- The Gourmet Pirate: his recipes for Syllabub.
- The Gourmet Pirate, The Accomplisht Cook, and Triumphs and Trophies in Cookery.
To the Right Honourable my Lord Lumley, and my Lord
Lovelace; and to the Right Worshipful Sir. VVilliam Paston, Sir Kenelme Digby,
and Sir Frederick Cornwallis; so well known to the Nation for their admired
Hospitalities.
The dedication was signed “From Sholeby in Leicestershire,
Jan. 24. 1659.” The cookbook and commendation were published in 1660 (the year of
May’s death, at the age of 72 years, according to some). The cookbook was a hit
for all it is said not to have sold as many as 200 copies.
By the 1685 edition, two of his previous noble employers
— the Lords Lumley and Dormer — both appear in the dedication signed under May’s
name “From Soleby in Leicestershire, September 29. 1684.”
To the Right Honourable my Lord Montague, My Lord Lumley,
and my Lord Dormer; and to the Right worshipful Sir Kenelme Digby, so well
known to this Nation for their Admired Hospitalities.
The date would have made him 95 or 96 years old at the
time. Except for his dedications to the several reprints of the cookbook,
history lost track of his existence from shortly before its first edition.
Sir Kenelme, history does record, died in 1665. It also
records his myriad talents, piracies, quackeries, recipes and hospitalities.
Of course, one had to be a nobleman or -woman, or stock
holder in the East India Company, or Sir Kenelme Digbie or the like, in order to
afford the “triumphs and trophies” described at the beginning of May’s work.
That May includes Digbie in the company — and as a host —
of such affairs, tells us something about how to read his own posthumous cookbook.
Triumphs
and Trophies in Cookery, to be used at Festival Times, as Twelfth-day, &c.
MAke the likeness of a Ship in Paste-board, with Flags and Streamers, the Guns belonging to it of Kickses[1], bind them about with packthread, and cover them with close paste proportionable to the fashion of a Cannon with Carriages, lay them in places convenient as you see them in Ships of war, with such holes and trains of powder that they may all take Fire; Place your Ship firm in the great Charger; then make a salt round about it, and stick therein egg-shells full of sweet water, you may by a great Pin take all the meat out of the egg by blowing, and then fill it up with the rose-water, then in another Charger have the proportion of a Stag made of course paste, with a broad Arrow in the side of him, and his body filled up with claret-wine; in another Charger at the end of the Stag have the proportion of a Castle with Battlements, Portcullices, Gates and Draw-Bridges made of Past-board, the Guns and Kickses, and covered with course paste as the former; place it at a distance from the ship to fire at each other. The Stag being placed betwixt them with egg shells full of sweet water
(as before) placed in salt. At each side of the Charger wherein is the Stag, place a Pye made of course paste, in one of which let there be some live Frogs, in each other some live Birds; make these Pyes of course Paste filled with bran, and yellowed over with saffron or the yolks of eggs, guild them over in spots, as also the Stag, the Ship, and Castle; bake them, and place them with guilt bay-leaves on turrets and tunnels of the Castle and Pyes; being baked, make a hole in the bottom of your pyes, take out the bran, put in your Frogs, and Birds, and close up the holes with the same course paste, then cut the Lids neatly up; To be taken off the Tunnels; being all placed in order upon the Table, before you fire the trains of powder, order it so that some of the Ladies may be perswaded to pluck the Arrow out of the Stag, then will the Claret-wine follow, as blood that runneth out of a wound. This being done with admiration to the beholders, after some short pause, fire the train of the Castle, that the pieces all of one side may go off, then fire the Trains, of one side of the Ship as in a battel; next turn the Chargers; and by degrees fire the trains of each other side as before. This done to sweeten the stink of powder, let the Ladies take the egg-shells full of sweet waters and throw them at each other. All dangers being seemingly over, by this time you may suppose they will desire to see what is in the pyes; where lifting first the lid off one pye, out skip some Frogs, which make the Ladies to skip and shreek; next after the other pye, whence come out the Birds, who by a natural instinct flying in the light, will put out the Candles; so that what with the flying Birds and skipping Frogs, the one above, the other beneath, will cause much delight and pleasure to the whole company: at length the Candles are lighted, and a banquet brought in, the Musick sounds, and every one with much delight and content rehearses their actions in the former passages. These were formerly the delight of the Nobility, before good House-keeping had left England, and the Sword really acted that which was only counterfeited in such honest and laudable Exercises as these.[2]
[1]
kickses] presumably, kickshaws. England’s demotic pronunciation of the
French “quelque choses”.
[2]
May, Robert. Accomplisht Cook, or the Art
& Mystery of Cookery (1685).
Also from the Library of Babel:
- The Best Translation of Dante’s Divina Commedia. July, 14, 2019. “For the next month, then, I put aside a few hours each night. Not only with Singleton and Merwin. In the glorious Age of the Internet, the first step could only be a search for what books relating to the subject were available on Google Book Search and the Internet Archive.”
- A Memoriam for W. S. Merwin. April 17, 2019. “It took about three days, as I recall, for me to surrender to the fact that W. S. Merwin was the finest English language poet of his time. I wished I’d been prepared to read him years ago.”
- Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.
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