Sauce for the Goose.

Today I want to revisit Panzoologicomineralogia, a wonderful book published in 1661, with the full title of:

SIVE

Panzoologicomineralogia.

Or a Compleat

HISTORY

Of Animals and Minerals,

Containing the Summe of all Authors, both Ancient

and Modern, GALENICAL and CHYMICALL,

touching Animals, viz. Beasts, Birds, Fishes, Serpents, Insects,

and Man, as to their Place, Meat, Name, Temperature, Vertues,

Sympathie, Antipathie, Diseases., Cures, Hurts, and Remedies, &c.

With the Anatomy of MAN, his Diseases, with their Definitions,

Causes, Signes, Cures, Remedies, and use of the London Dispen-

satory, with the Doses and Formes of all kinds of Remedies:

As also a History of MINERALS, viz., Earth, Metals, Semi-

metals, their Naturall and Artificial excrements, Salts, Sulphurs,

and Stones, with their Place, Matter, Names, Kidds, Temperature,

Vertues, Use, Choice, Dose, Danger, and Antidotes.

Also an Introduction to ZOOGRAPHY and MINERALOGY.

Index of Latine Names, with their English Names.

Universal INDEX of the Use and Vertues.

By Robert Lovell, St. C C. Oxon.

OXFORD

Printed by HEN. HALL, for Jas: GODWIN. 1661

The book is still firmly rooted in the ancient Humoral Theory, which I attempted to summarise in a previous post (here.http://www.theoldfoodie.com/2007/10/advice-for-melancholy.html)  In essence, it was a unifying theory of everything in the world, and one of its practical applications was in medicine. One of the basic tenets of humoral theory was that medicine was food, and food was medicine, and that the physician therefore worked closely with the cook in the household. In Panzoolologicmineralogia, this is superbly illustrated on the section on Animals, which contains a summary of the appropriate sauces to serve with various meats, in order to enhance their benefit. This fairly lengthy section on sauces featured in a previous post (here) and if you are not familiar with it, please do revisit it.

Today I want to offer a few more gleanings from other pages in the book, on the same theme, in the hope that we may gain some enlightenment about the era, and some inspiration for cooking in our own.  I give you the author’s thoughts on goose and pork, and note the exhortation to exercise to enhance digestion of these meats.

Goose: .. The flesh of goslings well fed is nourishing and pleasant, but the best is the stubble goose if it be above four months of age, it cannot be digested without Garlicke sauce, exercise, and strong drink.

Sow, or Hogge: the best of all meats ... when powdered [i.e salted[ its best eaten with green sauce to coole the salt and qualifie the malignitie of the flesh ... The bacon is of harder digestion, therefore both, as also brawn, are not to be eaten without wine, or strong bear [beer] spiced with ginger, and exercise after.

As the recipe for the day, I give you some alternative suggestions for sauce for goose, from Robert May’s Accomplisht Cook, first published contemporaneously with Panzoologiomineralogia, in 1660 (although I have taken the recipe from the 1685 edition.)

Sauce for a stubble or fat Goose.

1.       The Goose being scalded, drawn, and trust, put a handful of salt in the belly of it, roast it, and make sauce with sowre apples slic’t and boil’d in beer all to mash, then put to it sugar and beaten butter. Sometimes for veriety add barberries and the gravy of the fowl.

2.       Roast sowre apples or pippins, strain them, and put to them vineger, sugar, gravy, barberries, grated bread, beaten cinnamon, mustard, and boil’d onions strained and put to it.

Quotation for the Day.

A recipe has no soul.  You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe. 

Thomas Keller