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
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
but somewhat of too dry a nature yet prove they moist enough to give plentiful nourishment after they have been preserved in syrupe or candied with ginger encreasing blood seed and lust and restoring such as by lechery have been much consumed Radices Sisari Skirret-roots were so sweet delicate in ancient times that Tiberius Caesar caused the Inhabitants of Gelduba a certain signory upon the Rhine to pay him tribute at Rome in Skirret-roots bringing them weekly thither whilst they were in season They have a long string or pith within them which being taken away before they are thorough sod maketh them eat exceeding sweet usually they are boild till they be tender and then eaten cold with vinegar oil and pepper but if they be roasted four or five together in a wet paper under embers as one would roast a Potado or strain'd into tart-stuff and so baked with sugar butter and rosewater they are far more pleasant and of stronger nourishment agreeing with all complexions sexes and ages being also of a mild heat and a temperate moisture Did we know all the strength and vertues of them they would be much nourished in our Gardens and equally esteemed with any Potado root Cepa Ascalonites Skallions are a kind of little Onions brought first from Ascalon a Town of Jewry very hot and dry yea hotter and drier by one degree then any Onions Cold stomachs and barren weaklings may safely eat them raw to procure appetite and lust but they are not nourishing to indifferent stomachs till they have been perboild in new milk Some correct them by mincing them small and steeping them a good while in warm water afterwards they eat them with vinegar oil and salt after the Italian fashion Spinachia Spinache being boiled soft and then eaten with butter small currens and sugar heat together upon a chafing dish giveth no bad nor little nourishment to dried bodies and is onely hurtful to such as be over-phlegmatick Fragulae Strawberries of the garden be they white red or green but the red are best being once come to their full ripeness in a warm Summer and growing in a warm ground are to a young hot stomach both meat and medicine Medicin to cool his choler excessive heat meat by his temperate and agreeable moisture fit at that time of the year to be converted into blood especially being eaten raw with wine and sugar or else made into tart stuff and so baked howsoever they be prepared let every man take heed by Melchior Duke of Brunswick how he eateth too much of them who is recorded to have burst a sunder at Rostock with surfeiting upon them Cranz lib. 9. cap. 9. Hist Vandal Radix spirae albae Thistle-roots I mean of the white thistle when it first springeth are exceeding restorative and nourishing being sodden in white stued broth or else baked in Tarts or in Pies like Artichoks few men would think so good meat to lye hidden in so base and abject an herb had not trial and cookery found out the vertue of it Rapae rotunde Turneps in commendation whereof Moschio the Grecian wrote a large volumn are nothing but round Rapes whereof heretofore we writ in this Chapter Nastureia aquatica Water-cresses and Town-cresses nourish raw and cold stomachs very well but for hot or indifferent stomachs they are of a contrary nature Xenophon saith that the Persians children going to School carry nothing with them to eat and drink but Cresses in the one hand and Bread in the other and an earthen cruse at their girdle to take up water in whereby we may perceive that they agree well with moist natures and such as are accustomed to drink water Otherwise no doubt they nourish nothing but rather over heat and burn the blood As for Anise Blites Blood-wort Broom-buds Gapars Calamint Clary Dill Fennel Galangal Hisope Marigolds Mustard-seed Mints Nettles Orache Patience Primroses Rosemary Saffron Sage Samphire Savory Tamarisk Tansy Tarragon Time Violets and Wormwood howsoever they are used sometimes in broths pottage farrings sawces salads and tansies yet no nourishment is gotten by them or at the least so little that they need not nor ought not to be counted amongst nourishments CHAP. XXIV Of such Fruits of the Field as are nourishing THe chief fruits of the field are Wheate Rye Rice Barly Oates Beanes Chiches Pease and Lentils Triticum Wheate is divided into divers kinds by Pliny Columella Dodonaeus Pena and Lobelius it shall be sufficient for us to describe the sorts of this Country which are especially two The one red called Robus by Columella and the other very white and light called Siligo whereof is made our purest manchet Being made into Furmity and sodden with milk and sugar or artificially made into bread Wheate nourisheth exceeding much and strongly the hardest thickest heaviest cleanest brightest and growing in a fat soil is ever to be chosen for such Wheate in Dioscorides and Galens judgement is most nourishing Secale Rye seemeth to be nothing but a wild kind of wheate meet for Labourers Servants and Workmen but heavy of digestion to indifferent stomachs Oriza Rice is a most strong and restorative meat discommendable onely in that it is over-binding very wholesome pottage is made thereof with new milk sugar cinamon mace and nutmegs whose astringency if any man fear let him soke the Rice one night before in sweet Whey and afterwards boil it in new milk with sugar butter cloves and nutmegs leaving out cinamon and mace Thus shall the body be nourished costiveness prevented and nature much strengthened and encreased Hordeum Barly used any way in bread drink or broth is ever cooling saith Galen and engendreth but a thin and weak juice Before we use it in broths or Ptisan it should be clean hulld and washed in many waters The decoction of Barly in chicken-broth strained with a few blauncht almonds and sweetned with sugar and rosewater is a very covenient meat for sound men but more for them which are sick and abhor flesh Cardan saith that Galen maketh mention of a kind of Barly in Greece growing without a husk and hulld by nature which place he never citeth because he was mistaken for through all Galen I could never find any such thing though of purpose I searched for it very diligently The best Barly is the biggest and yellowest without and fullest closest and heaviest within it is never to be used in meat till it be half a year old because lying causeth it to ripen better and to be also far less windy Being made into Malt by a sweet fire and good cunning it is the foundation of our English wine which being as well made as it is at Notâ—ingam proveth meat drink and cloth to the poorer sort Parched Barly or Malt is hot and dry but otherwise it is temperately cooling and less drying That Wheate and Rye is far more nourishing then Barly Plutarch would thence prove because they are half a year
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
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
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
ripe Dates lighting upon a bad stomach do easily putrifie engendering malign agues stuffing the body with crude humours whereupon great stoppings encrease both of spleen and liver They are hot in the second degree and moist in the first never good when they are eaten alone or without sugar which hindreth their speedy corruption Praenestinae Heracleoticae Ponticae Avellanae nuces Filberds and Haselnuts coming first out of Pontus and translated by the Romans into our Countrey are found by experience to nourish the brain to heal old coughes being eaten with hony and to stay rhumes if be tosted Also being peeld whilst they are green and laid a while in water and eaten afterwards with sugar or salt at the end of meat they give a laudible nourishment encreasing seed tempering blood and making it of a good consistence Chuse ever the longest ripest and thinnest shel`d fullest of meat and freest from spot or worm also eat them whilst they are new if you purpose to nourish much for afterwards they wax more oily and less nourishing they are best towards Winter and fitter for strong and able stomachs because they easily overturn weak stomachs and procure headache Ficus Crossi Figs are the sweetest fruit of the bitterest tree in the world for neither leafe nor bud nor bark nor wood nor body nor root nor any part of it is sweet besides the fruit nay the very ashes of a fig-tree is as sharpe and bitter as any soot yet figs themselves are so sweet that onely for love of them the French men first invaded