because their flesh smelleth like thime when they be in season are a white firm and yet a tender meat tasting no worse then it smels and nourishing plentifully Seeth it in such sort as was described in our Treatise before of dressing Breams and you will find few fishes comparable unto it of all scaled fishes they only want a gall which perhaps is the cause of their greater excellency Gobiones Gudgins are of two sorts one whiter and very little the other bigger and blackish both are as wholesome as a Perch but if any be found yellowish they are dry lean and unseasonable Galen commendeth their flesh exceedingly not onely because it is short and pleasant in taste being fat and friable but also for that it is soon concocted nourisheth much and encreaseth good blood They are best which lye about rocky and gravelly places for fenny and lake Gudgeons be not wholesome Paganelli Rondeletius in his book of fishes mentioneth two Sea Gudgins called Paganelli of a far greater length and bigness then ours are of which our Western fishermen call by the name of Sea-cobs they sometimes come up the River of Vske where they are taken and brought to Exceter and accounted as they are indeed a most sound light wholesom and nourishing meat Capitones Gulls Guffs Pulches Chevins and Millers thombs are a kind of jolt-headed Gudgins very sweet tender and wholesome especially when they be with spawne for their eggs are many and fat giving good nourishment and though their flesh be hard in Albertus judgment yet it never putrifieth and is well digested Funduli Groundlings are also a kind of Gudgins never lying from the ground freckled as it were on each side with seven or eight spots they are seasonable in March April and May the best lye lowest and feed finest sucking upon gravel but they which lye neer to great Cities feed upon filth and delight in the dead carcasses of men and beasts therefore called of the Germans Leijtessers All sorts of Gudgins be wholesom either sod or fried
chuse the whitest purest clearest most glistering and thickest for they are notes of the best hony also let it be hony that ran and was never pressed out of the combs and of young Bees rather then old feeding upon thime rosemary flowers and such sweet and wholesome herbs Then may you boldly give it as meat to young children to cold and moist complexions and to rhumatick old men especially in Northern Countries and cold climates and in the winter season CHAP. XXI Of Fruit and the differences thereof NOw we are come to the last course which in ancient and more healthful ages was the first and onely whilst mens hands were neither polluted with the blood of Beasts nor smelt of the most unwholesome sent of fish This kind of meat is commended like the Hebrew tongue for three principal reasons antiquity purity and sufficiency for it was more ancient then either flesh or fish by two thousand years it is so pure of it self that it never defiles the hand nor needeth any great dressing and that it is sufficient to maintain us long in life not onely the history of the first twelve Patriarches but also whole nations living at this day in India Africa Asia and some parts of Europe do sufficiently declare feeding wholly or principally of fruit whereof I find three chief or especial kinds namely Orchard-fruit growing upon trees Garden-fruit growing upon shrubs herbs and roots and Field-fruit concluded under the name of Graine CHAP. XXII Of all Orchard Fruit. Pruna Armeniaca chrysomela ABricocks are plums dissembled under a peaches coat good only and commendable for their tast and fragrant smell their flesh quickly corrupting and degenerating into choler and wheyish excrements engendring pestilent agues stopping the liver and spleen breeding ill juice and giving either none or very weak nourishment yet are they medicinable and wholesome for some persons for they provoke urine quench thirst and sirup made of the infusion of dried Abricocks qualifies the burning heat and rage of fevers They are least hurtful to the stomach and most comfortable to the brain and heart which be sweet kerneld big and fragrant growing behind a Kitchin-chimny as they do at Barn-elms and so thoroughly ripened by the Sun that they will easily part from their stone They are best before meat and fittest for hot stomachs but let not women eat many of them and let them also remember to drown them well in Sack or Canary wine Galen preferreth Abricocks before Peaches because they are not so soon corrupted whereas common experience sheweth the contrary for as Abricocks are soonest ripe so of all other stone fruit they soonest corrupt in a mans stomach Amigdalae Almonds into whom fair Phyllis was turned as Poets imagine are of two sorts sweet and bitter These are fittest for medicin but the sweet ones for meat The sweet almonds are sometimes eaten green of women with child to procure appetite and in Summer