Thursday, November 15, 2018

BryonySeries Throwback Thursday: Centuries-Old Recipe for Snipe

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Centuries-Old Recipe for Snipe


In Bryony, Kellen tells Melissa that he became powerful by preying only on the rich and influential. Sounds like a good plan, right? I mean, somebody has to play victim to a vampire, so why not be choosy?

So in Before the Blood, one victim Kellen pursues in the 18th century is the Squire of Levonshire. While attending the squire's Michaelmas party, Kellen encounters one maiden - with red hair, what else? - who complains the snipe is dry.

Not sure what recipe the squire's cooks used, but it probably wasn't this one.


Recipe for a “surfuit” of snipes, from The Cookbook of Unknown Ladies

A Surfuit of Snipes

Take a fillit of veal. Cut it small with a pd of sewit, half a pd of good fat bacon, some thyme & pepper, a little shred lemon. Let these be minc’d extraordinary small, & made in forc’d meat wth an egg. Put a layer at ye bottom of yr dish & cut yr snipes in halves & lay a thin rashure of bacon on them, every one. After you have place’d ym handsomly in yr dish, strow a good deal of crumbs of bread & shred parsley & a very little pepper over all. Put some forc’d meat on ye edge of yr dish, & yr forc’d meat yt is left put as a lid over ym. Bake it an hour at least. When it coms out, cut a whole in ye top & pour in some very good greavy. So serve it up for first course.


And for more information on The Cookbook of Unknown Ladies:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2363961/Cookbook-Unknown-Ladies-dating-1690-reveals-gluttonous-recipes-co
w-heel-veal-kidney-florentine.html

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