Italy and inhabited a great part of it many years yea Moschus Antimolus the Sophister having once tasted them he hated all other meats during his life and Plato so affected them that he was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 â—he Fig lover nay he loved them so much that he died of lice engendred of corrupt blood which the Figs made also Pompejus Columna Cardinal and Viceroy of Naples died suddenly in the arms of Austen Nyphus that famous Philosopher with eating too many figs. Figs are dangerous without wine but wholesome with it Wherefore let all men beware of them as Solomon bids us take heed of too much hony least our sweet meat bring soure sawce and pleasure be punished with too late repentance They are seldome eaten of us green from the tree and of outlandish figs let Dioscorides commend his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yellow figs Athenaeus his blue Figgs and Pratensis his Mariscas or Fig-dates yet in my judgement the round short and thick barrel'd Figs having a thin skin and a firm substance with few seeds in them are of all other the best though not the sweetest which I nothing doubt to be Callistruthiae Galeni and those delicate figs of Livia Pompeia which Pliny writes of The seed of Figs nourisheth no more then a stone their skin hardly digesteth onely their pulppy substance giveth much though no very wholesome nor good nourishment Chuse the softest roundest newest soundest thickest and ripest and as you drink wine upon cold and moist fruits so drink small drink or suck the soure juice of Orenges Pomegranards Lemons or Citrons after Figs thus being taken they augment fat clear the countenance provoke venery quench thirst resist venom purge the kidneys of gravel and nourish more then any Tree-fruit whatsoever But if you would ripen a cold or cleanse your pipes or clear your voice it is best to eat them with ripe Almonds or to drink them with barly water old age is most offended by them and such as have stopt livers or be of a bad and corrupt complexion Pistacia or Psittacia Fisticks or rather Pisticks alluding to the Syrian word are Nuts growing in the knob of the Syrian or Egyptian Turpentine tree being so much more wholesome good and nourishing by how much they are more sweet odorifreous full big and green They nourish plentifully open the liver clense the breast strengthen the stomach and kidneys stay fluxes and vomitings fatten the body stir up lust and resist poison They are wholesome both before and after meat being eaten with old-pippins or sugar-roset Children and hot complexions must not use them for they enflame their thin blood and cause giddiness but even Galen who discommends them more then he needed alloweth them in Winter for cold fleagmatick and weak stomachs Isaac saith that they are hot and dry in the second degree whereof indeed they want very little Uvae Grapes differ two wayes especially in substance and tast In respect of substance they are either fleshy which are fittest for meat or winy and thinn which are fittest to drink being made into wine In respect of taste sweet Grapes fatten and nourish most being of hottest constitution and speediest concoction yet they swell the stomach engender thirst and loosen the body Soure and harsh Grapes are cold in operation hardly digested of little nourishment griping and yet binding the belly and therefore fitter to be tasted of as sawce then to be eaten as meat The Germans hang up clusters of ripe Grapes suffering them not to touch one another upon lines in a cold Gallery or rather in their Bed-chambers which being dried nourish much and yet neither swell the stomach nor cause loosness in heat of agues one such Grape or two at the most do more refresh the mouth and restore the taste then six ownces of conserve of cold Berberies Haselnuts are already written of in our Treatise of Filbirds Mala Iunia Iunitings are the first kind of Apples which are soonest ripe coming in and going out with the Month of June of a little round and light substance tender pulp and very fragrant smell sent at that time to cool choler slake thirst and restore spirits decayed with heat of Summer it giveth sufficient though no great nor strong nourishment being fitter for young and hot complections then them which are weakned with phleagm Gorni Kornils or Corneols are of a very astringent and binding taste fit to nourish weak stomachs that can keep nothing or weak guts that void all things For sound men they are not good but eaten in small quantity after meat because they firmly seal up the stomach and accidentally help concoctition Tart stuff or Marmalade may be made of them to that purpose wherein no doubt the excel quinces Egleutius berries be of the like substance and nature Malum Limonium Lemmons approach neer unto Citrons and Limes are engendred of them both Their poulp is cold and dry in the third degree their peel hot and dry in the second and their seed temperate If you eat the juice alone it causeth gripings leanness and crudities but if you eat the peel with the pulp as nature seemeth therefore to have united them the heat of the one correcteth the rawness of the other and not onely the stomach but also the heart is comforted by them both They of Naples and Genoa slice the best and
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
Brabant they are eaten as the roots of Turneps and Parsneps boiled in flesh-broth which correcteth their binding quality and maketh them of good and wholesome nourishment Bulbocastanea Earth-chesnuts are far bigger then Earthnuts and the flowers of them are white where the others be red About Bath there is great plenty of them and they are of like nourishment and use with the Earthnuts Intubum sativum latifolium Endive especially that which hath the longest largest softest and whitest leaves is of good nourishment to hot stomachs not only cooling but also encreasing bloud if it be sodd in white broth till it be tender but if you eat it raw in salads as it is most commonly used then it only cooleth and lyeth heavy in the stomach because it is not freed from its crudities Vacinia palustria Fen-berries grow not only in Holland in low and moist places but also if I have not forgotten it in the Isle of Eli. They are of like temper and faculty with our whortles but somewhat more astringent Being eaten raw or stewed with sugar they are wholesome meat in hot burning fevers unto which either fluxes of humors or spending of spirits are annexed Likewise they quench thirst no less then Ribes and the red or outlandish Gooseberrie Mora Rubi Idaei Trambois or Raspis are of complexion like the Blackberry and Dewberry but not of so astringent nor drying quality Furthermore they are more fragrant to the Nose and more pleasant in taste and of far better nourishment to hot stomachs for cold stomachs cannot convert them into any good juice Allium Garlick was so odious or hurtful to Horace that he makes it more venemous then Hemlocks Adders bloud Medea's cups yea then the poison of Nessus the Centaure which killed Hercules Contrariwise the Thracians eat it every morning to breakfast and earry it with them in warfare as their chiefest meat Whereat we need not marvel considering the coldness of their Country and their phlegmatick constitution Let us rather wonder at the Spaniard who eats it more being a hot Nation then our labouring men do here in England Whereby we may see how preparation begetteth in every thing another nature for the Thracians eat it raw because of their extreme coldness but the Spaniard sodden first in many waters or else rosted under the embers in a wet paper whereby it is made sweet and pleasant and hath lost more then half of his heat and dryness Thus is Garlick medicine and meat medicine if it be eaten raw but meat and nourishment being rosted under the embers or stickt like lard in fat meat or boiled in many waters broths or milks By which way also his fuming and diuretical quality is much corrected Yet beware lest you eat too much of it lest it engender little worms in your flesh as it did in Arnulphus the Emperor whereof he died It is very dangerous to young children fine women and hot young men unless the headdy hot and biting quality thereof be extinguished by the foresaid means Cucurbitae Gourds eaten raw and unprepared are a very unwholesome food as Galen saith exceedingly cooling charging and loading the stomach and engendering crudities and wind But being boiled baked or fryed with butter it loseth his hurtfulness and giveth good nourishment to indifferent