The swan is like the goose but grosser,
heavier, and harder of digestion. He yieldeth
best nourishment being baked and
well-seasoned with pepper, cloves, and salt. It is
a strong melancholic meat.

Next follows fish. Much of the
prejudice against fish diet that still
subsists among the common people may have
begun with the men of science in the days
of that medical theory of dry and moist, of
hot and cold, which causes Dr. Venner to
declare the much eating or often use of it
unwholesome, "because fish increaseth much
gross slimy and superfluous phlegm, which
residing and corrupting in the body, causeth
difficulty of breathing, the gout, the stone,
the leprosy, the scurvy, and other foul and
troublesome affects of the skin." Among
fish he accounts the sole as of primest note
and calls it the sea-capon. The eyes of a
salmon are far wholesomer than the eyes of
any other fish. Sturgeon is a very acceptable
fish, and best welcome at tables. It may
be much doubted whether it be not so greatly
esteemed for the mere rareness of it. Its
fat subverteth the stomach. The halibut is
a big fish and of great account. It is not
inferior to the sturgeon. John Dory, says
the Doctor (shame upon him!), is not very
delectable to the palate; it breedeth somewhat
a gross and phlegmatic juice.
Lampreys are of some greatly esteemed, but very
unworthily, for they are partly of the nature
of eels. Eels are only a convenient meat for
poor, hard labourers, The doctor supposes
that their aperient quality has caused oysters
to be usually eaten a little before meal, and
that with one-way bread. Although their
saltish nature excites appetite, they must
be eaten with pepper and vinegar, and a cup
of good claret or sack drunk presently after
them. The carp is of a sweet and exquisite
taste, but gives a slimy nourishment. Puffins,
whether they be eaten fresh or powdered,
are of an odious smell, of a naughty taste, of
unwholesome nourishment, and very noisome
to the stomach. Yet great drinkers esteem
well of the powdered puffin, because it
provoketh them to drink.

From the next section of the treatise, that
upon eggs and milk, including the products
from milk, here is the hint of a breakfast
for the age that knew no coffee and no tea.
"If any man desire a light, nourishing, and
comfortable breakfast, I know none better
than a couple of potched eggs, seasoned with
a little sauce and a few corns of pepper, also
with a drop or two of vinegar if the stomach
be weak, and supped off warm, eating
therewithal a little bread and butter, and drinking
after a good draught of claret wine."

Ben Jonson ate cheese after his meat,
and we keep up the custom, not having
after dinner, as Ben Jonson had, a reason
to give for the cheese that is in us. If
the poet was not scholar enough to know
upon what faith cheese after meat was
founded, Dr. Venner, his contemporary, was,
and so he tells us: "Being thus used, it
bringeth two commodities. First, it taketh
away satiety and strengtheneth the stomach
by shutting up the orifice thereof. Secondly,
it preventeth the floating of the meat, which
greatly hindereth and disturbeth the concoction,
by depressing it into the bottom of the
stomach, which is the chief place of digestion."
There is made of coagulated milk a kind of
junket, called in most places a fresh cheese.
This, or other junkets or white meats of like
nature must be always at meals first eaten,
or at banquets between meals, when the
stomach is empty.

Next, the Doctor treats of sauces and
spices. Sauces are salt, vinegar, rose vinegar
(which is white wine or claret vinegar with
red rose leaves steeped in it), eisell, the
vinegar of cider; verjuice, which is made of
sour grapes, crabs, or unripe apples; oranges,
lemons, citrons; olives, eaten with meat to
excite appetite; capers, eaten with vinegar
and oil or oxymel; pickled buds of young
broom, samphire, radishes, oil, honey, sugar,
and mixed sauces. Spices are cinnamon,
cloves, nutmegs, and mace, pepper, ginger,
and saffron. The doctor has by accident
omitted mustai'd, upon the relations of which
to ox-beef we have heard something from a
friend of Titania.

Fruits, roots, and herbs, that serve for
meat, and are usually eaten: apples, pears;
pear-wardens, solid and large, of all sorts of
pears the best and wholesomest, yielding the
warden-pie; quinces which yield a very
delectable cotiniate or marmalade; pomegranates,
peaches, and apricots, medlars and service-berries,
mulberries, figs, dates, plums,
damsons, prunes, grapes—which, "boiled in butter
and sops of bread added thereto, and sugar
also, if they be somewhat sour, are a very
pleasant meat;"—raisins, cherries, currants,
gooseberries, barberries, raspis or framboise,
now called raspberries, strawberries—they
may be well eaten with rose, violet, or borage
water and sugar—whortleberries; hazel nuts
which "violate the lungs"—filberts,
walnuts, chestnuts, pine nuts—the newest and
the whitest are the best, they must be eaten
with honey or sugar—pistachio or fistic nuts,
almonds; mushrooms. "Many fantastical
people do greatly delight to eat of the earthly
excrescences called mushrooms; whereof some
are venomous, and the best of them unwholesome
for meat. They are convenient for no
season, age, or temperature." Melons,
cucumbers, gourds, beans, pease, artichokes,
coleworts, carrots and parsnips, turnips and
navewes, skirret-roots, potatoes—"some use
to eat them being roasted in the embers,
sopped in wine, which way is specially good"
—iringo-roots, garlic, onion, scallion or chalot,
leek, chive, lettuce—" in these days commonly
eaten at the beginning of meals"—parsley,
sea-parsley, prick-madam, spinage, bleets and
orach, beets, herb-mercury, much used among