“This said, they made ready supper, and, of extraordinary besides his daily fare, were roasted sixteen oxen, three heifers, two and thirty calves, three score and three fat kids, four score and fifteen wethers, three hundred farrow pigs or sheats soused in sweet wine or must, eleven score partridges, seven hundred snipes and woodcocks, four hundred Loudun and Cornwall capons, six thousand pullets, and as many pigeons, six hundred crammed hens, fourteen hundred leverets, or young hares and rabbits, three hundred and three buzzards, and one thousand and seven hundred cockerels. For venison, they could not so suddenly come by it, only eleven wild boars, which the Abbot of Turpenay sent, and eighteen fallow deer which the Lord of Gramount bestowed; together with seven score pheasants, which were sent by the Lord of Essars; and some dozens of queests, coushats, ringdoves, and woodculvers; river-fowl, teals and awteals, bitterns, courtes, plovers, francolins, briganders, tyrasons, young lapwings, tame ducks, shovellers, woodlanders, herons, moorhens, criels, storks, canepetiers, oranges, flamans, which are phaenicopters, or crimson-winged sea-fowls, terrigoles, turkeys, arbens, coots, solan-geese, curlews, termagants, and water-wagtails, with a great deal of cream, curds, and fresh cheese, and store of soup, pottages, and brewis with great variety. Without doubt there was meat enough, and it was handsomely dressed by Snapsauce, Hotchpot, and Brayverjuice, Grangousier’s cooks. Jenkin Trudgeapace and Cleanglass were very careful to fill them drink.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Draw and truss the Capons, set them, & fill their bellies with marrow; then put them in a pipkin with a knuckle of veal, a neck of mutton, a marrow bone, and some sweet breads of veal, season the broth with cloves mace, and a little salt, and set it to the fire; let it boil gently till the capons be enough, but have a care you boil them not too much; as your capons boil, make ready the bottoms and tops of eight or ten rowls of _French_ bread, put them dried into a fair silver dish, wherein you serve the capons; set it on the fire, and put to the bread two ladle-full of broth wherein the capons are boil'd, & a ladlefull of mutton gravy; cover the dish and let it stand till you dish up the capons; if need require, add now and then a ladle-full of broth and gravy: when you are ready to serve it, first lay on the marrow-bone, then the capons on each side; then fill up the dish with gravy of mutton, and wring on the juyce of a lemon or two;…
Sources: The passage is from François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, tr. Motteux, Peter Anthony, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from May, The accomplisht cook of 1660, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — burgundy cloth, tankard stamp.