of others because then they are most pleasant but they nourish most after the fall when they are fully ripe being blanched into cold water they fatten the body give plentiful nourishment encrease flesh and seed help the brain and eyesight purge the brest by spitting clear the voice clense the kidneys and provoke sleep eat them not when they are very old and wrinckled for then they stay long in the stomach and breed headache if they be eaten with sugar as they are in march-paens or in cullices mortises rice porredge or almond milks they are of greater nourishment and more easie digestion but then they are to be eaten alone not in the middle and much less in the end of Meals Mala. Apples be so divers of form and substance that it were infinite to describe them all some consist more of aire then water as your Puffs called mala pulmonea others more of water then wind as your Costards and Pome-waters called Hydrotica Others being first graffed upon a Mulbery stock wax thorough red as our Queen-apples called by Ruellius Rubelliana and Claudiana by Pliny Roundlings are called mala Sceptiana of Sceptius and Winter-goldlings Scandiana Plinij Pippins mala Petisia Peare-apples Melapia and Pear-mains or Peauxans no doubt be those Applana mala which Appius graffed upon a Quince smelling sweetly and tasting a little tart continuing in his goodness a year or two To be short all Apples may be sorted into three kinds Sweet Soure and Unsavory Sweet Apples moisten the belly open the brest ripen rhumes ease the cough quench thirst help spitting cure melancholly comfort the heart and head especially if they be fragrant and odoriferous and also give a laudable nourishment Soure Appels stay the belly hinder spitting straiten the brest gripe and hurt the stomach encrease phlegm and weaken memory Unsavory Apples are unfit for our eating appointed rather to fat Hoggs and Swine then to come into our stomachs Old Apples are best if they be such as can bear age because by long lying they lose two ill quallities Watrishness and Windiness and have also a more perfect and pleasing taste As Nuts Figs and Mulberies be best towards the lowest boughes so contrariwise Plums Apples and Pears be best from the top of the Tree and hanging on the sunny side Sweet Apples are to be eaten at the beginning of meat but soure and tart Apples at the latter end All Apples are worst raw and best baked or preserved None at all are good sodden besides the Codlin which afterwards being made into tart stuff and baked with rose-water and sugar is no bad meat their coldnese and watrishness is soon corrected either in baking roasting or preserving with cinamon ginger orenge-pills aniseed caraway-seed sweet fennel-seed and sweet butter Now whereas the old Proverb ab ovo ad mala sheweth that Apples were ever the last dish set upon the board you must understand it of tartish and soure Apples or else justly though newly find fault with an old custome Philip of Macedonia and Alexander his son from whom perhaps a curious and skilful Herald may derive our Lancashire men were called Philomeli Apple-lovers because they were never without Apples in their pockets yea all the Macedonians his Countrymen did so love them that having neer Babylon surprized a Fruiterers hoy they strived so for it that many were drowned which fight was therefore called by Historiographers Melomachia the Apple-fight but cruel fluxes surprised the Army upon this and many dyed of intolerable gripings Oxyacanthae Spinae acidae Berberies preserved are a great refreshing to hot stomachs and aguish persons and being kept in pickle they serve for sallets and the garnishing of meat but they are of very little nourishment themselves or rather of none at all though by a pleasant sharpness they edge an appetite Prunus-Sylvestris regius Bullices likewise both white speckled and black are of the like nature being stued bakt roasted or preserved fitter to be eaten last to close up the upper mouth of the stomach then first
sourest Lemons and Citrons very thinn and having cast on salt and rosewater use them as a general sawce to all flesh and fish by which preparation an appetite is procured their wine well tasted and their kidneys scowred But forasmuch as we live in a colder climate it is best to take the ripest sort of Lemmons and to steep their slises peel and all in wine sugar and cinamon upon the warm coals and then to eat them alone or with our meat Let old and consumed persons beware of them for they will spend their spirits with abundance of urine and also overthrow their natural heat which is rather to be quickned and restored with wine then quenched or quelled with so great a cooler Mespila Medlers were not seen in Italy whilst Cato lived but now in England there be too many Concerning the fruit it self it is never good till it be rotten wherein the bus-meddlers of our age may also worthily be