The Order of Meats on a Flesh Day.

The book which provided yesterday’s recipe, A Booke of Cookerie (1620) by Thomas Dawson, is a wonderful source of information about food and dining in the first decades of the seventeenth century. My favourite historical cookery books include sample menus for various seasons and events, and Dawson’s book is no exception. Many of the days of the year at that time were mandated as fish-days, so it was usual for cookery books to offer alternative menus for these days too.

Heere followeth the order of Meates,

how they must bee served at the

Table.

Services for Flesh dayes at Dinner.

The first Course.

Pottage or stewed broath, boyled meate or stewed meats, Chickins and Bacon, powdered Beefe, Pyes, Pigge Roasted, Beefe roasted Veale, Custard.

The second course.

Roasted Lambe, rosted Capons, roasted  Conyes, Chickens, Peahens, Baked Venison, Salt.

The first course at Supper.

A sallet, Pigges Petitoes, Powdered Beefe sliced, a Shoulder of Mutton, or a breast Veale, Lambe, Custard.

The second course.

Capons roasted, Conyes roasted, Chickins roasted, Pigions roasted, Larkes rosted, a Pye of Pigions or Chickins, Baked Venison, Tart.

The pigges’ petitoes (trotters) are my choice for the recipe for the day, and here it is, from the above book:

To boyle a Pigs Petitoes.

Take and boyle them in a pint of Vergice [Verjuice] and Mastard; take 4 Dates minced with a few small Raisins, then take a little Time [thyme] and chop it small and season it with a little Sinamon and Ginger, and a quantity of Vergice.