status: historic

Whisked egg with extra yolk, plus sugar, butter, flour and citrus or marmalade, baked in a tin (Rundell 1807, Walsh 1859, etc)

Crushed biscuit or nuts with sugar, eggs and spice, baked. First known from The English Cookery Book' of 1859, a simpler version using crushed dried breadcrumbs...

Apricot jam spread over pastry, topped with a mix of butter, sugar, and egg. Baked (Acton 1845)

"A beverage made by boiling ale with spice and sugar, and sops of bread". Known from 'A Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English' by Thomas Wright (Wright ...

An old (16th Cent) sauce made from herrings. The form of the sauce is now lost, but it may have been similar to the Roman 'garum', a fermented fish sauce.

An old name for herrings. See: Alec Sauce

(Or ellicksander)

A salad of Alexander buds, in a lemon dressing.

Bread sauce with crushed garlic and pepper. A sauce for beef. Known only from 15th Century manuscripts.

The herb Alkanna tinctoria, also known as Dyer's Bugloss, boiled in vinegar to extract a red food colouring used from Medieval times until well into the 19th Ce...

A thickened almond-flavoured drink. Commonly ale and white wine boiled with sugar, stamped almonds, sweet spices and bread to thicken. (WM 1658, Robert May 1660...

Ground almonds boiled with milk, spices and sugar (Woolley 1677, Eaton 1822 etc)

Custard flavoured with almond. (Robert May 1660, Moxon 1764, etc)

Puff paste circles decorated with almond 'petals' (Mrs.B)

Cake, or almond fondant, formed into a rounded shape with currants for eyes, orange peel for a tongue and stuck all over with split almond spines (Moxon 1764, G...

Base of minced white meat, cream and ground almonds.

Beef or sheep-meat steaks, spread with herbs and spices, rolled or pressed together on a spit and roasted (Austin 1440, Noble Boke 1480, Wright 1857)

Filling of butter, sugar, egg yolks and candied orange (Eaton 1822).

Cockles mixed with yolks, flour, cream and nutmeg, fried. "A side-dish either for noon or night." (Moxon 1764)

Pig liver pieces with spicesry, spit roasted in caul.

Dried anchovies, powdered with hot spices "It is a very savoury relish, sprinkled on bread and butter for a sandwich" (Eaton 1822).

Described in Wright 1857 as "a purgative cake made of spurge, ginger, flour, oatmeal etc." Spurge is a plant of the Euphorbia family, which exudes a milky sap, ...

Alternate layers of cooked apple slices and angelica in syrup (Eaton 1822).

A type of soft cheese (WM 1658)

The chopped garbage (heads, feet, offal etc.) of a goose, fried with eggs (Noble Boke 1480)

Basin lined with thick paste filled with apple pieces, sugar, butter and clove, closed off and boiled (Soyer 1845)

Apple coated in sugar and spices, baked until the sugar caramelises (Moxon 1764, Eaton 1822, etc).

Batter of sack, ale, ale-yeast, eggs, ginger, salt and flour with grated apple, fried in suet (WM 1658).

There are several dishes of this name: (1) (2) (3)

Apple pieces boiled in ginger-flavoured syrup (Mrs.B)

Dish of cooked apples mounded up and 'spiked' with split almonds (Acton 1845)

Thin rounds of apple, fried in butter. Batter of egg, cream, sugar, sweet spices poured on and fried (WM 1658).

A fake earthenware pot filled with sausagemeat. One of many comical imitation dishes devised by medieval cooks for grand establishments.

A spirit drink infused with various presumed health-giving herbs. Repeatedly appears in both pharmacists and wine-merchants lists from the late 1600s to the end...

Peeled garlic cloves, boiled in water and oil, served sprinkled with saffron, salt and spices. The name may mean 'pacified by water'.

Pie of boiled artichokes with spices. Known at least since Gent.Delight 1653.

Dish of layers of sliced potato, onion and sliced meat, baked.

Rich cake, or bread, served at a funeral.

Ashen-keys are the unripe winged seed pods of the Ash tree. Evelyn 1699 has them boiled and potted with wine-vinegar, sugar and water. (Family Guide 1747)

White bread dough with butter worked-in. Rolled ¼ins thick, medium bake (Acton 1845)

Badger is almost unknown as a meat in England, but badger ham has occasionally been a local delicacy.

Herrings baked in half vinegar and half small beer with onion and bay (Eaton 1822), or more recently, with a moist stuffing.

Condensed milk made by part-drying in an oven "for weakly and consumptive persons" (Eaton 1822).

Dough of flour, suet milk and seasonings, baked under a roast. A form of Under Roast Pudding

Egg batter with butter, baked in teacups and served with wine sauce (Walsh 1859)

Minced veal balls in mutton broth, served on sippets (WM 1658)

A cow's milk cheese, yellow and strongly flavoured, made in very thin (c1ins) rounds, known at least since Huswife 1594.

The term 'barbecue' possibly comes from the Spanish word for a raised trestle and is known as a method of cooking in England, especially in a social, outdoor ma...

The small, oval, red fruits of a thorny shrub. Common in cooking before the late 19th Century, the European Barberry (Berberis vulgaris) is thought to host the ...

Barberries pulp with sugar, dried-out on paper (Moxon 1764, Eaton 1822).

"Barberies boyled in Claret Wine till they be soft, strained and boiled with sugar" (Woolley 1677).

Boiled suet pudding with a very high proportion of raisins, plus nutmeg, sugar and eggs. (Walsh 1859, etc)

Barley boiled in water and wine with currants, raisins and spices (Glasse 1747).

Old term for pastry crust made with yeast, or 'barm' (Walsh 1859). This became a very short-lived food fad as part of the USA 'Superpyramid Eating Program' of t...

Very fine salt, notably from Cheshire, evaporated in baskets from from salt-spring water (Eaton 1822).

Bastard Gravy appears in several medieval texts as a sauce for different dishes, including oysters, baked meat or "wheder that thou wolt" (Austin 1440). The ety...

A sauce made with the sweet Spanish 'Bastardo' wine (Huswife 1594, etc)

Small unleavened cakes of butter-rich sweet dough, very lightly baked and topped with sugar or comfits etc. (Moxon 1764, Raffald 1769)

Yeast-raised sweet buns made with sugar, egg and butter, flavoured with caraway and coated with caraway comfits.

Ground rice boiled in cream with egg and yolks, sugar, butter, ground almonds and brandy, baked (Walsh 1859)

A pie of gobbets of mixed soft and unusual meats in a savoury sauce. Most receipts include small chicken, young pigeon, sweetbread, lamb's testicles, coxcombs a...

Stuffed pullet basted with batter while roasting, to form a crust (Mollard 1802).

Split blanched almonds, sugar sprinkled over, "Beat up the white of an egg with two spoonfuls of orange-flower water, moisten the almonds with the froth, lay th...

Presumably creamed beans. Known from 16th century sources including in 'A Dyetary of Health', by Andrew Borde; "Beene-butter is used moche in Lent in dyvers cou...

A custard made with beasting, or beesting - the first milk drawn from a cow after she gives birth, it is unusually rich (White 1932, etc).

Made with a high spice and marjoram, thyme, and parsley (Walsh 1859, etc)

Minced beef topped with mashed potato, in scallop shells, grilled (Eaton 1822).

Cooked beetroot mashed with sugar, butter, flour, hard egg yolks, spices, orange and lemon. Made into cakes and dried in a slow oven (Bradley 1728).

Brown bread soaked in skimmed milk, said in 'A dictionary of archaic and provincial words' by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (1868) and Wright 1857 to be the...

The definitive chutney of the Raj was was made with mangoes - almost unobtainable in England, and here replaced with sour apples.

Batter of butter, flour and water, egg added and fried in clarified butter. Served sugared (AW 1591). The name is clearly connected [thanks Andrew Stevenson!] t...

Paste of flour, butter and milk (with or without yeast) rolled very thin and baked on stones (Eaton 1822).

Said by the current makers, Charles Martell, to be a "Full fat hard cheese made with pasteurised cows' milk and natural rennet. Includes annatto which gives it ...

Very thin slices of sponge cake sandwiched with jam strewn with grated coconut, "garnish or intersperse them with small sprigs of myrtle" (Acton 1845)

A small, flat, round cream cheese.

1lb flour to 5 eggs, 8oz sugar, rose or orange flower water, beaten and baked 1 hr (Eaton 1822).

Very thin plain paste, oven dried rather than baked, to give a very crisp texture (Digby 1669, etc)

Batter of sugar, flour, eggs & extra egg-white, with caraway seeds, beaten. Spoonfuls lightly baked on a buttered plate. This has been suggested as an early rec...

England has little tradition of digestive bitters, like Angostura, Cynar or Jagermeister. A receipt is known from Bradley 1728, of brandy with gentian root, ora...

English 'black butter' was originally a thick preserve made from fruit served as an accompaniment.

Before the 20th Century many families had for cooking only an iron pot on an open fire. Here the helpful Alexis Soyer explains how you can cook a complete Chris...

From 'The Only True Mother Goose', 1833

Rich hog's black pudding made with minced pork as well as blood, possibly with currants and spice.

The name means, 'White Eating', a general term for an all-white mixed dish, highly favoured in the late medieval period as indicative of purity.

White beans and boiled bacon chopped up together, the beans being blank and the meat the prize. Known from 'A Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English' by ...

Name known for certain loaves and a type of oval ginger biscuit, presumably for their alleged similarity in shape to the feet of a heavy-footed 'bobby' policema...

Pancakes of buckwheat flour with milk, yeast and eggs (Hammond 1819, Eaton 1822, etc).