stomachs The seed of it being husked and boiled in new milke is counted very restorative in hectick fevers Grossulae Uvae crispae Gooseberries being thorough ripe are as nourishing as sweet and of the like temper not only encreasing flesh but also fatting the body They should be eaten first and not last because they are so light a fruit When they are almost ripe they are restorative being made into Codiniack or baked in Tarts Soure Gooseberries nourish nothing serving rather for sawce to please ones taste then to augment flesh Grossulae transmarinae Red Gooseberries or bastard Corinths commonly called Ribes of Apothecaries and taken of Dodonaeus for the Bears-berry of Galen is almost of the like nature with Gooseberries but more cold dry and astringent by one degree because they never wax sweet in our Country They are very cordial and cooling in Agues being eaten either in Conserve or Codiniack yea nourishing also to hot stomachs Lupularii asparagi Hop-shootes are of the same nature with Asparagus nourishing not a little being prepared in the like sort which is before described though rather cleansing and scouring of their own nature Alliaria Jack by the hedge as it is not much used in Medicines so it was heretofore a very ancient and common meat being therefore called Sawce alone Country men do boil it and eat it in stead of Garlick being no less strengthened and nourished by it then the Persian children were with Town-cresses I allow it not for indifferent stomachs unless it have been steept in divers warm waters and then be eaten as Garlick may be eaten moderately for it is hot and dry more then in the third degree Porra Leeks are esteemed so wholesome and nourishing in our Country that few thinke any good Pottage can be made without them That they engender bloud no author denies but they say it is gross hot and evil bloud Nevertheless if they be first sodden in milke and then used in meat they are unclothed of all bad qualities and become friendly to the stomach and nourishing to the liver The Grecians made such reckoning of Leeks as our Welsh men do yea he ever sate uppermost at Apollo's feast that brought thither the greatest headed Leek Some impute that to his mother Latona her longing for Leeks whilst she was with child of Apollo Others say that Apollo did so highly esteem them because they engender much bloud and seed whereby mankind is much encreased which opinion I like best of hearing and seeing such fruitfulness in Wales that few or none be found barren and many fruitful before their time Porrum sectivum Palladii The unset Leek or Maiden-leek is not so hot as the knopped ones because his fuming quality is diminished by often cutting Lactuca Lettice is not more usually then profitably eaten of us in Summer yea Galen did never eat of any other Garden herb save this for ought we read whereby he delayed the heat of his stomach in youth eating it formost and slept soundly and quietly in age eating it last It is better sodden then raw especially for weak stomachs and if any will eat it raw correct it with mingling a little Tarragon and Fennel with it The young loaft Lettice is simply best but you must not wash it for then it loseth its best and most nourishing vertue that lieth upon the outmost skin only pluck away the leaves growing near the ground till you come to the cabbage of the Lettice and it is enough Long use of Lettice causeth barrenness cooleth lust dulleth the eyesight weakeneth the body and quencheth natural heat in the stomach but moderately and duly taken of hot natures it encreaseth bloud seed
other commending bad things because of emptiness As for Salt the second sawce of the Ancients I have already enough commended it in the former Chapter nevertheless it is not sufficient nay it is not convenient for all stomachs For even old times afforded two sawces Salt and Vinegar the one for hot stomachs the other for cold knowing well enough that appetites are not procured in all men alike because want of appetite ariseth from divers fountains Plutarch raileth mightily against sawces and seasonnings avouching them to be needless to healthful persons and unprofitable to the sick because they never eat but when they are hungry and these ought not to be made hungry lest they oppress nature by eating too much But I deny both his arguments for as many sound men abhor divers things in their health roasted which they love sodden so likewise they love some things seasoned after one fashion which seasoned or sawced after another fashion they cannot abide no though they be urged unto it by great hunger As for them that be sick whosoever dreameth that no sick man should be allured to meat by delightful and pleasant sawces seemeth as froward and fantastical as he that would never whet his Knife And tell me I pray you why hath nature brought forth such variety of herbs roots fruits spices and juices fit for nothing but sawces but that by them the sound should be refreshed and the sick men allured to feed upon meat for whom an overstraite abstinence is as dangerous as fulness and satiety is inconvenient All which I write not to tickle the Epicures of our age who to the further craming of their filthy corps make curious sawces for every meat or to force appetite daily where no exercise is used for as Morris-dancers at Burials make no sport but rather give cause of further lamenting so appetites continually forced weaken a diseased stomach either making men for a time to eat more then they should or else afterwards bereaving them of all appetite Socrates compared the over-curious seasoning of meat and these Epicurean sawce-makers to common Courtisans curiously painted and sumptuously adorned before they entertain their lovers whereby they stir up new lust in withered stocks and make even the gray-headed spend and consume themselves Even so saith he these new found sawces what are they but Whores to edge our appetite making us to feast when we should fast or at least to feed more then nature willeth Also he resembleth them to tickling under the sides and arm-pits which causeth not a true hearty but rather a convulsive and hurtful laughter doing no more good to pensive persons then hard scratching is profitable to a scald head wherein yet it delighteth to his own hurt There is a notable Hystory written of Alexander and Queen Ada who purposing to present the Conquerour with her best jewels sent him two of her best sawce-makers to season and dress his meat commending their skill exceedingly in her Letters But Alexander having bountifully rewarded them for their travail returned them with this message that he had along time entertained two for that purpose which made him better sawce to his meat then any other could make in his judgment namely Nyctoporia Night-marching who ever got him a stomach to his Dinner and Oligaristia littledining who ever procured him a stomach to his Supper Shewing thereby that exercise before Dinner and Supper are the best sawce-makers because they bring forth hunger which tasteth yea which causeth us also to digest all things And verily for strong and able persons what need we prescribe more sawces then exercise and hunger Nevertheless because many mens trade of life and estate of health is such that either they cannot exercise themselves abroad or else are not able thorugh weakness to do it at home whereupon want of appetite and want of digestion the onely founders of sawces must ensue it will not be amiss to set down some simples which may be the matter of sawces for both those inconveniencies The most usual and best simples whereof Sawces are made If the stomach want appetite by reason of cold and raw humours furring the same and dulling the sense of feeling in the mouth thereof Hot Sawces Make sawce of Dill fennel mints origanum parsly dryed gilli-flowers galinga mustardseed garlick onions leeks juniper-berries sage time varvein betony salt cinamon ginger mace cloves nutmegs pepper pills of citrons limons and orenges grains cubebs and such like mingle some one two or three of them together according as occasion most requireth with wine or vinegar strong of rosemary or gilly-flowers Cold Sawces Contrariwise wanteth your stomach appetite through abundance of choler or adust and putrified phlegm then restore it with sawces made of sorrel lettice spinache purselane or saunders mingled with vinegar verjuice cider alegar or water it self or with the pulp of prunes apples currens and such like As for digestion it waxeth slow and weak either because the stomach is too