“Wail for the little partridges on porringer and plate; ✿ Cry for the ruin of the fries and stews well marinate: Keen as I keen for loved, lost daughters of the Katá-grouse,[239] ✿ And omelette round the fair enbrownèd fowls agglomerate: O fire in heart of me for fish, those _deux poissons_ I saw, ✿ Bedded on new made scones[240] and cakes in piles to laniate. For thee, O vermicelli! aches my very maw! I hold ✿ Without thee every taste and joy are clean annihilate. Those eggs have rolled their yellow eyes in torturing pains of fire ✿ Ere served with hash and fritters hot, that delicatest cate, Praisèd be Allah for His baked and roast and ah! how good ✿ This pulse, these pot-herbs steeped in oil with eysill combinate! When hunger sated was, I elbow-propt fell back upon ✿ Meat-pudding[241] wherein gleamed the bangles that my wits amate. Then woke I sleeping appetite to eat as though in sport ✿ Sweets from brocaded trays and kickshaws most elaborate. Be patient, soul of me! Time is a haughty, jealous wight; ✿ To-day he seems dark-lowering and to-morrow fair to sight.[242]”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Stew them between two dishes as the former, in quarter or pieces as long as your fingar, with some broth, mace, a bundle of sweet herbs, salt, and a little white wine, being well stewed down, strain the yolks of two or three hard eggs with some of the broth, and thicken the broth where the rabit stews; then have some cabbidg-lettice boil'd in fair water, and being boil'd tender, put them in beaten butter with a few boiled raisins of the sun; or in place of lettice you may use white endive: then the rabits being finely stewed, dish them upon carved sippets, and lay on the garnish of lettice, mace, raisins of the sun, grapes, slic't lemon or barberries, broth it, and scrape on sugar. Thus chickens, pigeons, or partridges.
Sources: The passage is from Unknown, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 01, tr. Burton, Richard Francis, Sir, 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, lamp stamp.