Boned calves feet stewed with parsley, bacon, butter lemon, onion, herbs and spices (Mrs.B, Moxon 1764)

Cucumber flesh boiled. Wooley 1672 has it served with butter and vinegar.

Egg, flour and milk custard, cooked in a basin over boiling water (Raffald 1769, Mrs.B, etc)

A salad is a mixture of vegetables, only by about the 18th Century did that necessarily mean raw vegetables.

Hot water poured on toast, to make a soft mush, with salt and pepper. Said in 'Britain's Food Supplies' by KG Fenelon to be a product of the 'hungry forties' of...

An eastern-counties name for an apple rolled up in paste and baked.

The tips of the unfurled fronds of young ferns have been plain-boiled and eaten like asparagus, known from 'Food in England' by Dorothy Hartley (Hartley 1954). ...

Honey and ale fermented together, or ale flavoured with honey and spices. Known at least since Chaucer's 'Miller's Tale' of c1386 "Hir mouth was sweete as brago...

Boiled brains, pureed with herbs, formed, with egg or flour if needed, into patties and fried (Rundell 1807, Acton 1845, etc)

A sauce for fish containing wine, stock, ginger and sugar (Cury 1390, Wright 1857). The word may be related to 'braising'.

Rice boiled in milk, bread and egg mashed-in, nutmeg may be added (Eaton 1822, Walsh 1859, etc)

Older term for enriched bread.

Soaked bread pudding, baked, in the manner of an English Cheesecake.. See: Bread Pudding

Bread crusts boiled in water or stock with butter and seasonings (Eaton 1822, Mrs.B, etc).

A baked meat loaf of shredded roast beef with breadcrumbs, herbs, butter, cream and eggs (Acton 1845, etc)

A herb and spice sauce thickened with bread. The dish is known at least since the Middle English romance, the 14th Century 'Lay of Havelok the Dane', and is ref...

A rectangular form of cheese.

Old term for wedding cake, known at least since around 1550.

Soft scone batter with a very high proportion of currants.

Worcester sauce, vinegar, mustard and butter, served hot (White 1932)

Small partridge, dressed, grilled rubbed with butter, salt and cayenne (Acton 1845)

The water speedwell (Veronica beccabunga) formerly used in salads (Evelyn 1699).

"Boyle the greatest and hardest buds of the Broome in Wine Vinegar and Bay-salt, scum it cleane: when it is cold you may put in raw ones also, each by themselve...

Stale brown bread crumb, currants, suet, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, brandy and cream. Boiled (Eaton 1822, Acton 1845, etc). A form of Bread Pudding.

Old name for "The blackest and coarsest Bread". Not thought to be directly related to the bread-based Brown George Pudding

Strips of a stiff paste made from fruit puree bound with flour, either fried or baked. Served with a sauce of wine and fruit (Austin 1440, etc)

Gobbets of meat in a thickened sweet sauce with spices (Cury 1390, Liber Cure 1430, Austin 1440, Noble Boke 1480)

Pressed cheese formed in a 6ins by 9ins mould (Bradley 1728, etc)

A basting mixture for joints, consisting of Worcester Sauce, anchovy essence, mustard and finely chopped onion (Hutchins 1967)

Small pieces of swan meat with sugar and spices under a shortcrust lid.

Potted puree of 'bullies', bullace, the English wild plum, Prunus insititia (Moxon 1764)

Peeled burdock roots, soaked and sauteed. Served cold with breadcrumbs and sugar (Murrell, 1638)

The jelly and minced meat from a boiled calf's head set in a mould with spices (Acton 1845)

Meatballs of minced pork and egg, rolled in flour and fried (Cury 1390)

Stew of chicken pieces with herbs, containing pork meatballs made with fruit and spices (Noble Boke 1480)

Beer boiled with egg, sweet spices and butter. Known at least since the 16Cent it occasionally pops up right into modern times. As recently as 1936 we learn tha...

Eggs, cream and butter beaten together and cooked (Digby 1669).

Egg and butter enriched bread with spices, served with a sweet sauce. (AW 1591, WM 1658, Eaton 1822).

Boiled whiting mashed with egg and butter "It is a most savoury dish" (Digby 1669).

Rich milk boiled, then cooled so as to form a skin. Successive skins lifted off and placed on a plate "one upon another, in the fashion of a Cabbage, crumpled" ...

Chopped beef and cabbage with whole egg and seasoning, boiled in a cloth. "It may as well be made by People of the lower as of the higher Rank." (Bradley 1728).

Cabbage, boiled then stewed in butter. A dressing for goose (Glasse 1747)

Cabbages cooked in spiced broth.

Original Receipt in C.Guide 1654;

Minced tripe with beef suet, marrow, herbs and spices, eggs and cream stuffed into sheep guts and boiled (WM 1658)

A much prized dish from earliest times to the beginning of the 20th Century, almost always served whole, boiled and trimmed, as a centrepiece to be carved at ta...

Strips of meat from a boiled calf's head, breaded and spiced, fried (Acton 1845)

Shredded boiled calves-foot meat with crumb, suet, dried fruit, sugar, eggs and cream. Boiled in a buttered cloth (Moxon 1764).

Calves' head meat in broth with herbs, spices and vegetables. Mrs.B, following Acton 1845, thickens the broth with rice flour.

Fish, especially salmon, the cooking of which is begun while it is still alive (Cury 1390, WM 1658 etc.). Lord Macaulay's 'History of England' (1860) has "Princ...

Minced tripe with marrow, sweet spices and citrus juice between sheets of puff paste (WM 1658)

Chopped, cooked, calves-foot meat with suet, bread, fruit and egg, baked (Walsh 1859, etc)

An unusually salty butter, with good keeping quality, formerly manufactured around Downham-Market in Norfolk and distributed via dealers in Cambridge. Mrs Beeto...

Dough of flour or crumb with chopped dried fruit (dates, currants) suet, cream, rosewater, yeast and egg. Made in two rounds, butter between and the two sealed ...

Bread sauce with cinnamon, ginger and mustard. A sauce for quail (Noble Boke 1480)

Carrot boiled in sugar. Occasionally encountered in old cook books, but "they will look very finely, and are good to set forth Banquets, but have no pleasant ta...

Lemon pulp boiled with sugar to a hard set. (Bradley 1728)

Dried beans which have been reconstituted then dried again in an oven, cut small and toasted. The method probably provided for more reliable preservation and qu...

Capon, skin larded with thin slices of lemon. Stewed in spiced mutton broth (WM 1658)

Roast fowl, covered with fat bacon and breadcrumbs, stuffed with cloved onion, served with orange-juice and salt, or with oysters (Bradley 1728).

Very thin, very dry, wheatflour and milk biscuits (Acton 1845, etc).

Original Receipt in 'The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet' by Hannah Woolley (Wooley 1672)

Chopped shallots with vinegar, broth and pepper, a sauce for mutton (Rundell 1807, Eaton 1822, Glasse 1747, Walsh 1859, etc)

A general term for thickened drinks. Typically wine, milk or ale thickened with flour, oatmeal or egg, sweetened and spiced.

Boiled florets, cream with egg, spices and orange-water poured over, baked. Sugar, sack and butter for sauce.

Par-cooked mutton joint, scored deeply, rubbed with salt and cayenne, roasted. Served with pickled mushrooms (Acton 1845)

Hot wine with grated chocolate ("chaculato") egg yolks and sugar. This, in Wooley 1672, is the first known reference to chocolate in an English cookbook.

(Soupes Jamberlayne) Wine and ale stewed with ginger, cinnamon and sugar, thickened with grated toasted bread (Austin 1440)

Prepared fruit pulp. Chardequynce (or chardecoynes) being made from quince, chardewarde from warden pears (Austin 1440)

A custard of milk and eggs, with cooked pork and seasoning, known from the 14th to 17th Centuries. The earliest known receipt is: "Take Pork and seethe it well....

General term for flavoured (herb, spice etc) gravies.

A sauce made from the offal and giblets of a fowl. A giblet gravy. Most associated with swan, but also used with other birds.

(ME chiete, ME-15 chet, chete, 15 chett, 15-16 cheate, cheat, (17-18 Hist. cheat, chete) also cheat-bread, cheat-loaf)

A form of pie, said by 'Food in England' by Dorothy Hartley to be; "very curious. It is mentioned by many old writers and I found it still made in Leicestershir...

Steamed sponge pudding with spices, typically ginger, and a mid layer of fruit (Walsh 1859, etc)

Flour, eggs and cream, baked to set, strewn with sugar and browned (Walsh 1859).

A large ice-cream mound, hollowed and filled with fruit (pineapples, damsons, etc) and surrounded by 'Chesterfield Biscuits', tiny (c2ins?) wafer cones filled w...

A steamed sponge pudding with fruit and lemon, served with a lemon-and-wine sauce.

Chick peas boiled with garlic and spices (Cury 1390)

Chicken cooked in mutton bone marrow broth with whole lettuce, spices, pepper and a very little sugar. Served on bread sops (AW 1591, Huswife 1594)

Cold pudding of cherry puree with wine, butter and sugar, thickened with breadcrumbs and decorated with 'gilofre' - clove-gillyflowers. (Cury 1390, Liber Cure 1...

Hog guts filled with dates, herbs, rosewater, sugar and eggs (Robert May 1660, Wooley 1672, etc).

Boiled beef with red wine, beer, spices, apples and dried fruit (Family Guide 1747, Bradley 1728). A traditional starter at Christmas time. Compare with Durham ...

The fermented juice of apples. Known by this name since the 14th Century (OED), and presumably much older.

