Pages

Tuesday 5 April 2016

The Good Huswifes Jewell 1585 by Thomas Dawson


The Good Huswifes Jewell 1585 by Thomas Dawson
To make a Haggas pudding
Take a peece of a Calves Chaldron and parboile it,
shred it so small as you can,
then take as much Beefe Sewet as your meat,
ten shred likewise, and a good deale more of grated bread,
put this together, and to then seven or eight yolkes of egs and two or three whites,
a little creame,
three or four spoonfuls of rosewater,
a little Pepper, Mace and nutmegs,
and a good deale of sugar,
fill them and let them be sodden with a very soft fire, and shred also with a little Winter savoury, parsely and Time, and a little Pennyroyal with your meat.

Context
The Elizabethan age represented the period of transition from Medieval to modern.
Cookery was changing as trade brought new ingredients, and fashion favoured new styles of cooking,
with for example locally-grown herbs as well as imported spices.

Cooking came to be seen as a subject in its own right, rather than being part of medicine or books of "secrets"

Such books were becoming available to a wider audience than the aristocratic households of the Middle Ages, hence the "huswife" of Dawson's title.

Medicines
Dawson's recipes included medicines, some of which involved sympathetic magic

The Good Huswife's Jewell described "a tart to provoke courage in either man or woman", calling for the brains of male sparrows.

Torn sinews are healed by taking "worms while they be nice", crushing them and laying them on to the sore "and it will knit the sinew that be broken in two".

No comments :

Post a Comment