cold or because the meat is of bad digestion which is put into it Sawces for slow digestion Cold stomachs must be quickned with sawces hot of spice and meats hard of digestion must be helped with hot things therfore I commend the use of mustard with biefe and all kind of salted flesh and fish and onion-saw with Duck Widgin Teal and all water Foul salt and pepper with Venison and galinga sawce with the flesh of Cygnets and garlick or onions boild in milk with a stuble Goose sugar and mustard with red Deer Crane Shovelar and Bustard Sawces for temperate Meats But for temperate Meats and speedy of digestion as Pork Mutton Lamb Veal Kid Hen Capon Pullet Chicken Rabbet Partridge Pheasant c. we must likewise devise temperate sawces as mustard and green-sawce for Pork verjuice and salt for Mutton the juice of Orenges or Limons with wine salt and sugar for Capons Pheasants and Partridges water and pepper for Woodcocks vinegar and butter or the gravet of roasted meat with Rabbets Pigeons or Chickens for if their sawces should be either too cold or too hot such meats would soon corrupt in our stomachs being otherwise most nourishing of their own nature As for the just quantity and proportion of every thing belonging unto sawces and pickles albeit Apicius took great pains therein writing whole volums of that argument yet few of those sawces agreed with most mens natures and some of them perhaps if we might peruse those books were grounded upon little or no reason wherefore I leave the directing of them to particular Cooks who by experience can best aime at every mans appetite and know also sufficiently how to correct that flesh by Artificial preparation and appropriated sawce which nature hath made queazy or heavy to indifferent stomachs Some have put the question Whether there be any sawce but appetite or whether it be good to use sawces CHAP. XXVIII Of Variety of Meats that it is necessary and
as the Sun cannot warm us when Clouds be between So excess either fetters or divides the minds faculties How careful is the mind alwaies to preserve life yet many a drunkard sinks under water because reason cannot teach him the art of swiming the inward sences being choaked with abundance of clammy vapours Divine Hippocrate whom I can never sufficiently name nor honour compareth diet most fitly to a Potters wheele going neither forward nor backward but as the world it self moveth equally round moistning that which is too dry drying up that which is too moist restoring true flesh if it be decaid abating proud flesh by abstinence if it be too much neither drawing too much upward nor downward as peevish Sawyers do neither clapping on too much nor too little Sail like unskilfull Mariners but giving like a wise Steward every part his allowance by geometrical proportion that the whole household and family may be kept in health Such a steward was Asclepiades who cured by onely Diet infinite diseases Such an one was Galen that famous Physitian who being three or four times sick before he was twenty eight years old looked afterwards more strictly to his diet in such sort that a hundred years following he was never sick but once and died onely through want of radical moisture Such an one finally was Hippocrates who lived till he was a hundred and nine years old or at the least till he was fourscore and five without any memorable sickness and yet he had by nature but a weak head insomuch that he ever wore a night cap. Wherefore let us neither with the impudent call diet a frivolous knowledge or a curious science with the imprudent but embrace it as the leader to perfit health which as the wise man saith is above gold and a sound body above all riches The Romans once banished Physitians out of Rome under pretence that physick druggs weakened the peoples stomacks and Cooks for corrupting and enforcing appetites with strange sawces and seasonings and Perfumers and Anointers and Bathe-masters because they did rather mollifie and effeminante the Romans mindes then any whit profit or help their bodies Yet they retained Cato the chief dietist of that time and all them that were able without physick to prevent or cure diseases esteeming diet as it is indeed to be so honest pleasant and profitable a science that even malice it self cannot but commend it and her enemies are forced to retaine it Thus much or rather too much in the commendation of Diet for which some Spartane censor would severely punish me as Antalaides did the Orator that prais'd Hercules whom no wiseman ever discommended For howsoever idle heads have made these addle proverbs 1. Dieted bodies are but bridges to Physicians mindes 2. We shall live till we dye in despight of Diet 3. Every dissease will have his course 4. More Rubarb and less Diet c. Yet the wisest man and King of all others hath established it upon such grounds as neither can nor shall ever be shaken with all their malice CHAP. II. 1. How many sorts of Diet there be 2. Wherein Diet consisteth materially 3. Wherein Diet consisteth formally 1. THere be especially three sorts of Diets a full Diet a moderate Diet and a thin Diet. The first increaseth flesh spirits and humors the second repaireth onely them that were lost and the third lesseneth them all for a time to preserve life Full Diet is proper unto them which be young growing strong lusty and able through their good constitution to endure much exercise Moderate Diet is fittest for persons of a middle health whose estate of body is neither perfectly strong nor over-weak Thin Diets are never to be used especially in the strictest kind but where violent diseases caused either of fulness or corruption have the preheminence wherein how much the body wanteth sufficient food so much the sickness wanteth his tyrannical vigour 2. The matter of Diet is neither iron nor steel nor silver nor coral nor pearl no nor gold it self from which worthy simples albeit most rare and effectual sustenances be drawn as our own Countryman of all other most learnedly proveth to strengthen our body and to thicken our radical moisture which is soon consumed like a fine spirit of wine when it is too thin and subtile yet neither have they neither can they have a nourishing power because our natural heat will be tired before it can convert their oyle into our oyle their substance into our substance be it never so cunningly and finely exalted Furthermore if it be true which Hippocrates and reason telleth us that as contraries are expelled by contraries so like is sustained by his like How should the liquors of gold pearl and precious stones which the Chymists have named Immortal essences nourish or augment our mortal substance Nay doth not that soonest restore decayed flesh as milk gellie strong broaths and young lamb which soonest corrupteth if it be not presently eaten Is not a young snite more nourishing yet it keeps not long sweet then a peacock that will not corrupt nor putrifie in a whole year no not in thirty years saith Kiranides though it be buried in the ground yet as a candles end of an inch long being set in cold water burneth twice as long as another out of water not because water nourisheth the flame which by nature it quencheth nor because it encreaseth the tallow which admits no water but by moistning the circumfluent aire and thickning the tallow whereby the flame is neither so light nor lively as it would be otherwise in like sort the substances powders and liquors of the things aforesaid may perhaps hinder the speedy spending of natural heat by outward cooling of fiery spirits inward thickning of too liquid moistures hardning or condensating of flaggy parts but their durableness and immortality if they be immortal are sufficient proofs that they are no nourishments for corruptible men But they are pure essences and therefore suitable to our radical moisture which the best Physicians derive from a starr-like substance Alas pure fools what doe you vaunt and brag of purity when the purest things do least nourish for had not the aire water and earth certain impurities how should men beasts birds fishs and plants continue for the finer the aire the less it nourishes the clearer the water the less it fatneth the simpler the ground the less it succoureth yea were we in an air such as the element of aire it self is defined to be void of invisible seeds and those impalpable substances or resekens that are sometimes descried by the Sun-beams our spirits should find no more sustenance by it then a dry man drink in an empty hogshead And though we see Pikes to live a great while in Cisterns with clear water alone yet were that water so pure as the element it self they would clean consume for want of nourishment The like may