Cut bread soaked with honey, cider and boiling water. Known only in 'Food in England' by Dorothy Hartley (Hartley 1954).

This term appears regularly in ancient cookbooks including Cury 1390, Liber Cure 1430, Austin 1440 and appears to indicate either some type of sauce or a servin...

Chopped marrow, melted, strained and stored. Among other uses, suggested by Acton 1845 as a Kosher alternative to butter.

Clary, or English Clary, is Silvia Sclarea, also known as Clary Sage, Clear Eye and Eyebright, a herb with erect spikes of blue flowers. Both the seeds and leav...

Omelette with chopped clary leaves (qv), fried in lard, served with lemon slices (Bradley 1728, Moxon 1764)

Wine or ale with honey, spices and clary flavouring. Known since medieval times, by 1829 the poet Robert Southey could say; "Almost as obsolete as metheglin, hi...

The white clover (Trifolium repens), when used in salads.

Small squares of thin puff paste folded over a filling of chopped apple with dried fruit, brandy and almonds to form a triangular pasty. Baked. Strewn with suga...

Most often an alternative spelling for Clotted Cream, but also used for a thin spiced custard.

Pork rubbed with salt and smoked continuously until, "The flitch ought not to be dried up to the hardness of a board, and yet it ought to be perfectly dry." Mr ...

Boiled chicken with medicinal herbs (including gold) for a sick person. (AW 1591)

Ale mixed with the jelly or minced meat of a boiled cock, typically with fruits and spices.

The Cockatrice (or Cockagrice or Cokentrice) is an entirely mythical beast, said to be like a bird's body with a serpent's tail, and able to kill just by lookin...

Cockles in their liquor, with spicings. (Eaton 1822).

Cod's head, boiled or baked whole, skinned and served with a rich sauce (Moxon 1764, Glasse 1747 Francatelli 1852, Mrs.B, etc).

Small apples, baked. Known from cookbooks from the 17th to the 19th Centuries.

Codlin (sour apple) pieces with sugar, pastry lid over (Eaton 1822).

Pureed codlins (small sour apples) with cream, sugar, breadcrumb and wine (Eaton 1822).

The word 'coffin' originally just meant 'casing' and appears in many English cookbooks before about 1600 as the word for a pie crust. See; Battaglia Pie, Blackb...

A type of pudding made with oatmeal and suet.

Old term for any form of cabbage, later specifically for very young cabbage for salads.

Eels collared by pickling and hot-cooking.

Hard-boiled eggs, cut at the end, the yolks removed and mashed with ham, cream and nutmeg, the mixture replaced in the egg and re-capped (Walsh 1859, etc).

Given by Wright 1857 as a name for gingerbread.

Pouring batter fried in lard, "when lightly coloured on one side, turn the fritters, drain them well from the lard as they are lifted out, and serve them very q...

General term for any mixture, most commonly now of fruit, but earlier a stew of mixed ingredients (Liber Cure 1430, Austin 1440, etc).

Rabbit or hare filled with a rich stuffing of bread, fruit, herbs and spices. Known from several early sources, the version given here from Robert May 1660 is b...

Ale, wine and brandy with citrus flavourings, including capillaire (orange syrup), herbs and spices.

Aqua vitæ (plain spirit, vodka) in which strawberries have steeped four or five days, sweetened (WM 1671).

General term for a bread loaf shaped by hand, the name probably derived from 'manchet' (White 1932)

A soft cheese, now lost.

Sweet potato with fruit and sparrow brains. The phrase "to provoke courage" is almost certainly a euphamism for presumed aphrodisiac qualities.

Cowheel with herbs and rice (Francatelli 1852)

Cowslip peeps (flowers) steeped in brandy and ale, with spices, then distilled (Moxon 1764)

A decoration for salads, or candied (Evelyn 1699)

Fermented honey-water with cowslip flowers (Eaton 1822).

Cowslips boiled with sugar (Moxon 1764)

Crushed cowslip blossoms in egg custard, baked (Lady 1677)

Also: crakenelle, krakenelle, crakenell, crackenel, cracknelle, cracknal, cracknell, cracknel, crackney

Thin biscuits of enriched paste with caraway seeds.

Described in John Murray's 'Devon and Cornwall' of 1865 as; "something like Irish stew, but instead of potatoes having slices of a batter pudding and served in ...

(Boiled Cream) A custard of cream and egg yolks, with saffron and salt, decorated with borage flowers (Noble Boke 1480)

A blown egg shell filled with a paste confection of almonds and sugar, the centre part being yellowed with saffron to imitate a yolk, for eating in Lent (Austin...

A method of preparing fish by slashing them while alive and leaving an hour or so in water before being plain boiled.

A type of apple turnover.

Beatrix Potter wrote to her publisher enthusing about the forthcoming crow-shooting season and looking forward to crow pies. She also started, but never complet...

Small strips of fried plain paste, either pasta-type flour paste, or poured batter (Cury 1390, Austin 1440)

Sliced cucumber boiled in vinegar with hot spices such as mustard, garlic, ginger etc. to imitate mango pickle. From a time when mango pickle was a rare delicac...

Old term for strong meat broth (Evelyn 1699)

Almonds boiled in sugar, rolled in coloured comfits. "They are pretty to put in glasses, or to set in a desert." (Moxon 1764)

Curds with egg, flour and spices "you must make them like little Loaves and bake them in an Oven", served with butter, cream and sugar sauce (WM 1658)

Curds mixed with egg, cream, orange-flower water, nutmeg, breadcrumb and dried fruit, boiled (Eaton 1822, Soyer 1845)

Curds beaten with butter, breadcrumbs (or ground rice), nutmeg, wine and sugar. Baked in small cups (Walsh 1859)

Old name for redcurrants. Known at least since Oliver Heslop's 'Northumberland Words' (2 vols, English Dialect Society, 1893-4)

Water in which currants have been soaked, or in which currant jelly is dissolved. A summer drink, or the basis for various water-ices (Nutt 1789, Walsh 1859, et...

Cake made using custard as an ingredient. Either using made custard as the wetting agent in a cake mix, or cake baked with a layer of custard in place.

(Also: (OED) ME ciser, cisar, ME cisere, cysar, cyser, cesare; ME seser, ME sychere, syser, 15-16 sicer, 16 sicere)

Small open crust tarts filled with a semi-set confection of milk with spices and fruit (Austin 1440)

Pie with spiced mutton and fruit in hot-water paste. As late as Radcliffe 1822 it was described as; "This curious pie, formerly of great fame."

Young fowls stuffed with their minced pluck with herbs, anchovy, onion and hard-boiled egg. Sewn up tight and boiled, browned in butter to finish. Served with m...

Dough of flour, butter, beaten egg, milk, yeast. Part-baked as rolls, cooled, dipped in milk and oven dried.

Bones with a little meat on, coated in a hot spice 'devil' sauce and grilled (Soyer 1845, Francatelli 1846, etc)

Grated carrot with flour, fruit, egg, milk, sugar and spice, baked (Walsh 1859) . See also: Carrot Cake

Wine sugar and nutmeg frothed with milk, clotted cream on top with cinnamon and sugar (Eaton 1822).

Curds with hot cream, sugar, cinnamon on top. Brandy, rum may be added (Eaton 1822, Walsh 1859, Mrs.B, etc). Compare with Damask Cream

An early form of Bread and Butter Pudding. Baked cream custard with bread slices, raisins, sugar, spices (WM 1658, Wooley 1672, Walsh 1859, etc)

Whipped-egg sweet sponge cake baked in a hoop shape (Mollard 1802, Eaton 1822).

Eggs, grated bread, saffron and sage, boiled together.

Described simply as "Gingerbread nuts" in 'A Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English' by Thomas Wright (Wright 1857)

Described in 'A Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English' by Thomas Wright (Wright 1857) as "a type of sweet-herb pie", an alternative spelling of Doucette

Open sweet egg custard tart with minced white meat such as pork or veal. Known to have been served at Henry IV's coronation banquet in 1399 (Austin 1440, etc)

Batter infused with lemon and bay, baked in a pastry-lined dish. Compare with Doucette

Minced beans with onions in broth. 'Drawen' may come from an old usage meaning 'to make of a suitable consistency' (OED)

Boiled snails, replaced in their shells with oil, herbs and then grilled (WM 1658)

Batter of eggs, dripping, sugar, cream, flour and dried fruit, baked in cups. This dish is made with the melted fat that drips from roasting meat, distinct from...

Parsley and dry toast beaten with vinegar, salt and pepper.

A form of trifle. Brandied cherries in custard, garnished with macaroons or biscuit. Whipped cream with brandy on top (Acton 1845)

A cake made on an auspicious day (St. Mark's Eve (April 24th), St Agnes Eve (January 20th) Midsummer's Eve or Halloween) with numerous ceremonies, by spinster m...

A plain pudding made with flour and water.

Minced mushrooms and veal, cooked in butter and cream, spread on toast (Eaton 1822, etc).

Very fine milled husk-free mustard flour, produced by a process developed c1720 by Mrs. Clements of Durham, and favoured by King George I. Although now lost, th...

A pasty of onion, chicken and spices.

Cream and nutmeg stewed with sugar and "three spoonfuls of Sack, and some eight of Ale" (WM 1658)

Made with onion and usually flavoured with mace (Glasse 1747, Walsh 1859, etc)

Frothed ale with eggs and spices.

Hot ale with eggs, brandy and sugar, frothed.

Hot beer with sugar, spices and egg whisked-in (Francatelli 1852)

Lighltly-baked pie of hard boiled egg with fruit. Hannah Wooley's receipt from 1677.

Cooked eggs with a spiced sauce. The phrase also appears in Elizabethan and early modern texts to indicate 'an impossible fancy'.

