a question of selecting a few specimens of old receipts, to resort
to the representative of a type of culinary philosophy and sentiment
somewhere midway between those which have been rendered easy of
reference and our own. I have therefore given in the few following
pages, in a classified shape, some of the highly curious contents of
E. Smith's "Compleat Housewife," 1736, which maybe securely taken to
exhibit the state of knowledge in England upon this subject in the
last quarter of the seventeenth century and first quarter of the
succeeding one. In the work itself no attempt at arrangement is
offered.


I.--MEAT, POULTRY, ETC.

_To make Dutch-beef_:--Take the lean part of a buttock of beef raw;
rub it well with brown sugar all over, and let it lie in a pan or tray
two or three hours, turning it three or four times; then salt it well
with common salt and salt-petre, and let it lie a fortnight, turning
it every day; then roll it very strait in a coarse cloth, and put it
in a cheese-press a day and a night, and hang it to dry in a chimney.
When you boil it, you must put it in a cloth: when 'tis cold, it will
cut out into shivers as Dutch-beef.

_To dry Mutton to cut out in Shivers as Dutch-Beef_:--Take a middling
leg of mutton, then take half a pound of brown sugar, and rub it hard
all over your mutton, and let it lie twenty-four hours; then take an
ounce and half of saltpetre, and mix it with a pound of common salt,
and rub that all over the mutton every other day, till 'tis all on,
and let it lie nine days longer; keep the place free from brine, then
hang it up to dry three days, then smoke it in a chimney where wood is