doubt hapned upon these causes That Cyprus aboundeth in Cypres and Firr-trees Sardinia in Alom and Copper Mines Anticyra is replenished with true Hellebors and Thasus is full of deadly Ughes which either kill a man or make him mad when the savor infects him fully as it doth in such hot and dry Countries The aire may be also infected with the smoak of Charcole newly kindled whereof Quintus Catulus died or with the smel of new morter which killed Jovinianus the Emperor in his bed or with the snuf of a candle wherewith many have been strangled or with the aire of a pan of coles throughly kindled by which as Aemylius Victor studied in the City of Parma he suddenly fell down dead By the smell of a snuf of a candle many become leprous and women miscarry of children What light is best to study by of oyle wax dears suet and tallows the very smel of roses cureth headach and of some flowres drunkenness The smel of a wantlowse may kil a child in the mothers womb the very smel of Physick cureth many First therefore in the election or choice of aire observe this that it be pure and void of infection for pure aire is to the heart as balm to the sinews yea it is both meat drink exercise and Physick to the whole body Meat whilst it is easily converted into spirits Drink whilst it allayeth the thirst of the lungs and heart which no drink can so well quench exercise whilst it moveth humors immoveable otherwise of their own nature medicine or Physick whilst it helpeth to thrust forth excrements which would else harden or putrifie within our bodies the vapors whereof would so shake the bulwark of life and defile the rivers of blood issuing from the liver that we should not live long in health if happily we lived at all Next to purity of aire we must chuse that also which is temperate For natural heat is not preserved saith Galen but of aire moderately cold And Aristotle saith That Countries and Cities and houses which by interposition of hils on the North side be seldom cooled are subject to mortality and many diseases Yet must it not be so hot as to dissolve spirits procure thirst and abundant sweat to the hindring of urine and decaying of strength and appetite But as I said before of a middle temper because as nature is the mother so mediocrity is the preserver of every thing Who sees not a dry Summer peeleth and a dry winter riveleth the skin and that contrariwise an over-over-moist aire puffeth it up with humors and engendreth rheumes in the whole body Thirdly That aire is best which is most seasonable Namely warm and moist in the Spring hot and dry in Summer cooling and dry in Autumn cold and moist in Winter which seasons falling out contrarily as sometimes they doe especially in Islands infinite and unavoidable diseases ensue thereupon For if the spring-aire be cold and dry through abundance of Northeast winds dry inflammations of the eys hot urines fluxes of bloud by nose and bowels and most dangerous catarrhs to old persons follow upon it If Summer be cold and dry through the like winds look for all kinds of agues headaches coughs and consumptions Contrariwise if it be too hot and dry suppression of urine and womens courses together with exceeding bleeding at the nose is to be feared If Autumn be full of Southern and warm blasts the next Winter attend all rheumatick and moist diseases If Winter on the contrary be cold and dry which naturally should be cold and moist long agues humoral aches coughs and plurisies are to be expected unless the next Spring be of a moist disposition Again consider also how any house or City is situated for the aire is qualified accordingly Namely if they be placed Southeast South and Southwest and be hindred from all Northern blasts by opposition of hils they have neither sweet water nor wholsome aire but there women are subject to fluxes and miscarriages children to convulsions and shortness of breath men to bloudy fluxes scourings and Hemorrhoids and such like But Cities Countries or houses situated clean contrary towards the North-west North and North-East and defended from all Southern gusts and blasts albeit the people there are commonly more strong and dry yet are they subject through suppression of excrements unto headaches sharp plurisies coughs exulceration of the lungs phlegmatick collections rupture of inward veins and red eyes Likewise in those Countries young boyes are subject to swelling of the codds young girls to the navel-rupture men to the diseases above named Women to want and scarcity of their natural terms to hard labours ruptures and convulsions and to consumptions after childbearth Easterly Towns especially inclining to the south and houses are more wholesome then the westerly for many causes first because the aire is there more temperately hot and cold Secondly because all waters and springs running that way are most clear fragrant pleasant and wholesome resembling as it were a dainty spring and verily women there conceive quickly and bring forth easily children prove large well coloured and lively men healthful strong and able to any exercise But Western cities and houses barren clean of Eastern gusts have ever both troubled waters and unwholesome winds which mingled with the waters obscure their clearness and maketh the inhabitants weak heavy and ill coloured hoarce-voiced dull witted and wanting as if they were entring the house of death quickness and vigour But Avicen of all others declares this most at large who shewing the boldness and goodness of aire by the situation describes them in these words Houses having their chief or full seat Eastward are very wholsome for three causes First because the Sun rising upon them purgeth the aire very timely Secondly because it stayes not there long to dissolve spirits but turneth westward after noon Thirdly because cold winds are commonly as ushers to the Sun rising by which all corruption is killed that either was in the aire or lay on the ground Westerne places are worst situated First because the Sun bestowes not his maiden head and kingly heat upon them but a hot and scorching flame neither attenuating nor drying their aire but filling it full of fogs and mists Whereupon it falls out that the inhabitants are much troubled with hoarseness rheumes measils pocks and pestilence Southern seats are commonly subject to catarhs fluxes of the belly heaviness want of appetite haemoroids inflamation of eyes and their women conceive hardly and miscarry easily abounding in menstrual and mighty pollutions their old men are subject to palsies trembling apoplexies and all humoral diseases their children to cramps and the falling evil their young men to continual putrified agues and all kind of rebellious fevours In Nothren countryes through the driness coldness and sharpness of the wind women do hardly conceive and dangerously bring forth or if they be well delivered yet commonly
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
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
as Ithaca never bred nor fostered them so in all Grece they hardly lived Here thanks be to God they are plentiful in such sort that Alborne Chase affordeth above a hundred thousand couple a year to the benefit of good house-keeping and the poors maintenance Rabbet suckers are best in March agreeing as well with old melancholick dry and weak stomacks as disagreeing with strong and moist complexions A Midsomer Rabbets flesh is less moist and more nourishing but a Michaelmas or Winter Rabbet is of firm wholesome temperate and most laudable flesh best roasted because their nourishing juice is soon soked out with the least seething making good broth and bad meat Chuse the Female before the Male the fat before the lean and both from out a chalky ground and a sweet laire Hedghoggs When I considered how cleanly the Hedghogg feedeth namely upon Cows milk if he can come by it or upon fruit and mast I saw no reason to discontinue this meat any longer upon some fantastical dislike sith books nature and experience hath commended it unto us For as Martial made Hares flesh the daintiest dish of the Romans so in Hippocrates time the Hedghogg was not of least account among the Grecians which he commendeth for an excellent nourishment were it not something too moist and diuretical Nay as some affirm it nourisheth plentifully procureth appetite and sleep strengthneth Travailers preserveth Women