The young shoots of the elder tree, skinned and boiled.

Vinegar with dried elder flowers (WM 1658)

Elderberries with spices and vinegar.

Bowl lined with strips of left-over boiled pudding, filled up with custard and re-heated (Acton 1845, Walsh 1859, etc). Compare with: Summer Pudding

Early references are not to the modern Chinese Endive, but the indigenous wild chicory (Evelyn 1699, etc).

'Sack', an earlier name for what has now become Sherry, was immensely popular in England and there have been several attempts to produce an imitation of it at h...

"Take a chepis wombe" (take a sheep's womb) ... and stuff it with chopped chicken, pork, cheese with eggs spices, boiled (Austin 1440)

The roots of Eringus or Eyringo, the Sea Holly (Eryngium maritimum), used as a food ingredient, as a vegetable, or, commonly candied as a, reputedly aphrodisiac...

Butter, flour and sugar with whipped egg poured over fruit preserve and baked (Acton 1845, Walsh 1859)

Batter of egg, flour, butter, sugar and lemon pieces, baked in cups.

A form of Lumber Pie filled with meatballs of veal with spices, plus veal sweetbreads, button mushrooms, egg yolks, coxcombs (Bradley 1728).

Hard boiled yolks beaten with orange-water, sugar and butter, "force it through a fine strainer full of little holes onto a plate" (Glasse 1747, Walsh 1859, Mrs...

Egg yolk custard, smoothed through a sieve and flavoured with brandy, or rum (Soyer 1845)

Old term for forcemeat, usually highly flavoured with sweet spices.

A tiny spherical titbit (OED). A Whet, or Subtelty. Early references are to spheres of light sweetened pastry, a later receipt (Huswife 1594) is of minced mutto...

An old North-West name for Turnip Greens, known from the 1882 'Lancashire Glossary' and Holland's 1884 'Words of the County of Chester' and Wright 1857.

"A dish in ancient cookery, composed of eggs, pigeons and onions."

Fenland Eels were formerly highly prized, being caught in large numbers in the many drainage ditches of the flatlands around Cambridge and Ely.

Chopped fennel in thickened butter, a sauce for oily fish such as mackerel (Acton 1845, Mrs.B, Walsh 1859)

Fish chunks with seasoning and onions, in paste, boiled (Soyer 1845, etc)

Apples baked in batter.

Open pastry cases filled with a confection of milk, sugar, egg yolks and ale, baked and then sprinkled with sugar (Austin 1440)

Pork and cheese pie. The name may be associated with 'flaumpaump', meaning an odd mixture.

Any of several sweet desert dishes involving an item floating in a sea of something else, the simplest being jam mixed with stiff egg-white dropped with a spoon...

A flummery (set desert) boiled in ale to make a thick drink.

Old term in Suffolk and Yorkshire for the distinctively flavoured cheeses made from milk of cows fed on "rank strong grass", most probably the 'Yorkshire Fog' g...

Small birds roasted and covered in a sauce of almond milk with shredded sheep or goat meat, decorated with hard boiled eggs (Cury 1390)

A mutton leg stuffed with its own minced meat.

Tiny pasties, made from a sheet of very thin paste "of the bignesse of your hand", edges damped and folded over fillings such as bone marrow with ginger or peel...

Whisked egg with butter, fried, strewn with crumb and sugar, baked (Walsh 1859, White 1932, etc)

Chicken pieces stewed with herbs, fried with egg yolks and verjuice (WM 1658).

Cooked trotters, floured and fried in hog's lard. Served with gravy of claret, mushrooms and burned butter. Lemon, breadcrumb and berry garnish (Bradley 1728)

Pieces of boiled chaldron (tripe), with spices, onion, fried with mutton gravy, citrus juice, egg yolk and nutmeg (WM 1658).

General term for a pie made without meat, for the Friday fast. A vegetable pie. Wooley 1672 has green beets, ginger, currants and butter.

Sliced beetroot, cut in the shape of a fish, breaded and fried. Served with lemon and "put about stew'd Carps, Tench, or roasted Jacks, by way of Garnish, with ...

Thick batter of cream with eggs and flour. Boiled to set, cooled, cut into pieces and fried "so dish them up with a little white wine, butter and sugar for your...

Fried in butter, as an accompaniment for mutton or dark meats (Moxon 1764, Mrs.B, etc)

Green vegetables, typically parsley or spinach, fried until crisp. Known from many sources as an accompaniment for fish and meats.

Original Receipt in 'A True Gentlewomans Delight' by 'WJ', 1653 (Gent.Delight 1653)

Ox-feet (Cow-Heel pieces) rolled in egg and seasoned crumb. Fried in butter (Mrs.B)

Stewed oyster meat fried in batter of flour, breadcrumb and mace (Bradley 1728, Mrs.B, etc).

Pumpkin or melon (the word 'pompion' could mean either) pieces soaked in wine and egg, fried.

Frog's legs boiled in veal broth with herbs, lemon and shallots. Served in cream with mushrooms, or in gravy with claret. "They make a very good Dish ... but we...

Frogs have very rarely played any part in English cooking. With one or two historical exceptions...

Segments of fruit (apple, apricot etc) fried. Before the 19th Century the term 'chips' universally refers to fruit chips.

Grains, usually hulled cracked wheat (as 'Bulgur' wheat), or occasionally barley, boiled in milk (for a sweet desert dish) or stock (for a savoury accompaniment...

A form of very thick sauce, often made with bread, with spices such as galyngale, and sometimes wine added. Served with meat and fish.

Chopped meat, commonly white meat, such as veal or pork, often with vegetables, prepared so as to form a set slab when cold, glazed with a gel. Eaten cold and s...

English Galingale is Cyperus longus a herb with a highly aromatic root, similar in flavour to the East Indian Galingale, which are of the genera Alpinia and Kæm...

Boiled thin slices of celery with mace, pepper, salt, and nutmeg, thickened with flour and butter. "Lemon pickle or lemon juice may be added to it." (Eaton 1822...

A milk-and-garlic sauce, especially for goose (Liber Cure 1430, Austin 1440)

Edible entrails, especially of fowls. See also, 'Apetito'.

Figs, grapes and small bread cubes in an almond sauce (Austin 1440)

Pastry case filled with rice boiled in milk with sugar, citrus, apple pulp and stiff egg whites baked brown and served with wine sauce (Eaton 1822). The origin ...

Boiled fowl pluck, in a crust on top of beef steak (Glasse 1747, Eaton 1822, Francatelli 1852, etc)

Original Receipt in 'The Whole Duty of a Woman: or a Guide to the Female Sex' by Lady Mary Cressy (Cressy 1696)

General term for sharp-scented flowers used as spicing - cloves, clove-scented pink (Dianthus Caryophyllus), wallflower (Cheiranthus Cheiri) or the white stock ...

Nowadays gingerbread is most usually a form of biscuit made with a proportion of oats, but many makers follow the older form of a softer, more bread-like, produ...

Figures of men made of gingerbread pressed into wooden moulds, baked and gilded, commonly sold at fairs up to the middle of the nineteenth century. The 'Chelmsf...

Jelly of rice, sago, pearl barley, hartshorn and eringo root (Eaton 1822).

It was formerly the custom of the City of Gloucester to present a pie of Lampreys caught in the River Severn to the reigning monarch at Christmas. This custom w...

Said in 'Suffolk words and phrases' by Edward Moor (1771-1848) (Moor 1823) to be a form of cake or pie with a crimped crust, a particular speciality of Stratfor...

Cheese flavoured with the juice of marigolds (Bradley 1728)

Old term for paste wafers made using a decorated 'goffering' iron (Moxon 1764)

Goose pieces stewed with onions, spices, wine or ale and thickened and darkened with either burned bread or boiled blood (Cury 1390, Liber Cure 1430, Austin 144...

Gooseberries, cut cross-wise end-on almost through, each spread out and several threaded together, forming a hop-flower like shape. Served fresh, or preserved i...

Gooseberry infusion, fermented with sugar.

Gourds appear in many early receipts, though it is unclear which variety they might be.

Paste made of frothed egg whites, sugar, flour and caraway seeds with saltpetre (E252), rolled very thin and baked. This was a 'biscuit for travellers' presumab...

Yeast-raised sweet wheatflour cake with butter, sweet spices, dried fruit, rosewater and ambergris, frosted with egg white and sugar.

Open shortcrust base filled with ground almonds, nutmeg and cream plus spinach to colour. Known at least since Woolley 1677.

A 'Green-Goose' is a young, unhung, goose.

Balls of breadcrumb with sugar, nutmeg, marigolds and spinach. Boiled, and served with a sauce of rosewater, sugar and butter (WM 1658)

Sorrel juice with wine, berries, butter, sugar. A sauce for goose or duck. (Eaton 1822, etc)

Sorrel, butter, and gooseberry (Moxon 1764)

Pouring sauce for meat made from green herbs such as spinach and tansy or sorrel, commonly with verjuice and bread as a thickener. Known since the 1400's (Moxon...

A stock-based soup with ground elder leaves, and, in most versions, bacon.

Ground rice boiled in milk with eggs, cream, butter, sugar, lemon and nutmeg baked in puff-paste "you may prick in it candid lemon or citron if you please", (Mo...

A dish of chopped, cooked, fish livers (Cury 1390, Austin 1440)

Grated white bread pounded with vinegar and ground ginger (Cury 1390)

A type of meat stew or hash.