compared to them the great ones called Setania have most pulp the little ones less but more fine and fragrant these also do more comfort and bind the stomach though the great ones excell them in plenty of nourishment either sort is to be eaten last because they are of an heavy and astringent nature burdensom to the stomach and engendering gross humours if the be eaten first Mora. Mulberies being black and fat which is a signe of their full ripeness are hot in the first degree and moist in the second fittest to be eaten before meat because they easily pass from out the stomach to the guts drawing the other meat along with themselves they please the stomach procure losness of body and urine nourish â—ound and clean bodies though they corrupt in unclean stomachs also they smoothen the harshness of the throate quench thirst delay choller and cause no great but yet a natural appetite to meat They should be gathered before Sun-rising and given onely as I said to clean stomachs and before meat for they will else corrupt and swell us up and drive us perhaps into some putrified fever They are fittest in Summer for young men and such as abound with blood and choler Unripe Mulberies which is discerned by their whiteness and redness may be good to make medicins for ulcered throats and fluxes of the belly but they deserve not the names of nourishments When Mulberies cannot be gotten Blackberries or Dewberries may supply their room to which Galen ascribeth the like vertues This one thing let us note omitted of all Herbarists of our latter age that albeit a Mulbery Tree be called in Greek and Latin Morus that is to say a fool yet her wisdome excelleth all other Trees in my judgement because it never budeth till all sharp weather be clean gone and then spredeth out her leaves more in a day then all other Trees did in thirty before Olivae Olives the desired salade of divine Plato are an usual dish at most mens Tables though none of them grow in England Wild Olives are better then those which are set in City Orchards which the very Birds do know in Italy more coveting the wilder sort We have three sorts of them brought into our Countrey Spanish-olives Italian olives and Olives of Provence The first sort is the biggest but yet the worst being too yellow too soft and too full of oil the Italian Olive is almost as big but more firm of flesh and pleasanter through retaining his natural greenishness The Province Olives are less then either something bitterer also and more leather like skin'd yet better for the stomach then the Spanish though nothing neer the Italian or Bononian Olive in flesh taste or goodness There also their pickles is made of water salt ind sweet fennel which giveth them a greater grace and maketh them less heavy unto weak stomachs All Olives even the best are but of slow and little nourishment serving especially to provoke appetite to cleanse the stomach of phlegm to strengthen the guts and to cure loathing of meat It were good to take them out of their salt pickle which enflameth blood and to lay them a while in vinegar before we eat them to correct their heat and make them more agreeable to the stomach They are best in the midst of meat with a French salad for being first eaten they lye heavy in the stomach and being last eaten they offend the head with their brackish and salt vapours which hinder sleep and encrease thirst Malum Aurantium Orenges are brought hither of three kinds some exceeding sweet others soure and the third sort unsavory or of no rellish The first sort are sweet and temperately hot of indifferent nourishment good for stoppings of the brest rhumes and melancholy Very soure Orenges are extreamly cold making thin and watrish blood and griping the belly but right Civil-orenges have a pleasant verdure betwixt sweet and soure whose juice and flesh preserved cause a good appetite bridle choler quench thirst yet neither cool nor dry in any excess As for unsavory Orenges they neither nourish nor serve to any good use but lie heavy in the stomach stirring up wind and breeding obstructions in the belly being eaten with sugar and cinamon civil-orenges give a pretty nourishment to aguish persons whose stomachs can digest no strong meats and also their pills preserved do somewhat nourish especially if they be not spoiled of the white part which is most nourishing as the outward rind contrariwise is most medicinable chuse the heaviest ripest and best coloured and those that taste pleasantly betwixt sweet and soure Mala Persica Peaches shew manifestly how change of earth and climate may alter natures For Columella and divers before Plinies time have recorded that in Persia from whence they were brought into Europe peaches are a deadly poison but with us the smell of a ripe tender and fragrant peach comforteth the heart and their meat not onely causeth appetite maketh a sweet breath and cooleth choler