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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A89219	Healths improvement: or, Rules comprizing and discovering the nature, method, and manner of preparing all sorts of food used in this nation. Written by that ever famous Thomas Muffett, Doctor in Physick: corrected and enlarged by Christopher Bennet, Doctor in Physick, and fellow of the Colledg of Physitians in London.	Moffett, Thomas, 1553-1604.; Bennet, Christopher, 1617-1655.	1655 (1655)	Wing M2382; Thomason E835_16; ESTC R202888	187,851	309

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

Ostreae Oisters do justly deserve a full treatice being so common and whithall so wholesome a meat they differ in colour substance and bigness but the best are thick little and round sheld not sli ppery nor flaggy through abundance of a gellied humour but short firm and thick of flesh riseing up round like a womans breast being in a manner all belly and no fins or at the most having very short fins of a green colour and listed about as with a purple haire which will make them indeed to be justly called Calliblephara that is to say The fair eye lidded Oisters such are our Walfleet and Colchester Oisters whose good rellish substance and wholesomeness far exceedeth the Oisters of Vsk Pool Southampton Whitstable Rye or any other Port or Haven in England Thus much concerning the body of Oisters now somewhat concerning their bigness Alexander with his Friends and Physitians wondred to find Oisters in the Indian seas a foot long And in Plinies time they marvelled at an Oister which might be divided into three morsels calling it therefore Tridacnon by a peculiar name but I dare and do truly affirm that at my eldest Brothers marriage at Aldham hall in Essex I did see a Pelden Oister divided into eight good morsels whose shell was nothing less then that of Alexanders but as the Greek Proverb saith Goodness is not tied to greatness but greatness to goodness wherefore sith the little round Oisters be commonly best rellished and less fulsome let them be of the greatest account especially to be eaten raw which of all other is thought to be the best way Galen saith that they are somewhat heavy of digestion and engender fleagm but as he knew not the goodness of English beefe when he condemned the use of all Ox-flesh so had he tryed the goodness of our Oisters which Pliny maketh the second best of the world no doubt he would have given Oisters a better censure That they are wholesome and to be desired of every man this may be no small reason that almost every man loves them Item whereas no flesh or other fish is or can be dangerless being eaten raw raw Oisters are never offensive to any indifferent stomack Nay furthermore they settle a wayward appetite and confirm a weak stomack and give good nourishment to decayed members either through their owne goodness or that they are so much desired Finally if they were an ill and heavy meat why were they appointed to be eaten first which is no new custome brought in by some late Physitian for one asking Dromeas who lived long before Athenaeus and Macrobius time whether he liked best the Feast of Athens or Chalcis I like said he the Athenians Prologue better then the Chalcidians for they began their feasts with Oisters and these with hony cakes which argueth them to have been ever held for a meat of light digestion else had they not alwaies been eaten in the first place It is great pitty of the loss of Asellius the Sabins book written Dialogue-wise betwixt the Fig-finch the Thrush and the Oisters wherein upon just grounds he so preferred them before the Birds that Tiberius Caesar rewarded him with a thousand pound Sterling The fattest Oisters are taken in salt water at the mouth of Rivers but the wholesomest and lightest are in the main upon shelfs and rocks which also procure urine and stools and are helps to cure the chollick and dropsy if they be eaten raw for sodden Oisters bind the belly stop urine and encrease the collick How dangerous it is to drink small drink upon Oisters it appeareth by Andronicus the elder who having made a great Dinner of Oisters drank cold water upon them whereupon he died being not able to overcome them And truly as Oisters do hardly corrupt of themselves so if cold drink follow them they concoct as hardly wherefore especially having eaten many drink either wine or some strong and hot beer after them for fear of a mischiefe Little Oisters are best raw great Oisters should be stued with wine onions pepper and butter or roasted with vinegar pepper and butter or bak't with onions pepper andbutter or pickled with white-wine-vinegar their owne water bayes mints and hot spices for of all wayes they are worst sod unless you seeth them in that sea water from whence they were brought All Oisters are dangeours whilst they be full of milk which commonly is betwixt May and August Raw Oisters are best in cold weather when the stomach is hottest namely from September to April albeit the Italians dare not venture on a raw Oister at any time but broil them in the shell with their water the juice of an orenge pepper and oil which way I must needs confess it eates daintily Pickled Oisters may be eaten at all times and to my taste and judgement they are more commendable chiefly to cold weak windy distasted stomachs then any way else prepared I wonder whether it be true or no which I have heard of and Pliny seemeth also to affirm That Oisters may be kept all the year long covered in snow and so be eaten in Sommer as cold as can be which if it prove answerable to the likelihood I conceive of it I will cry out with Pliny in the same Chapter Quanti quanti es luxuria quae summa montium maris ima commisces How great and powerful is riot which maketh the highest covering of mountains and the lowest creatures of the seas to meet together Yet it is recorded that Apicius the Roman kept Oisters so long sweet were it in snow pickle or brine that he sent them from thence sweet and good to the Emperour Trajan warring against the Parthians Cochleae marinae Perwinckles or Whelks are nothing but sea-snails feeding upon the finest mud of the shore and the best weeds they are very nourishing and restorative being sod at the sea-side in their own sea water the whitest flesht are ever best tenderest they which are taken in clean creeks eat pleasant but they which are gathered upon muddy shores eat very strongly and offend the eyesight They are best in winter and in the spring for a stomack and liver resolved as it were and disposessed of strength Apicius warneth us to pick away the covering of their holes for it is a most unwholesome thing being nothing but a collection of all their slime hardned with seething The best way to prepare them for sound persons is to seeth them in their owne sea-water or else in river water with salt and vinegar But for weak and consumed persons Apicius willeth them in the Book and Chapter aforesaid to be thus drest take first the skin from their holes and lay them for a day or two covered in salt and milk the third day lay them onely in new milk then seeth them in milk till they be dead or fry them in a pan with butter and salt Passeres