Shredded cooked ham with butter or cream, moulded and baked. May be glazed and decorated with capers etc. (Rundell 1807, etc)

"A pudding made upon the bones of a shoulder of mutton, after the flesh is taken off" (OED)

Fried potato rounds, with melted butter, sack and sugar poured over, "These are a pretty corner-plate" (Glasse 1747)

Omelette with chopped fried onions (Austin 1440)

Plain flour-and-water paste balls, boiled c1hr, an accompaniment for beef (Glasse 1747, Eaton 1822, etc)

Pig's pluck, liver, sweetbreads etc, chopped with sage, onions, seasonings, wrapped together and roasted (Cury 1390, Eaton 1822, etc).

Mixed fruits (figs, grapes, dates) on a skewer with nuts, roasted (Cury 1390)

"A sort of ale, formerly made in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, by boiling the tops of the [heather] plant to a wort, and then putting wormwood to it, and ferm...

Small oval bread dough teacakes made with added lard and caraway seeds. Whigs are known in this form at least since Moxon 1764.

Tin loaf-cake made from batter of sugar, butter and flour with rosewater, egg and dried fruit (Mollard 1802).

Minced meat, typically pork, broth with finely chopped herbs and whole egg, baked in a dish. Later versions have a pastry case (Cury 1390, Austin 1440, Gerard 1...

Bird stuffed with oyster meat, roasted (Wooley 1672).

Rabbit with a spiced and sweetened parsley bread sauce.

Green herbs, boiled, pressed dry and chopped, batter poured over, a top crust above and baked (Eaton 1822).

Chervil, spinach, celery, leeks, beet etc., boiled with breadcrumbs (Bradley 1728)

A mix of herbs, bound together and cooked. The nearest modern equivalent is something like Dock Pudding.

Roast heron or crane appears in many early cookbooks, almost always with the bird's head to be pushed under the wing for cooking.

Meat pudding containing heron pieces, with distinct instructions regarding the bones.

Herring baked in a pie crust, in the receipt from Wooley 1672 with onions, currants, raisins and butter

A highly spiced, medicinal, wine. Commonplace from the 13th to 18th Centuries. The precursor of Tonic Wine. Compare with: Clary and Piment

Domestic servants and farm labourers were formerly employed only on a one-year contract, so Hiring Fairs were held in spring or autumn for prospective employees...

A mixture of ingredients, commonly diced sheep meat with carrot, lettuce (or cabbage) and other vegetables, cooked so as the ingredients fall and produce a high...

Form of coarse gingerbread known at least since a note by of July 1803 by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who, the present-day Horsham Gingerbread Company tell u...

Hot beer with spices. Spirits such as rum sometimes added. Occasionally with egg. Known from the 17th to the 19th century (OED) it is unrelated to the stew of t...

Given as an old name for very strong ale, barley wine in 'A Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English' by Thomas Wright (Wright 1857)

A rich steamed pudding with dried fruit, lemon peel.

Rich, light, yeast-raised butter-and-egg dough with caraway seeds, "cut into what forms you please" (Mollard 1802).

Fermented drink of water and honey. Digby 1669 has several receipts.

Oatmeal soaked in cream with suet, whole egg and spices in a skin, boiled (Huswife 1594)

From Izaak Walton's 'The Compleat Angler' of 1653:

A pungent herb, Alliaria petiolata, also known as Garlic Mustard, formerly used as a salad component (Evelyn 1699)

The word 'jannock' means straightforward or genuine, and has been applied to plain bread loaves in both Lancashire and Northamptonshire.

(Sheep's Head)

Beef chunks, often with oysters, in suet pastry (Acton 1845). A form of Steak Pudding

Cooked shapes such as knots, rings or S-shapes, of rich pastry (eg, flour, butter, sugar and egg) with flavourings such as almonds, lemon, peel or, in the earli...

A dish of minced herbs, sometimes with minced meat or fish, thickened 'til it be standing' with, for instance, egg or breadcrumbs (Cury 1390, Austin 1440, etc.)

Dough of flour, suet, egg, with pepper formed "into the shape of a paste-roller", boiled in a cloth. "At very plain family dinners, this pudding is usually sent...

Toasted bread in a bowl with boiling water poured over and any available seasonings, salt and pepper.

A meat loaf of minced cooked sheep-meat with breadcrumbs and a flavouring of anchovy. Known from several 19th Century cookbooks.

A term used from the 16th to 19th Centuries to indicate any 'fancy' accompaniment dish.

Ale with beaten egg, cream, sugar and nutmeg (Eaton 1822).

A raising mixture made from hops, water, flour and yeast applied to a mashed-potato-and-flour bread dough. Known only from Mrs.B, and unknown from local enquiri...

Old name for perfumed sugar sweets, to freshen the breath (Murrell 1617, etc). May 1671 makes them as thin lozenges of sugar with musk, civet, ambergris and whi...

Soft sweet biscuit paste flavoured with rosewater, mace, aniseed and caraway, formed into small rings or plaits.

Oatmeal eaten with (hot) milk poured over it.

A salted soft cheese (WM 1658)

Powdered whole mustard seeds mixed with Sherry and sugar (Digby 1669).

Custard of water, wine, sugar, salt, lemon, butter, flour and egg, baked in cups (Walsh 1859).

Apple juice with apple pulp, sugar, lemon juice and orange peel boiled to a set jelly (Digby 1669).

Cooked mashed potato with flour, egg and chopped ham formed into small flat cakes and fried (British Food Trust)

Original Receipt in 'The Accomplish'd Lady's Delight In Preserving' (1677) by Hannah Woolley (Wooley 1672)

Langdebouf (French: Tongue of Beef) was the precursor of pickled tongue, the meat being boiled with fruit and spices before being pickled in vinegar and salt (N...

Pie-dish lined with sliced beef with bacon, filled with stuffed larks, stock.

Very thin strips of meat, especially when prepared in a jelly. (Liber Cure 1430, Noble Boke 1480).

Juice pressed from unripe salted walnuts, with pounded shallots, soy, cayenne and garlic in vinegar and Port. A sauce for; "every description of Fish, Game, Wil...

Jelly desert set with isinglass, sweetened and flavoured with fruit and almonds (Moxon 1764)

Leeks boiled in milk "till it become as thick as cream. This is good for the jaundice" (Eaton 1822).

Hard-dried meringues with lemon, made by dropping the mixture onto paper (Moxon 1764)

Imitation potato made from almond flour, butter, egg, wine and sugar. Made into balls with biscuit crumb, Fried (Eaton 1822).

.

Lettuce stalks, peeled, boiled, dried and candied, as a sweet (Plat 1609, Digby 1669, etc).

Hare roasted while basted with milk and butter. Known from 'Food in England' by Dorothy Hartley (Hartley 1954).

Dough of flour, sugar, butter, egg and milk, "cut it in pieces the size of eggs, roll them even, and ... bake quick" (Soyer 1845)

Sliced liver fried with spinach, parsley, and green onions

The organs fried before wrapping in paste. Essentially a more recent version of 'Umble Pie'. "A few herbs is a variation" (Soyer 1845)

Sauce of minced rabbit or fowl liver with parsley and melted butter.

Minced liver (or other meat) with egg, spices, flour. Fried (Wooley 1672)

Chopped liver with lard in a suet-pastry case (Glasse 1747, Walsh 1859, etc)

Boiled sausage of minced liver, often with egg and spices (AW 1591)

A general term for bread made from what would now be considered a standard dough, as regulated by the London Bread Act of 1822, which enforced standards to prev...

Veal "covered with a stuffing of sage and onions, then rolled, and roasted or broiled." (Acton 1845)

Pork fat, almonds and crushed almonds, sugar and breacrumbs with ambergris, musk and orangewater, in pig gut (WM 1658)

Red (ie. smoked) herrings, soaked in oil and vinegar, then grilled. Soaked and grilled again until very crisp. Served with salad (Digby 1669).

Boiled peas, some fallen, some whole, with coriander seed, onion, mint, parsley, winter-savoury, marjoram, salt, pepper and butter (Digby 1669).

Broth of pig's feet and ears with herbs, thickened, with sherry (Acton 1845).

Piece of fried bread coated in foie-gras puree, on top a lamb cutlet, slice of truffle, piped Parmesan souffle. Baked 5 mins, served with buttered asparagus-hea...

Pasta shapes. The term appears as a synonym for 'pasta', whatever its form, throughout early English cookbooks, presumably because of their customary lozenge sh...

Dish of layered meat broth, pasta and cheese.

A pie of gobbets, usually of meat, in highly-seasoned savoury custard.

Image: thepastisaforeignpantry.com

The precursor of macaroni cheese

Stoned cherries boiled to jam with raspberry and redcurrant juice and sugar.

A mixture of black treacle and gin, an old sailor's drink.

Also known as 'Mock Brawn', a 'collared' dish.

(Also recorded as: manged, maunchett, maynche, maynchett, mayned, mengyd, meyned, manchete, manchett, manchet, mainchet, mancheat, mancheate, manched, manchuet,...

A highly-decorated disc of marzipan, typically about 1in thick, supported on a wafer or thin cake base. Since its heyday in the 16th and 17th centuries it seems...

Pasties of meat marrow with fruit or vegetables, fried (Family Guide 1747). Digby 1669 adds shredded spinach.

Breadcrumbs with bone marrow, egg, fruit and spices, baked (Family Guide 1747, Moxon 1764, Mollard 1802, etc)

Cream, yolks, sugar, spices, wine with biscuits, bone marrow and peel, "stir it on the fire till it becomes thick" then, and when it is cold put it into a dish ...

Sack, ale and sugar, boiled with egg yolk & extra whites. Milk or cream added. Known from WM 1658 and others.

A general term for thick broth of minced meat in a spiced sauce, known from the 14th to 17th Centuries.

