“The myriad-minded man, our, and all men’s Shakespeare, has in this piece presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished from comedy by the licence allowed, and even required, in the fable, in order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be probable, it is enough that it is possible. A comedy would scarcely allow even the two Antipholuses; because, although there have been instances of almost indistinguishable likeness in two persons, yet these are mere individual accidents, _casus ludentis naturæ_, and the _verum_ will not excuse the _inverisimile_. But farce dares add the two Dromios, and is justified in so doing by the laws of its end and constitution. In a word, farces commence in a postulate, which must be granted.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Take a lobster being half boil'd, take the meat out of the shells, and mince it small with a good fresh eel, season it with cloves & mace beaten, some sweet herbs minced small and mingled amongst the meat, yolks of eggs, gooseberries, grapes, or barberries, and sometimes boil'd artichocks cut into dice-work, or boil'd aspragus, and some almond-paste mingled with the rest, fill the lobster shells, claws, tail, and body, and bake it in a blote oven, make sauce with the gravy and whitewine, and beat up the sauce or lear with good sweet butter, a grated nutmeg, juyce of oranges, and an anchove, and rub the dish with a clove of garlick. To this farcing you may sometime add almond paste currans, sugar, gooseberries, and make balls to lay about the lobsters, or serve it with venison sauce.
Sources: The passage is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, 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 — teal cloth, pear stamp.