Recipes

Appears in

The Curious Cookbook: Viper Soup, Badger Ham, Stewed Sparrows and 100 More Historic Recipes

The Curious Cookbook

Published 2012

About

© 2012 All rights reserved. Published by British Library.

In this section

A medieval lasagne

Preparing edible ‘garbage’ and ‘compost’

Hawthorn flower pudding

A mythical beast created from half a pig and half a cockerel

An artificial pitcher made of pork, cheese and bread

Porpoise with wheat porridge

How to roast a peacock and serve him in his skin

Imitation entrails

To make one capon into two by blowing up the skin

Eggs in moonshine

A dishful of snow

A rabbit with a pudding in his belly

A carp with fruit pudding in his belly

Stewed sparrows on toast

A cockerel distilled with gold for treating consumption

Fruit pudding in a holloued-out turnip

Portuguese puffs

Candied sea holly

Rabbits, woodcock and other animals cast in sugar

Thirst-quenching fruit pastilles for ladies

Nutmegs candied for three weeks then smashed out of their pots

Fruit preserved in pitch

A cucumber stuffed with barley to attract flies

Butter roasted on a spit

Dried instant vinegar for travellers

Minnow, tansey, cowslip and primrose omelette

Sautéed tortoise with asparagus

Whore’s Farts

Barbecued otter

Pies containing live frogs and birds, a pastry stag that bleeds, exploding ships and castles

Lips, noses, udders, ox-eyes and sparrows on toast

Fishy mince pies

A cure for the plague

To bottle cock ale

Slices of bacon imitated in marzipan

A great swan pie and a swan-skin stomacher

A sweet and spicy potato and fruit pie

A tart made with a gallon of cowslip flowers

A pickle of green ash keys

A sea-duck served with a sauce of chocolate, truffles and morels

Badger ham anyone?

Viper soup, or viper and snail broth - the choice is yours

A jellied rock pool complete with fish, shells and seaweed

Larks, served in a nest of eggs or shaped like a pear with their feet as a stalk

Baked wheatears potted in butter

Calves feet served with a sweet currant and cream sauce

Little dishes of mushroom-stuffed cockscombs in gravy

Kebabs of ox palate, pigeon, chicken-peepers, cockscombs and oysters

Instant meat-stock ‘glue’ to carry in your pocket

Hannah Glasse’s poisonous purple pears

To cook eggs in a butter whirlpool, make one giant egg using bladders and golden fairy butter to look like vermicelli

Artificial asses’ milk made with bruised snails

A barrel of tripe to take to the East Indies

A ketchup that will last you twenty years and an eighteenth-century Worcestershire sauce

How to tell if waders, gulls and dotterels are fresh or stale

Chopped brain fritters

Hens, fish, eggs, bacon, islands and playing cards in jelly

Rabbits with jaw-bone horns, a bunch of myrtle in their mouths and a frothy liver sauce

How to turn a live turtle into soup and serve it in its shell

A hairy heart for Valentine’s Day

A Victorian savoury cheese ice cream

The swim bladder of a cod served with egg sauce

The flavour and texture of mature cheese created with eggs and spices

A sweet ‘cocktail’ of sherry, port and chocolate

Mrs Beeton’s nourishing soup for the deserving poor

Mrs Beeton’s extremely economical soup for children

Mrs Beeton’s stock cubes

Making a meal of a cod’s head and shoulders

A cheap pudding for soldiers and sailors on half-pay

To make a pint of gruel for invalids

How to avoid making an exceedingly disagreeable beverage

How to cook birds’ nests as white as snow

Tendons with all the meat removed served in gravy with peas

Kangaroo soup and curry, roast wallaby and parakeet pie

On the naming of recipes

An economical savoury trifle

The working-class tea and jazz-age cocktails

Hedgehog cooked in a ball of clay

Several ways to cook squirrel, including a squirrel-tail soup

How to avoid a bitter rook stew

Vine-leaf wrapped sparrows or starlings on toast

Freshly roasted asparagus coffee

A kitchen goes to war

Potato Pete and Doctor Carrot

The hidden delights of cold porridge

Further uses for cold porridge

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