but also easily digesteth and giveth good nourishment I never saw greater store of good peaches then in Suitzerland where the poor men fat themselves and their hoggs with them exceedingly when they are in season All Peaches are to be quartered and laid in strong wine before they are eaten Ripe Peaches according to Galens rule must be eaten in the beginning of meals because they are a moist and slippery fruit but hard and unripe Peaches are best at the end of meat if ever they are good at all yea though they be candied or preserved yet Peaches must be sparingly eaten for many are dangerous and killed Theognostus that fine Scholer so much lamented in the Greek Epigrams Four good morsels Peaches Figs Melons and Champignois Pyra Pears be of infinite kindes because men by graffing divers Pears together have made of them infinite mixtures The Norwich-pear and St. Thomas-Pear are most durable and very good the Sand-pear is firm and also nourishing the Lady-pear is too watrish
the greater being asked dayly by his Stuard what he should provide for his Supper never gave him other answer then this Onely Bread shewing us thereby that as our breakfast must be of the moistest meats and our Dinners moderately mingled with driness and moisture so our Suppers should be either onely of of Bread or at the most of meats as dry as Bread especially in these Islands and moist Countries so subject to rhumes and superfluous moistures CHAP. XXVI Of Salt Sugar and Spice THere was a sect of Philosophers called Elpistici commending Hope so highly above all vertues that they termed it the sawce of life as without which our life were either none at all or else very loathsom tedious and unsavory May I not in like manner say the like of Salt to which Homer giveth the title of Divinity and Plato calleth it Jupiters Minion for tell me to what meat be it flesh fish or fruit or to what broth Salt is not required either to preserve season or rellish the same Nay bread the very staff and strength of our sustenance is it not unwholesom heavy and untoothsom some without Salt Wherefore in the same Temple Neptune and Ceres ever stood together because no Grain is good unsalted be it never so well spiced or sugared or otherwise artificially handled Besides this the famous Warriours in old time accustomed to hard and sparing Diet howsoever voluntarily they eschewed flesh and fish as meats too delicate for Souldiers stomachs living onely upon bread onions leeks garlick town-cresses and roots yet they did eat Salt with every thing as without the which nothing was deemed wholesome And truly what is flesh but a peece of carrion and an unsavory carcass till Salt quickens graces and preserves it infusing thorough out it as it were another soul what is fish but an unrellished froth of the water before Salt correcteth the flashiness thereof and addeth firmness yea milke cheese butter eggs tree-fruit garden fruit field-fruit finally all things ordained and given for nourishment are either altogether unwholesome without Salt or at the least not so wholesome as otherwise they would be Plutarch moveth a question in his Natural Disputations why Salt should be so much esteemed when beasts and fruits give a rellish of others tastes but none of Salt For many meats are fatty of themselves Olives are bitterish and many fruits are sweet many soure divers astringent some sharpe and some harsh but none are salt of their own nature what should be gathered of this that the use of salt is unnaturall or unwholesome nothing less It is enough for nature to give us meat and elsewhere to give us wherewith to season them And truly sith Salt may either be found or made in all Countries what needed fruit flesh or fish to have that taste within them which out wardly was to be had at mans pleasure Now if any shall object unto me the Egyptian Priests abstaining wholly from Salt even in their bread eggs because it engendereth heat and stirreth up lust Or Apollonius Herophilus his Scholer who by his Physicians counsel abstained wholly from any thing wherein Salt was because he was very lean and grew to be exceeding fat by eating hony-sops and sugared Panadoes I will answer them many wayes and perhaps sufficiently First that long custome is a second nature and that it had been dangerous for the Egyptian Priests to have eaten Salt which even from their infancy they never tasted Again whereas it was said that they abstained from it for fear of lust no doubt they did wisely in it for of all other things it is very effectual to stir up Venus whom Poets fain therefore to have been breed in the Salt Sea And experience teacheth that Mice lying in Hoyes laden from Rochel with Salt breed thrice faster there then if they were laden with other Merchandize Huntsmen likewise and Shepherds seeing a slowness of lust in their Dogs and Cattle feed them with Salt meats to hasten coupling and what