Old term for meat-free soups for Lent.

Beaten whole egg in a frying-pan, a bread slice placed on before the egg sets, the whole turned over to cook. Served with sugar.

Old term for butter made from partly-fermented milk, possibly similar to modern lactic 'Continental' butters, unlike the usual 'Sweet Cream' butter of England.

Pressed curds with egg, fried (Cury 1390)

Milk with brandy, citrus and spices (Moxon 1764)

Milk boiled with salt, cinnamon, sugar, poured over bread sops (Eaton 1822, Mrs.B, etc).

General term for solid foods made from milk, such as cheese, or in Austin 1440, pancakes.

Millet seed with milk, butter, lemon, spices and sugar, in paste (Eaton 1822).

Minced beef with onion and seasonings. The word 'collop', in use from at least the 14th to the late 19th Centuries refers to a cut piece of meat, ready for cook...

Izaak Walton, in the 'The Complete Angler' of 1653 has; "And in the spring they make of them excellent Minnow-tansies; for being washed well in salt, and their ...

Breadcrumb soaked in milk, wine etc.

Soup made in imitation of the, prized but impossibly expensive, turtle-meat soup. Known since the mid-18th Century and popular in the 19th. Usually made from ca...

In this version, beef slices layered with suet, wine vinegar and spices, in a pasty.

Drink of fermented honey with mulberries. Claimed to be ancient, but not known before the 19th Century.

A bright red thick soup, sometimes with meat flakes. Coloured with mulberries, or 'sanders' food colouring (Cury 1390, Murrell 1638, etc)

Minced fish meat and fish liver cooked in sweet thickened broth. (Noble Boke 1480)

A soup so thick that you can literally 'stand a spoon up in it'.

Moy or Moise or Moill was a very ancient class of set pudings, the name possibly from the Old French Moller - to mould.

Thin beef slices stewed with herbs, lemon peel, onion, pepper, salt, nutmeg and claret. Thickened with burned butter. Served with diced lemon, beetroot, capers....

Black pepper, allspice, salt, horseradish, pickled shallots all pounded in liquor of mushroom ketchup or walnut pickle.

Rich fruit cake of flour, eggs, butter, ale-yeast, sweet spices, dried fruit, almonds and sugar baked very slowly then iced with a mixture of finely powdered su...

A gravy with herbs, anchovy, onion, mushroom and red wine "pour the sauce into the pie. This serves for mutton, lamb, veal, or beef pies" (Eaton 1822).

Curd cheese with eggs, sugar, almonds and sweet spices in a stiff pastry case (WM 1658).

Carp fillets with balls of minced eel, breadcrumbs, marjoram, eggs, anchovy, nutmeg, plus oysters, mushrooms, lemon, bacon, claret and mace (Bradley 1728).

Yeast-raised cake of flour, butter beaten yolks, blanched almonds, rosewater, chopped raisins, sugar, and spices (WM 1658)

An English Piquant Sauce sauce.

Barley boiled with mace, bread, lemon and white wine (Glasse 1747)

Bread muffins mashed into flavoured milk, fruit and eggs added. Boiled or baked in pastry (Mollard 1802).

Sugar stored with a little musk wrapped in cloth (Plat 1609, etc)

Musk flavoured sweets, to freshen the breath (Murrell 1617, etc). A form of Kissing Comfit (qv).

Roast sheep-meat usually with chopped or pureed celery (Moxon 1764, Mrs.B, etc)

Original Receipt in 'A True Gentlewomans Delight' by 'WJ', 1653 (Gent.Delight 1653)

Capon in broth with blanched almonds and cream, nuts such as "Chess-nuts" pistachios or pine-nuts, beaten egg and citrus peel (Digby 1669)

Beef tongues, dried and smoked to preserve them. In common usage from about 1550 to 1790. WM 1658 has them salted with ordinary salt and saltpetre (E252), dried...

A pudding of rice, butter, wine and sugar. The nature of 'Nelson Balls' in this context is unclear, but the receipt is repeated in several early 19th Century co...

Spherical sweetmeats, known from advertisements throughout the 19th Century. It is possible that they are named after Admiral Horatio Nelson. (See also: Nelson ...

A medieval fried flour-paste patty. Either a flavoured poured-batter fritter, or a sort of fried pasty. One version includes fish (Cury 1390, Austin 1440)

Image: Unknown

Boiled nettles with seasoning and butter, poached eggs (Soyer 1845)

Brown bread with caraway seeds. Hartley 1954, etc. For other breads with caraway seeds, see Caraway Bread...

Beef or tongue pickled in "1 gallon of soft water, 3 lbs. of coarse salt, 6 oz. of coarse brown sugar,½oz. of saltpetre" (Mrs.B)

Whole apples of the red 'Beefing' variety, very slowly part-dried in the oven under weights to flatten them, on layers of straw to absorb moisture. Served cored...

Water boiled with butter and shaken until emulsified. A simplified version of English Butter Sauce.

Yeast-raised cake of flour with cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, orange flower or rosewater, currants, cream, butter and wine (Bradley 1728)

A 'Hasty' puddings of boiled milk and flour, set, cooled and mashed. Butter, currants, peel, sugar and brandy added, "Bake it in teacups, turn them out on a dis...

Egg white froth with sugar and cream, baked (Walsh 1859, etc)

Breadcrumbs with nuts, suet and bone marrow, sugar, cream and egg, flavourings. Baked in puff paste (Walsh 1859)

Blood puddings (Black Puddings) with a high proportion of oatmeal and flavouring herbs.

Batter of boiled oatmeal with milk and egg, spooned onto a butter to fry. Served with sugar over, "have sack, butter and sugar for sauce (Moxon 1764)

Original Receipt in TPJPRCNB 1674;

Oatmeal soaked overnight in milk, eggs added and boiled, "Eat it with cold butter and salt. When cold, slice and toast it, and eat it as oat-cake, buttered." (E...

"Take the biggest Oatmeal, mince what herbs you like best and mix with it, season it with Pepper and Salt; tye it strait in a bag; and when it is boyled, butter...

Oatmeal with cream, nutmeg, eggs and sugar, baked (WM 1658)

"Take a pint of Milk, and put to it a pint of large, or midling Oatmeal, let it stand on the Fire till it be scalding hot, then let it stand by, and soak about ...

(Oyle Soppys) Fried onions with stale ale, served poured onto toast. An accompaniment for fowl (Austin 1440)

Milk and eggs, cooked with sops of bread, sugar and salt (Noble Boke 1480) There is no oil here, the name may be from the Spanish ola.

Steamed suet pudding with dried fruit, and, in the original receipt, potato and carrot. The word 'omnibus' means 'for everyone' and is more commonly applied to ...

Sauce of sliced onion, sometimes with other vegetables, browned. (Eaton 1822).

A plant of the Goosefoot or Atriplex family. (Evelyn 1699).

Open tart of 'Orangeadoes' - sugared peel-on oranges.

Ox-lips, boiled. Moxon 1764 serves them with truffles, mushrooms, coxcombs and forcemeat balls.

Thin beef stewed with wine, shallots, marjoram and bacon. Bradley 1728, puzzlingly, has the cooking finished in a pan over over burning paper.

Port with a lemon stuck with cloves and roasted, spices, sugar (Acton 1845) A form of Mulled Wine

Crumb or flour with currants, suet, sugar, chilli, lemon and egg. Fried. "Serve them up with sweet sauce" (Eaton 1822).

Fried kidneys on fried bread sippets, rich sauce over.

Now lost, but known from several literary references.

Tiny, single-mouthful pie cases filled with spiced fruit (prunes, dates, and currants) topped with chopped boiled oyster meat in verjuice and butter (Huswife 15...

Minced oyster meat with breadcrumbs and herbs, widely recommended as a stuffing or fried in balls as an accompaniment to light meats during the 19th Century (Ac...

Small bread-bun, hollowed out and the cavity filled with cooked oysters and breadcrumb. Known at least since Moxon 1764.

Seasoned mutton broth with oysters. Known only in Eaton 1822.

"To bake Oysters shels and all" .. a closed pie containing oysters in their shells with cloves and butter (Huswife 1594, Wooley 1672, etc)

Minced oyster meat with beef suet, breadcrumb, egg and spices. Formed into sausage shapes or patties. Fried (Acton 1845)

Made with veal stock, thickened with egg and breadcrumb (Mollard 1802, Eaton 1822, etc).

Stuffing of chopped oysters with breadcrumbs and pepper, mace and onion, for mutton (Moxon 1764)

Oysters in a sauce of ginger, sugar, saffron, pepper and salt (Austin 1440).

Pie made of a thin forcemeat-and-breadcrumb crust and containing small birds (pigeons, larks etc.) or other small game such as rabbits, in a rich sauce, possibl...

A version of Eggy bread or French Toast made by frying bread in butter, pouring on egg mixture with sweet spices. From the French "pain perdu"

(also paindemeine, payndmayn, paynedemayne, peyndemayne, payndemayn, paindemain, pandemain, payman, paymen, paynemayn, paynmain, paynman, paynmayn, paynmayne, p...

Given in the 1828 'Dialect of Craven' as; "PANDEWAFF Water and oatmeal boiled together sometimes mixed with fat and baked in a pan."

Hot, sweetened, milk, slightly thickened with, for example, flour, breadcrumbs or eggs. A food for babies or invalids. Known at least since 1286.

Old term for bread mulch for babies.

Very thin, paper-like, sheets sugar egg and juice, rolled to produce a very fine tube (Nutt 1789)

A milk pudding with honey and saffron (Austin 1440)

Chopped parsley with vinegar, breadcrumbs and salt (Austin 1440)

Paste containing Savoy leaves with whole stuffed partridge, boiled (Soyer 1845)

Minced partridge with beef marrow, orange and lime peels, and sweet spices in puff pastry (WM 1658).

