Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

To make Melon Mangoes: — Take small melons, not quite ripe, cut a slip down the side, and take out the inside very clean ; beat mustard-seeds, and shred garlick, and mix with the seeds, and put in your mangoes; put the pieces you cut out into their places again, and tye them up, and put them into your pot, and boil some vinegar (as much as you think will cover them) with whole pepper, and some salt, and Jamaica pepper, and pour in scalding hot over your mangoes, and cover them close to keep in the steam ; and so do every day for nine times together, and when they are cold cover them with leather. To make Conserve of Hips ;■ — Gather the hips before they grow soft, cut off the heads and stalks, slit them in halves, and take out all the seed and white that is in them very clean ; then put them in an earthen pan, and stir them every day, else they will grow mouldy; let them stand till they are soft enough to rub through a coarse hair-sieve ; as the pulp comes, take it off the sieve ; they Early Receipts. 141 are a dry berry, and will require pains to rub it through ; then add its weight in sugar, and mix it well together without boiling ; keeping it in deep gallipots for use. To make clear Cakes of Gooseberries : — Take your white Dutch gooseberries when they are thorough ripe, break them with your fingers and squeeze out all the pulp into a fine piece of cambrick or thick muslin to run thro’ clear; then weigh the juice and sugar one against the other ; then boil the juice a little while, then put in your sugar and let it dissolve, but not boil ; scum it and put it into glasses, and stove it in a warm stove. To make white Quince Paste: — Scald the quinces tender to the core, and pare them, and scrape the pulp clean from the core, beat it in a mortar, and pulp it through a colander ; take to a pound of pulp a pound and two ounces of sugar, boil the sugar till it is candy-high; then put in your pulp, stir it about constantly till you see it come clear from the bottom of the preserving-pan ; then take it off, and lay it on plates pretty thin : you may cut it in what shape you please, or Early Receipts. make quince chips of it; you must dust it with sugar when you put it into the stove, and turn it on papers in a sieve, and dust the other side ; when they are dry, put them in boxes with papers between. You may make red quince paste the same way as this, only colour the quince with cochineel. To make Syrup of any Flower : — Clip your flowers, and take their weight in sugar ; then take a high gallipot, and a row of flowers, and a strowing of sugar, till the pot is full ; then put in two or three spoonfuls of the same syrup or still’d water; tye a cloth on the top of the pot, and put a tile on that, and set your gallipot in a kettle of water over a gentle fire, and let it infuse till the strength is out of the flowers, which will be in four or five hours ; then strain it thro’ a flannel, and when ’tis cold bottle it up. VIII.— PICKLES. To pickle Nasturtium-Buds : — Gather your little knobs quickly after your blossoms are off ; put them in cold water and salt for three Early Receipts. M3