maketh Doves and Goats so lusty and lacivious but that they desire to feed upon salt things Finally remember that lechery in Latin is not idlely or at adventure termed Salaritas Saltishness for every man knows that the salter our humours be the more prone and inclinable we are to lechery As manifestly appeareth in Lazars whose blood being over salt causeth a continual tickling and desire of venery though for want of good nourishment they perform little Wherefore whosoever coveteth to be freed of that desire with the Egyptian Priests which is an unnatural thing to covet let them altogether abstaine from Salt in every thing but look how much they gain in impotency that way so much they lose of health another way For as sheep feeding in salt Marshes never dye of the rot and be never barren but contrariwise are rotted as well as fatted in fresh pastures so likewise whosoever moderately useth Salt shall be freed of putrifaction and stoppings and live long in health no disorder being elsewhere committed when they which wholly abstain from it both in bread and meat shall fall into many diseases and grievous accidents as did Apollonius himself for all his fatness and as it hapned to Dr. Penny who after he had abstained certain years from Salt fell into divers stoppings cruel vomitings intolerable headache and strange migrams whereby his memory and all inward and outward senses were much weakned Remember here That I said whosoever moderately useth Salt for as wholly to refuse it causeth many inconveniencies so to abuse the same in excess is no less dangerous engendring choler drying up natural moisture enflaming blood stopping the veins hardning the stone gathering together viscous and crude humours making sharpness of urine consuming the flesh and fat of our bodies breeding salacity and the colt evil bringing finally upon us scabs itch skurfe cankers gangrena's and foul leprousies They which are cold fat watrish and phlegmatick may feed more plentifully on salt and salt-meats then other persons but cholerick and melancholick complexions must use it more sparingly and sanguineans must take no more of it then lightly to rellish their unsavory meat Our Wiches in Cheshire afford so good Salt through God's singular Providence and mercy towards us that I am eased of a great labour in shewing the differences of salt Onely thus much I leave to be noted that Bay-salt is best to make brine of but our white salt is fittest to be eaten at table Finally sith not onely we in England but also all other Nations yea the old Romans and Grecians as Pliny and Alexander remember placed Salt ever first at the Table and took it last away insinuating thereby the necessary use thereof with all kinds of meats let us conclude with the Scholers of Salern in good rhime and better reason Sal primo debet poni non primo reponi Omnis mensa male ponitur absque sale Here I might speak of Sal Sacerdotale Aetii
so that they could neither have many guests nor much meat at their board thrift wealth and health embraced one another afterwards all went to ruine when variety of dishes were admitted their boards enlarged and after-courses induced by the Ionians The people of Lituania were very frugall laborious and healthful saith Aeneas Sylvius till Switrigalus made them exceed by his owne example who had no fewer then a hundred and thirty dishes at a meal whereupon his owne life and the happy estate of his subjects was soon shortned What should I stand upon the Romans riot in Antoninus Geta Commodus Adrians Son Vitellius and Heliogabulus their dominions and times of governing the Empire when Dormise timber-worms and snails were served for dainties when the livers of great fishes the brains of Phesants and young Peacocks the kernels of Lampreys brought by flyboats and light-horsemen out of Spain to Rome when infinite numbers of nightingales tongues the brawnes of Kings-fishers Pheasants-Combs Peacocks-Gizards and Wrens-livers were made altogether into one Pie when finally three courses came daily to Geta his boord and as many dishes at each course as there be letters in the Alphabet But what followed Marry infinite diseases and infinit Physitians whereof some were so ignorant that they tormented the people worse then sickness in such sort that Galen Herophilus Erasistratus and divers Greek Physicians were sent for to recover them languishing and consumed almost with fevers whereinto through excess and variety of meats they were justly fallen So likewise fell it out with the Israelites who in the wilderness longed first for the fish of Egypt then for cucumbers pompions leeks garlick and onions Then being fed with Manna from heaven they loathed it because it was but one meat East of all Quailes came down yet were they never satisfied with one meat were it never so good coveting still change and variety were it never so bad wherein both they and we shew