Butter and flour paste rolled thin, spread with jam, rolled-up, closed at the ends and boiled in a cloth (Eaton 1822).

Roast Peacock appears from the 15th to the 19th Centuries and is still occasionally prepared today, most distinctively in a manner where the whole skin with fea...

Confection of soft-boiled pearl barley with eggs, sugar and spices, in puff-paste (Moxon 1764), or baked in a dish (Eaton 1822).

Pork or bacon pieces boiled with peas, carrots or parsnips, onions, and sweet herbs. The peas pulped to serve (Eaton 1822, Soyer 1845)

Boiled and pulped peas, reheated with butter, parsley, chives and seasoning (Robert May 1660, Eaton 1822).

A type of whet, or appetiser. A Kickshaw

Chopped pennyroyal with breadcrumbs, suet, Sack, cream and eggs, boiled in a gut bag or baked (Evelyn 1699). Pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium) is a herb of the mint ...

Infusion of the leaves of the pennyroyal plant, "A most wholsome and excellent Tea" (Evelyn 1699) .

Rich wine in which white pepper has been boiled, sugar added, boiled and dropped in shapes and allowed to dry (Glasse 1747).

Asparagus in white-wine vinegar and salt (Evelyn 1699).

Beans in vinegar and salt, "range them Row by Row in a Jar ...Thus you may preserve French-Beans, Harico's, &c. the whole Year about" (Evelyn 1699)

Unripe buds of the common broom in salt and vinegar (Gent.Delight 1653, WM 1658, Evelyn 1699, etc)

Cauliflower florets with pepper in brine and vinegar, coloured bright red with cochineal (Moxon 1764, etc)

Cornelians are the fruit of a variety of dogwood (Cornus mascula). They are "pickled like Olives" according to 'Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets' by John Evelyn...

Commonly pickled with dill in malt vinegar. (WM 1658, Evelyn 1699, etc)

Red currants in brine and vinegar, as a garnish (Moxon 1764)

"The largest and youngest shoots of elder, which put out in the middle of May, the middle stalks are most tender and biggest ... peel off the outward peel or sk...

Canada Goose

"The abortive and after-Fruit of Melons being pickled as Cucumber, make an excellent Sallet." (Evelyn 1699)

Stalks of Golden Purslane, parboiled and preserved in vinegar with sugar (Murrell 1638, WM 1658, Evelyn 1699)

'Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets' by John Evelyn (Evelyn 1699) has; "Radish. The Seed-Pods of this Root being pickl'd, are a pretty Sallet"

Mollard 1802 has them boiled with herbs then breadcrumbed. Hartley 1954 explains how they were once stewed with wine or vinegar and served with mustard, lemon o...

Water with grated hartshorn and gums (tragacanth E413 & arabic E414), put in a sealed bottle and boiled. Then mixed with cream, almond flour, rosewater, poured ...

Woodland herbs such as rue, rosemary, sage, sorrel, celandine, mugwort, the tops of red brambles, pimpernel, Balm, Angelica, (Digby 1669, Family Guide 1747) ste...

The Plover family, which includes lapwings, are too tiny to cook in any conventional poultry manner. Mrs.B recommended roasting them plucked, but undrawn, and s...

Plum Porridge, or Plum Pottage or Christmas Pottage is widely mentioned up to the 19th Century. Bradley 1728 gives a receipt consisting of beef boiled with beer...

Eggs broken into a broth of shredded partridge with sweet spices, mutton gravy and anchovies, served with orange juice over (WM 1658)

Poached eggs coated in a sauce of egg yolks, milk and spices (Cury 1390, Austin 1440)

Salted, dried, fish, usually hake.

Filling of sliced potato with meat fat and seasoning. "A bloater, boned and cut up with the fat, makes a nice change of flavour." (Soyer 1845)

Minced onion with vinegar, pepper and salt. Eaton 1822 adds chopped parsley, Francatelli 1846 fries the onions first and adds wine.

Porpoises are small cetaceans related to whales and dolphins, though the word has been used to refer to any small dolphin. Rarely eaten now, it appears in sever...

Original Receipt in 'The English and French Cook' By "TPJPRCNB" 1674 (TPJPRCNB 1674)

A 'poor man's cheese' made from mashed potato, milk and a little real cheese, pressed together and stored several weeks to ferment.

The tomato-like fruits of the potato (the two are related) have been used in salads (Evelyn 1699, etc) but are now considered toxic.

Mashed potato (probably sweet potato in earlier receipts) with sugar, spices, etc. Baked and served as a dish by themselves or as accompaniment to meats. (Bradl...

Potatoes cut into very thin, and very long ribbons, fried crisp.

Eggs soft-cooked in a hollow formed in a pan full of hot salt (Austin 1440)

Forcemeat cooked in a raw earthenware pot, the pot being broken open to access the food (Cury 1390, etc) cf. Appraylere.

Sauce based on chopped shallots with vinegar and stock, "a proper sauce for turkey, or any other sort of white fowls." (Glasse 1747, Moxon 1764, Eaton 1822).

Fruit, nut etc. pieces dipped in hard caramel.

Vinegar flavoured with sugar and primroses (Eaton 1822, Hartley 1954, etc)

Batter of flour, sugar, eggs, rosewater and sweet seeds (caraway, aniseed), baked in small buttered paste moulds (Plat 1609, WM 1671, etc.)

Puff paste base filled with sponge fingers in lemon custard.

Slightly sweetened clear veal stock with small turnip balls served poured over bread discs.

Puff-paste base with slices of bread and lumps of marrow on, custard poured over. Fruit and lemon peel (Digby 1669).

Puff pastry pieces, made by layering thin egg-flour-butter paste with butter, baked and strewn with sugar.

Drained curds with flour, sugar and egg yolks, nutmeg and salt, moulded "little, like eyes", fried in butter and served with butter and sugar (WM 1658)

Sliced pumpion (pumpkin or melon) with herbs and spices, made up with eggs and sugar and fried. Pieces placed in a pie with apple slices and filled through the ...

Citrus with brandy, sugar and water (Eaton 1822).

A confection of spiced nuts cohered into a mass. In one receipt (Cury 1390) fixed with egg, in another (Austin 1440) with honey, perhaps like modern nut brittle...

A wobbly semi-set desert. Thick cream mingled with flour and eggs, boiled in a buttered cloth and served with a sauce of butter, rosewater and sugar "you may st...

A large loaf, often cut into quarters for sale.

A basting mixture for joints of Port, shallots, anchovy and pepper. Said by Hutchins 1967 to date from the reign of William and Mary.

Barley Cream soup with "Almond-Milk, and, if you will, some Melon seeds. You may put some juyce of Limon or Orange to it. Also season it with Cinnamon" (Digby 1...

('Quick' as in 'lively') Bottled ale with raisins or wheat-corns added. "After a while this will drink exceeding quick and pleasant" (Digby 1669). The adding of...

A thick semi-set fruit syrup, almost a jelly or jam (Plat 1609, Digby 1669, etc.)

A quince conserve with rosewater.

Whole quinces, boiled, then peeled and pureed with sugar and cream.

Walnut pickle, mushroom pickle, anchovy and hot pepper (Eaton 1822)

Rabbit, chicken or lamb pieces, parboiled in salted water, then fried in butter.

Cooked rabbit pieces with onions and herbs, in a suet crust (Soyer 1845, Francatelli 1852)

Known from Wooley 1672

A lost cheese. The name is thought to be derived from a reference to its ingredient 'raw' (ie, whole) milk.

The boiled young roots of the bellflower, Campanula rapunculus.

A very thick spiced sauce, typically for fish, made of dried fruit boiled in wine (Cury 1390, Austin 1440, AW 1591)

A crumb or flour based enriched solid pudding batter with the jam mixed-in. Boiled or steamed.

A small ball or patty of minced pork and spices, encased in dough and fried (Austin 1440)

A cream soup of bone stock from game with game meat, carrot, onion, celery, turnip, egg yolks (Mrs.B)

"The young stalks look well ... only slightly encrusted with the batter, through which they should be merely drawn." (Acton 1845)

Cream boiled with rice flour, wheatflour, egg yolks and rosewater "till it be as thick as water-pap." (WM 1658)

Paste of rice, boiled to a jelly, with cream egg, butter, flour and salt. Fried (WM 1658)

An early version of Rice Pudding, generally made with milk and almonds, highly flavoured.

Cygnets (young swans) used to be served at official banquets as far back as the 14th century, and were a feature of the annual dinner at Vintners' Hall in the C...

Boiled griskin (the lean part of the loin of a bacon pig), baked.

Image: Gainsborough Old Hall

Sponge pudding, steamed on top of a layer of jam or Golden Syrup which forms a sauce. Known from bills-of-fare from the 1920's and 30's.

"Cakes of inspissated treacle, streaked somewhat curiously with lines of flour"

Lightly baked small rolls of flour, egg white, butter and yeast.

Rooks were formerly commonplace fare for farm labourers, and the rookeries especially protected for that reason. There is no definitive receipt. Young rooks are...

Biscuits of mashed potato or parsnip with sugar and gum dragon (tragacanth E413) (Wooley 1672)

Roots such as carrot or turnip, hollowed out and filled with a rich forcemeat stuffing (AW 1591)

Thickened cream flavoured with sweet spices and rose petals (Cury 1390, Austin 1440)

Cooked rosehips in an open pastry case.

Tiny rich sweet cakes made for 'routs', or evening parties.