with child from miscarrying dissolveth knots and kernelly tumours helps the Lepry Consumption Palsy Dropsie Stone and Convulsion onely it is forbidden unto Melancholick and Flegmatick persons and such as are vexed with Piles or Hemorhoids Squirrels Squirrels are much troubled with two diseases Choler and the Falling-sickness yet their hinder parts are indifferent good whilst they are young fried with parsly and butter but being no usual nor warrantable good meat let me skip with them and over them to another tree for it is time to write of the winged nation which promise us a second course of more dainty I will not say of more wholesome meats Neither shall any discourse of Asses flesh which Maecenas so highly loved that all Italy was too little to find him Asses enough nor of horse flesh for longing after which Gregory the third excommunicated the Germans nor of Foxes flesh which the Vandales eat for restorative nor of Lions flesh wherewith Achilles was dieted in his pupillage nor of Beares flesh which the Moscovite calls his great venison nor of Apes flesh though it most resembleth a man which the Zygantes in Africa highly esteam eat of in their solemn feasts nor of Lysards Tortesses or any other four-footed beasts nor of mans flesh albeit the Canibals praise it above all other as Osorius writeth and Cambletes King of Lydia having eaten of his own wife said he was sorry to have been ignorant so long of so good a dish As for the flesh also of young puppies commended of Hippocrates afterwards of Galen howsoever in the Isles of Corsica Alalta they are still esteemed as good meat yet Cardan saith in his divers history that they made the people like to doggs that is to say cruel stout rash bould and nimble Wherefore leaping over these insolent and bad meats which neither use nor reason hath confirmed I now to come treat of Birds and fowl and then of fish and the fruits of the earth and waters according to my first division CHAP. 10. Of the Flesh of tame Birds THat the Flesh of tame foul nourisheth more then wild foul Isaac the Physitian proveth by three arguments First because they are more usually eaten of and so by custom a second nature made more agreeable to our stomacks Secondly where al other Birds fly from us and are not gotten without cost and travel nature hath caused tame Birds to converse with us and to offer themselves as it were to be killed at our pleasure which verily she would never have done had they been of a small or a bad nourishment Thirdly wild foul for the most part especially such as flye far for a little meat and trust more to their wings then their feet though they are more light in digestion because they are of a more spirituous aiery substance yet they are not of so abundant nourishment as tame houshold Birds which feed not at randome of what they can get but of good corne such as men themselves eate and therefore most fit to nourish man Now of all kind of fowl remember that the youngest is tenderest and lightest old Birds flesh is heaviest but they which are proceeding to their full growth are most nourishing for ungrown Birds and much more nestlers give but a weak thin and gelly-like substance old Birds are tough and dry those which are almost fully grown are of a more fleshy and firm nature Furthermore all Birds feeding themselves abroad fat with wholesome meat are of better nourishment then such as be cram'd in a coop or little house for as prisoners smell of the Gaol so do they of their own dung And thus much generally of birds Now let us come to every particular Pulli Gallenacei Chickens saith Avicen are so pure and fine a meat that they engender no excrements in our bodies having in themselves no illaudable substance Wherefore Caius Famius being sick of a burning feaver which had almost consumed all his flesh was advised by his Physicians to eat of no other meat then Chickens whereby he recovered his consumption and the eleventh year after the second Carthaginian Wars made a Law that nothing but Chickens or young Pullets fed in the Camp should be brought to him at his meals The young Cockrels are counted the best in this kind being of all flesh the most commendable nourishing strongly augmenting seed and stirring up lust For which purpose Boleslaus Duke of Silesia did eat thirteen Cock-chickens at a meal whereof he died without having his purpose fulfilled because he knew not how to use so wholsom a creature We doe not amiss in England to eat sodden Chickens and Bacon together for if they were eaten first and Bacon after they would oversoon be digested and if they were eaten after Bacon they would be corrupted but they are best being rosted because they are a moist meat and if they be sawced with Sorrel and Sugar or with a little Butter and Grape-Verjuice they are a most temperate meat for weak stomacks as Platina and Bucinus set down for no man I think is so foolish as to commend them to Ploughmen and Besomers White Chickens are found by experience to be hardest of digeston as Gilbert our Countryman writ a great while since Yet Griunerius preferreth them for Hectick persons because they are coldest and moistest of complexion They are all best in Summer as contrariwise Pullets and Hens be best in Winter Cock-chickens are best before they crow lowd Hen-chickens before the cock offereth to tread
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
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
may fat himself with froggs and filth Futhermore when a Pike is big and full grown is not his flesh rather to be counted hard then firm indeed I will not deny but a Pike of a middle sise fed in gravelly ponds with fresh livers of beasts sodden crisp in wine-vinegar and sweet-herbs is of no bad nourishment for any man but fittest for hot chollerick stomachs and young persons Macrobius writeth that the best Pike is taken in a clear River betwixt two bridges but I never saw them fat in any clear River and therefore I suspect their goodness Certain it is that old great Pikes are very hard tough and ill to digest young ones called Jacks are contrariwise to watrish and moist Chuse therefore one of a middle growth for it is most likely to nourish us best The Germans having split them along the back thrust their tails into their mouths and then fry them a little with sweet butter then they take them out of the frying pan and boil them as long as one would seeth an egg with wine water vinegar and salt gallopping on the fire and last of all having sprinckled it over with the powder of cloves cinamon and ginger they serve it to the Table Rutili Roches or Roch fishes called so of Saint Roch that Legendary Aesculapius and giver of health are esteemed and thought uncapable of any disease according to the old Proverb As sound as a Roch. Hence have men collected that the flesh of them is light sound and wholesome which verily is not to be denied being sodden like a Bream they are full of bones which maketh them the less regarded though wisemen know well enough that roses are roses albeit their tree be dangerous and full of thornes Cernuae Aspredines Ruffs or Ruggels are not much unlike to Perches for the goodness of their flesh though their skin be rougher the best live in sandy places where they wax exceeding fat and sweet dress them as you do perches some take them for the Base and verily by Gesners description they disagree as much as nothing Salmones Salmons are of a fatty tender short and sweet flesh quickly filling the stomach and soon glutting Gesner commendeth them that go fardest up into fresh Rivers accounting them worst which are taken nearest the Sea which I find to be true in the difference betwixt the Salmons of upper Severn betwixt Shrewsbury and Beaudly and the Salmons taken betwixt Glocester and Bristowe Nevertheless if they go too high up the River they wax leaner for want of sufficient nourishment as manifestly appeareth which I my self have seen in the Salmon of the Rhine taken at Ringfielden beyond Basel and at Oppenheim above the City of Ments Salmons come in and go out with the Buck for towards Winter they wax kipper full of kernels under their throate like a measeld hogg and lose both their redness of flesh and also the pleasure of tast which else it giveth they are to be sodden wholly in wine or wholly in water for if they be sodden in both they prove tough and unpleasant it is best to seeth them in wine vinegar and salt or else parboile them onely in water being cut into certain pieces and having stickt those pieces full of cloves broil them upon a