plainly from what root we are first sprung For when our first Parents might eat of all trees and fruits in Paradise yet the shew lure and desire of variety made them touch and taste the unbidden fruit After the floud when flesh fish and fruit were permitted to be indifferently eaten and blood and fat onely forbidden yet we gather up the blood and fat of beasts to make us puddings and abstain not for recovery of consumptions to suck the hot leaping and vital blood out of one anothers veins Neither are we contented to feed as wise men should do upon wholesome meats but we mingle with them venison of wild bears the flesh of scabby Cuckoes the spawne of Whales Sturgians and Tunnies and other very loathsom things onely for varieties sake and delight of change Licinius though he fed upon many dishes yet he must end his meals with a Lamprey-pye Lucius never supt without Oisters nor Sergius without a Dorry whereupon they were justly nicked by these names Licinius Lamprey Sergius Dorry and Lucius Oisterman Thus im-borne impiety engraffed by propagation from Adam and Eve hath made us to lose the desire of unity in all things coveting variety of meats drinks and women yea of Gods and religion never contented with what is given for our good but desirous of that which we snatch for our own hurt An apology for variety of meats answering the former objections Hitherto I have spoken much from Philinus owne mouth and more from mine own in his behalf to oppugne the variety of meats now read I pray you with the like patience How I shall defend Philo against Philinus and prove apparently that variety of meats is both at board and in our stomachs most agreeable to nature and consequently beneficial to maintain us in health First therefore Philinus abused our ears in saying that all beasts feed onely upon some one kind of meat For Eupolides his goats yea and ours to feed upon time mints hysope heath ivy oken buds beech ash mullen chervil and tamarisk and many other herbs differing no less in taste smell substance and vertue one from another What Shepheard is ignorant that his flock feedeth upon filipendula daisies mouseare cowslaps lambs-tongue milk-wort Saxifrage and little mullen yet work they no worse effect in their stomachs then if they had onely been fed with grass what should I speak of the Ostrich which devoureth iron and pap together and refuseth no meat unless men had also an Ostriches stomach Onely let him serve to disprove Philinus avouching all beasts and birds to tye themselves as it were to one meat and not to eat at once of divers nourishments Secondly where it was affirmed that brute beasts and birds out live men because they are of a simpler diet I must pardon Philinus being a heathen and ignorant of the Scriptures wherein Methusalem and divers Patriarkes are registred to have lived longer then any beast or bird whatsoever called fitly of Homer by the name of Mortals as upon whom more rots murrens aches diseases and plagues do light then usually happen unto men Nay go to your Raven and Stag those longestlivers of all the unreasonable breathers feeds not the Raven upon all flesh eats not the Stag of all herbs boughs and mast that comes in his way ye feedeth he not some times upon Snakes and Adders Thirdly the Physitians giving of simple meats to aguish persons proveth no more that variety is not good for most men then that because Thersites can hardly carry his single speare therefore Agamemnon shall not put on his compleat armour Fourthly the sedition and tumults foolishly feared and rashly presupposed to be in meats of divers kinds afflicting the stomach either at the time of concoction or digestion that reason of all other is most unreasonable For who would or can imagine that Man the Epitome or Abstract of the whole world in whom something of every thing to speak Platonically and yet truly is placed and inserted could live ever or long in health without variety of meats Hippocrates seeing such variety of simples rooted sprouted and quickned upon the earth gathereth thereupon very truly and learnedly that there lye hidden in the earth all kinds of tastes smells liquors and heats and that it is not as some imagine a dry and cold dust void of all tast heat and moisture Much more then may I justly avouch that many meats may and do best agree with most mens stomachs in whose bodies not onely firm flesh but also thin blood sweet phlegm bitter gall and sourish melancholy is necessary to be preserved wherefore let hot meats cold meats moist meats dry meats bitter meats salt meats light meats and heavy meats be mingled together in an indifferent stomach so that they be well prepared orderly taken and no error committed in time measure and quantity no sedition or tumult will arise no not so much as if the stomach had taken but one meat for according to that Oeconomical distribution of Empedocles Sweet straitwaies