gridiron and bast them with butter and serve them in with sawce made of vinegar cinamon and sugar Some have pickled Salmon as Sturgian is used and find it to be as dainty and no less wholesom but salt Salmon loseth a double goodness the one of a good taste the other of a good nourishment Hot Salmon is counted unwholesome in England and suspected as a leprous meat without all reason for if it be sodden in wine and afterwards well spiced there is no danger of any such accident As for Salmon peales which indeed are nothing but Sea Trouts howsoever they be highly commended of the Western and Welch people yet are they never enough commended being a more light wholesom and well tasted meat then the Salmon it self Salmunculi Shuins seem unto me akind of Salmon whereof plenty is taken in the River running by Cardiff castle but it surpasseth the Salmon as much in goodness as it is surpassed by him in length and greatness boil it in wine vinegar salt and sweet herbs and you shall find it a delicate and wholesome fish Violaceae Epelani Rondeletij Smellts are so called because they smell so sweet yea if you draw them and then dry them in a shadowy place being seasonably taken they still retain a smell as it were of violets Their flesh is of the finest lightest softest and best juce of all other fish their excellency is in winter and whensoever they are full of spawne Western smelts have the greatest commendation for their greatness and goodness Void the gall cleanly and then use the livers guts bellies and fat for great restoratives The best are taken by Kew and Brainford within eight miles of London and at Westchester Seeth them in hot boiling water and salt and take them out as soon as they are sodden for lying long in the water they will wax flaggy their sawce is butter and verjuce mingled with a little gross pepper but if you fry them in butter eat them with the juice of civil-orenges for that is their best sawce Truttae Trouts are so great in Northumberland that they seem thicker then Salmons and are therefore called Bull-trouts there are especially two sorts of them Red-trouts resembling little fresh-water Salmons and therefore termed Salmon-trouts and Gray-trouts or Skurffs which keep not in the chanel of Bournes or Rivers but lurk like the Alderlings under the roots of great Alders they are both a very pleasant and good meat for sound persons but they are fouly mistaken which prefer them in agues before Perches whose flesh is tender friable light of good juice and speedy concoction when they are in no one thing comparable unto them they are best being sodden like a Bream and eaten hot for being eaten cold they lose much of their grace and more of their goodness Tincae Tenches are naturally such friends to Pikes that pitty it is they should be separated yet sith I have followed the order of the Alphabet I could not but divide them in name though they agree in nature Old writers hardly vouchsafe to mention them because they were onely esteemed as beggers meat the very feeling and smell of them shew that a Tench is but a muddy and slimy fish Albertus living 1252 years after Christ was the first that ever wrote of the nature of the Tench His flesh is stopping slimy viscous and very unwholesome and as Alexander Benedictus writeth of a most unclean and damnable nourishment Antonius Gazius saith that a fried Tench is a secret poison and I remember that Dr. Cajus whose learning I reverence was wont to call Tenches good plaisters but bad nourishers For indeed being outwardly laid to the soles of ones feet they oftentimes draw away
to stop the neither mouth unless it be in fluxes Sorbi Cervises like to Medlers are then truely ripe when they are rotten if you would chuse the best chuse the biggest most poulpy and voidest of stones They are cold in the first degre and dry in the third giving little nourishment but staying fluxes preventing drunkenness strengthening the stomach and making a sweet breath their great astringency sheweth that they are to be eaten last for otherwise they wil bind the body burden the stomach and engender very gross humours Pliny maketh four kind of Cervisses one as round as an Apple another bottled like a Peare the third ovale made like an egg The Apple-cervise is most sweet fragrant and nourishing the other of a most winy tast the fourth kind of Cervisse is a very little one called the Torment-Cerviss allowed for nothing but that it ceaseth the torments of bloody fluxes Cherries were neither brought into Italy nor England till Lucius Lucullus returned from his victory against Mithridates whereof there are chiefly four sorts amongst us Iuliana Iulians which are very red soft and poulpy never good but under the Tree for they rot in carriage a little way Aproniana Apronians which are red round and harder and can abide the carriage Duracina Duracines or in French Coeurs or heart-Cherries because they are made like a heart which are the firmest of all other Actiana The blackest of all be called Actians because they were brought from Actium a promontory of Epire. In England we have also seen white Cherries growing wherein the artificial choler marred the good nature and taste of them wherefore I will not commend them for wholesomness but shew their rareness Concerning their uses let us remember thus much that the Coeurs or French Cherries are most cordiall the common and pulpy Cherries most nourishing the black Cherries kernel is the best meat but his flesh unwholesome and loathsome to the stomach Furthermore our common Cherries being ripe and eaten from the Tree in a dewy morning loosen the belly when contrariwise Coeurs and red soure Cherries bind the same being of a more dry and astringent faculty All Cherries saving them which are black slake thirst cool moderately and procure appetite Sweet and ripe Cherries should be eaten formost others are to be eaten last either scalded or baked or made into tart stuff or preserved with sugar or rather dried after the German manner which they keep all the year long to quench thirst in agues to cool choller to stir up appetite to unfur the tongue and rellish the mouth to stay puking vomiting and all kind of fluxes Castaneae nuces Chestnuts are so discommended of Galen in his book of Thin Diet that they should be little esteemed had not latter ages better considered of their nature Pliny thought and I allow his reason that it could not be a vile meat which nature had hidden with such wonderful and artificial covers or husks Divus Tiberius having been in Sardinia or rather as I take it at Sardis in Lidia brought from thence some chestnuts and set them in Italy whence no doubt they were derived into France and England It is questioned by some whether raw Chestnuts may not engender lice But the French Chestnut is bigger tenderer and far sweeter then ours whereof there are two kinds the one of a light and reddish colour fittest to be roasted the other resembling a dark bay enclining to a blackish brown called Coctivae of Pliny because they are best sodden Of all Chestnuts chuse the biggest fullest brownest and roundest and let them be three months old at the least before you eat them If you eat too many they breed head-ache collicks and costiffness but feed moderately upon them in the midst of meals and they nourish without offence They are dry in the second degree and almost as hot as dry but seething remits a little of each as roasting addeth somewhat to either quality They are best in Winter agreeing with moist complexions and such as are not subject to stoppings of the brest and liver Mala medica Citria Citrons were not known in Homers time to be any meat onely the pills thereof were burnt with Cedar-wood in Temples when they sacrificed to Apollo as thinking the fume of it a special preservative against the Plague Neither is the juice of them since commended but to resist poison to qualifie humours putrified within the body to make a sweet breath to cure hot burning agues and to cure the longing of women with child for which yet the seeds are thought most medicinable Nevertheless I am sure as ripe Citrons in Spaine do nourish Spaniards so preserved Citrons may no less nourish us considering that their corrosive quality is altered by sugar and their coldness made temperate thorough perboiling Pruna Damascena Damsins which were first brought from the mount of Damascus in Syria are a most wholesome Plum of all others giving moderat nourishment in hot weather to young chollerick and dry stomachs The most nourishing be fully ripe sweet plump and thin-skinn'd Our custome is very bad to eat ripe Plums last when their sweetness and lightness perswades us to eat them formost Ripe Damsins eaten whilst the dew is upon them are more medicinable then meat but being eaten at the beginning of Dinner or Supper they are more meat then medicin and give an indifferent sustenance to an indifferent stomach especially when they are preserved Damsins not fully ripe had need to be boiled or preserved to correct their cold and crude nature but as they are fit for hot stomachs and aguish persons so none at all are good for them that be old or cold or watrish and phlegmatick of constitution The like may be said of Damase-prunes brought out of Syria Spaine and Italy which are sweet nourishing and pleasant being stued or sodden when contrariwise the French Prune is harsh and soure fitter to cool men in agues and to edge distasted stomachs then to be offred any man in the way of meat Dactili Dates are usually put into stued broaths minced-pies and restorative cullâ—ces as though they were of very great and wholesome nourishment Ceatain it is that they fat much and encrease blood but such blood as easily turneth into hot choller Alexanders Souldiers were killed with new Dates which taste so pleasantly that only danger makes a man surcease to eat them The best Dates grow by Jericho in Jewry the next by Alexandria in Egypt but the Dates of Barbary and Spaine have long writhled bodies without substance Chuse them which are ripe and not rotten firm and not worm-eaten sweet and not astringent and at the least a year old after the gathering for such are best for a cold Liver fittest to move the Belly and to help the cough whereas new Dates bind excessively stop the liver stomach veins and lungs gripe the guts breed headach hurt the teeth and make little ulcers to arise in the mouth yea
and milk stayeth all fluxes of nature bringeth on sleep and cooleth the heat of Urine The middle and thickest part of the leaf being boiled and preserved in Syrup as Endiff and Succory is done beyond-sea give a great nourishment to weak persons newly recovered of hot Agues The Romans did eat Lettice last to provoke sleep we eat it first to provoke appetite So that Martials question is fully answered Claudere quae coenas Lactuce solebat avorum Dic mihi cur nostras incipit illa Dapes When elder times did feed on Lettice last Why is it now the first meat that we tast Melones Pepones Melons and Pompions are not so cold nor moist as Cucumbers Growing in a hot ground and thoroughly ripened with hot and dry weather they give much nourishment especially being baked with good flesh or sweet milke or baked with sweet apples butter and fennel-seed Melopepones Musk-melons are neither so moist nor cold as the ordinary sort engendring far better bloud and descending more speedily into the belly They will hardly prosper in our Country unless they are set in a very fat hot and dry ground having the benefit of Sun-shine all the year long Jason Mainus a most famous Civilian so loved a Musk-melon that he said to one of his friends Were I in Paradise as Adam was and this Fruit forbidden me Verily I fear me I should leave Paradise to taste of a Musk-melon Nevertheless let not the pleasant smell or taste of them draw any man to eat too much of them for they cast Albertus secundus the Emperor into a deadly flux Sophia Queen of Poland into a numb'd Palsie and Paulus secundus the Pope into a mortal Apoplexy All Melons Pompions and Cucumbers are not presently to be eaten out of the ground though they be fully ripe but rather a week after for with delay they prove less moist and also less cold As for our great Garden Pompions and Melons they may tarry in a warm Kitchin till towards Christmass before they be eaten to be more dryed from their watrishness and freed from crudities Napi Navews especially Napus sativus called in English Navew gentle nourish something less then Turneps otherwise they are of like operation They are best sodden in pouldred Beef broth or else with fat Mutton or pouldred Pork Cepae Onions are very hot and drye nevertheless being rosted or boiled in fat broth or milke they become temperate and nourishing leaving their hot and sharp nature in the broth or embers The Priests of Aegypt abhorred them of all herbs first because contrary to the course of other things they encrease most when the Moon decreaseth Secondly because they nourish too much and procure lust which religious men of all other persons ought to refrain The greater whiter longer sweeter thinner-skinned and fuller of juice they be such are St. Thomas Onions the more they nourish and excel in goodness but if they be very red dry round light and sowrish they are not so commendable Raw Onions be like raw Garlick and raw Leeks that is to say of great malignity hurting both head eyes and stomach enflaming blood and engendering both gross and corrupt humors but sodden in milke and then eaten Sallad-wise with sweet oil vinegar and sugar as we use them in Lent they are hurtful to no persons nor complexions Apium hortense Parsley nourisheth most in the root for if you choose young roots and shift them out of two or three warm waters they lose their medicinable faculty of opening and cleansing and become as sweet yea almost as nourishing as a Carot being sodden in fat broth made with good flesh The like may I say of Alisander buds which is nothing but the Parsley of Alexandria being drest or prepared in the like manner otherwise they may be used as Nettles are in Spring-time pottage to cleanse bloud but they will give no laudable or rather no nourishment at all Portulaca Purslane is usually eaten green in sallades as Lettice likewise But being sodden in wine it is of good nourishment in the Summer time unto hot stomachs which are able to overcome it Radices Sisari Indici Potado-roots are now so common and known amongst us that even the husbandman buyes them to please his wife They nourish mightily being either sodd baked or rosted The newest and heaviest be of best worth engendring much flesh bloud and seed but withall encreasing wind and lust Clusius thinks them to be Indian Skirrets and verily in taste and operation they resemble them not a little Radicula sativa Radish roots of the Garden for they are best are either long and white without or round like a Turnep and very black skinned called the Italian Radish Most men eat them before meat to procure appetite and help digestion But did they know and yet they feel it what ranck belchings Radishes make how hardly they are digested how they burn bloud and engender lice cause leanness rot the teeth weaken eye-sight and corrupt the whole mass of nourishment I thinke they would be more temperate and sparing of them yet were so prized amongst the Grecians that at Apollo's feast when Turneps were served in tinn dishes and Beets in silver yet Radish roots were not served but in golden dishes Notwithstanding sith by nature they provoke vomiting how can they be nourishing unless it be to such rustical stomachs as are offended with nothing and to whom resty Bacon is more agreeable then young and tender pork Nevertheless sith only the heat and biting of radish are the chiefest cause why it nourish little or nothing as Galen saith no doubt if by steeping in warm milk or boiling in fat broth those qualities be removed it would prove the less medicinable more nourishing Rapi Silvestris radix Rampions or wild Rapes of nature not unlike to Turneps eaten raw with vinegar and salt do not onely stir up an appetite to meat but also are meat and nourishment of themselves In high Germany they are much eaten and now our Nation knows them indifferently well and begin to use them Radix Allii ursini Ramseys are of like vertue and power with Garlick and are so to be prepared or else they give neither much nor any good nourishment Rapae Rapes or Turneps sodden in fat broth or roasted with butter and sugar put into the midst thereof nourish plentifully being moderately taken for if they be undigested through excess they stir up windiness and many superfluous humours in the body The Bohemians have Turneps as red outwardly as blood which I did eat of in Prague and found them a most delicate meat yea they are counted so restorative and dainty that the Emperour himself nurseth them in his Garden Roasted Turneps are so sweet and delicate that Mavius Curius refused much gold offered him by the Samnites rather then to leave his Turnep in the Embers Radices Eringii marini Sea holly roots are of temperate heat and cold