The term 'ruayn cheese' occurs in several old manuscripts including Cury 1390 where it is an ingredient of Loseyns.

Soft cheese made using rennet (Huswife 1594)

Soft cheese set in a rush box (9ins x 5ins), possibly similar to the French Broccio. (Moxon 1764)

Boiled steak pudding in pastry made with egg and butter instead of suet. Devised by Acton 1845 from references in Charles Dickens's 'Martin Chuzzlewit'.

An old name for the wines of Spain and the Canaries, possibly including what is now called 'sherry'.

Hot cream with sack, sugar, nutmeg and "strong water" (WM 1658)

Breadcrumb with suet, dried fruit, sweet spice, sugar, yolks and Sack. Made into dumplings, boiled. "Melted butter for sauce, with white wine and sugar." (Eaton...

A thickened drink made with Sack (C.Guide 1654, WM 1658, etc)

Sherry (formerly known as 'sack') mixed with cake-crumbs, orange water, cinnamon, lemon, currants, sugar, butter and eggs. Baked.

A commonplace drink before the arrival of India or China tea, made with the narrow leaved sage.

Sago boiled, cooled and added to cream, egg and spices, brandy. Cooked and set in glasses (Moxon 1764)

Sago boiled in water, spices, wine and citrus added (Moxon 1764)

Sagoo (sago) boiled, cooled and mixed with lemon peel, spices, almond, breadcrumbs, cream, rosewater, sack and butter. Filled into a paste-lined dish and baked ...

A very varied mixed salad. Evelyn 1699 has almonds, pickled cucumbers, olives, cornelians, capers, Barberries, red-beet, nasturtium buds, broom, purslane, sampi...

Cooked mallow stalks:

This name appears in several 15th Century cookbooks. Its meaning and origin are obscure.

The slim, sweet, root of Tragopogon porrifolius, also known as the oyster plant. It appears, peeled and boiled, as a vegetable in many 18th and 19th Century coo...

Sweetened curds with egg and elderflowers, fried or baked, sometimes in a pastry case (Cury 1390, Noble Boke 1480)

(Not to be confused with the beef dish 'Sanders or Saunders')

Almond milk boiled with sweet spices. It isn't clear if 'sardeyne' is 'sardine'.

Said to have been served at the Crown Inn at Sarre to accompany the cherry brandy they were famous for.

Stuffing of herbs such as sage, parsley, hyssop, garlic and savory with fruit such as quince, pears or grapes, served alongside the goose in which it was cooked...

Layer of buttered mashed potato over small-cut or thin-sliced meat. Baked. A precursor of cottage pie. (Acton 1845, etc).

Steamed pudding containing spiced sausage meat.

Skins filled with pounded fish with herbs and spices, lain 24 hrs in pickle then smoked, boiled after (Bradley 1728).

Sausages fried with sliced apple (Eaton 1822).

Batter pudding, made with scalding milk (Eaton 1822).

Patties of minced veal with spices, fried or baked and served with gravy and pickles.

Clear veal stock with spices, set with egg. Baked in pastry, or in cups to be turned out, and served with mushroom sauce. Apparently invented by Louis Ude, cook...

A shoulder of pork roasted, with the blade bones cut into it.

A sharply-flavoured sauce for fowl, game and read meat. Eaton 1822 has simply wine vinegar boiled with sugar. Soyer 1845 has chopped onions with chilli vinegar,...

Sheep's ears stuffed with veal forcemeat with breadcrumb and herbs, laid one over the other and fried. "This is a pretty side dish." (Eaton 1822).

A whole cooked sheep's head. Known by the name 'Jemmy' from 19th Century literature, including Dickens' 'Sketches by Boz' and Mayhew's 'London Labour and the Lo...

Rich boiled suet pudding with lemon peel and raisins.

Dish of vegetables intended for display, rather than eating.

There is significant variation among records of Shrewsbury cake, but they seem to agree around a sort of very large, circular, shortbread with rose or lemon fla...

An English Piquant Sauce sauce.

Small pieces of toasted or fried bread, usually served in soup or broth, or with meat, or used for dipping into gravy, etc. Known from the 13th Century up to Mr...

Trifle of crumbed cake etc. in wine and citrus, custard poured over

Skirret or Crummock is a perennial plant of the Apiaceae family.

Local name for pork crackling.

An old version of 'skewer'. Smith 1750 places alternate gobbets of bacon and stewed sweetbreads on his, all rolled in crumb and grilled. Bacon and oysters is al...

"Industrious and intelligent boys who live in the country, are mostly well up in the cunning art of catching small birds ... pluck them free from feathers, cut ...

The wild celery, as a flavouring herb, known from several receipts (Digby 1669, Mrs.B, etc), now very rare.

Snails crushed in beer, with herbs, distilled, "for weak Children, and old People" (WM 1671, Family Guide 1747, Robert May 1660, etc).

Snails boiled, then fried in oil with onions, minced herbs (parsley, pennyroyal, fennel, thyme, garlic, cloves) and breadcrumbs. Served on sippets with vinegar ...

Snails stewed in veal-broth, with cloves, Sack, Mace, and served with a white sauce of cream, butter and nutmeg, or else on sippets with a brown sauce of gravy,...

A sweet, snow-like, froth as an accompaniment to sweet deserts. Appears repeatedly in cookbooks until the end of the 19th Century.

Milk splashed into wine with clotted cream over, powdered nutmeg and cinnamon (Walsh 1859, etc)

Pieces of bread over which a soup or broth is poured. Known at least since the 'Ayenbite of inwyt' of about 1340 "Ase is a zop of hot bryead huanne me hit poteþ...

Toasted bread soaked in a broth, sweetened and coloured with saffron.

Tripe pieces fried in batter.

Artemisia abrotanum, a bushy flowering herb also known as Boy's Love, Maid's Ruin, Sagebrush and Lemon Plant, with a strong camphor-like odour. It was reputed t...

A large potato, hole cut in the side and insides scooped out, replaced with sausage-meat or veal stuffing, the hole covered. Baked (Soyer 1845)

Sparrows in batter, boiled (Raffald 1769). See also: Fonnell

Prepared spice mixes, every mediaeval cook having their own receipt. Mentioned repeatedly in cookbooks from the 14th Century onwards, there is no definitive lis...

A broth with raisins. Known from dialect glossaries. Possibly similar to Fig-Sue.

Beef soaked in brine and claret, drained 2-3 days, sliced into 3 and layered with mashed cochineal, alum, claret, anchovies, cloves, mace, pepper, salt, marjora...

Salmon soaked in vinegar and wine, then poached with cloves, cinnamon and mace. "You may doe Carps, Eeles, Trouts, &c. this way, alter the tast to your mind...

Custard with spinach juice, biscuit and orange (Eaton 1822).

Boiled spinach bound with egg and breadcrumbs, fried.

An open paste tart with a filling of spinach cooked with apple, spices and set with egg (AW 1591), and also with chervil (Family Guide 1747)

Chopped, stewed spinach with butter and currants, served on toast; "This is proper for a side-dish either for noon or night" (Moxon 1764)

A thickened cream confection flavoured with hawthorn flowers (Cury 1390, Austin 1440). Our corresponden Alex Bray describes the taste as; "hard to describe. The...

Eel cut into small pieces, coated in herbs and breadcrumbs, fried.

Pie filled with boiled roots (probably of scorzonera, or 'black salsify'), soaked in wine, with sweet fruit, including redcurrants, peel and butter, in sweet eg...

Breadcrumbs, suet, sugar, lemon, egg. Boiled (Walsh 1859)

Parboiled Coast of Mutton (neck and breast together) rolled around stuffing of breadcrumbs, lemon peel, pepper, salt, nutmeg, dried marjoram and basil, egg yolk...

Milk splashed into cider and brandy. (Rundell 1807, Eaton 1822 and Walsh 1859, etc)

A summer drink made from raisins and lemon. Known at least since Thomas Blount's 'Glossographia' of 1656; "Stipone, a kind of sweet compound liquor, drunk in so...

Beef or mutton stewed with spices, fruit and wine

Cucumber slices sprinkled with flour and hot pepper, stewed in stock (Acton 1845, etc)

Sliced onion and cucumber in white sauce well flavoured with pepper or cayenne, "This is a favourite dish with lamb or mutton chops, rump-steaks, &c." (Mrs....

Peeled mushrooms, soaked in wine, stewed in mutton stock with salt, cloves, pepper and orange. Sprinkled with nutmeg (WM 1658)

Sweetened cream set semi-solid with gelatin, rennet etc., served with jam or fruit (Walsh 1859, etc)

An enriched minced-meat pie with a topping of fruit. The origin of the name is not known, but occurs repeatedly in works from the 17th up to the early 19th Cent...

Minced pork in almond milk with spices, thickened to a semi-solid with eggs and rice flour. Served with a wine-and-honey syrup (Austin 1440)

Ornamental forms, often of sugar or moulded paste, either as table decorations, or to be eaten.

Fruit or vegetable pieces candied in syrup, as a sweet.

The wild Cichorium Intybus or chicory, "Cykorie or suckorie is lyke in operation to lettise." (Thomas Elyot, 'The Castel of Helth' 1539)

Puff paste base covered in candied citrus, filled with bean puree with cream, butter, eggs. Baked (Eaton 1822)

Plain boiled flour-and water dumplings, of unknown speciality (Mrs.B)

Thin pastry pieces, fried in butter, served dusted with sugar and spice (Wooley 1672).

Mixed mandarin and Seville orange jelly (Acton 1845)

Whole eggs boiled with minced apple, suet, currants and spices and "a spoonful or two of brandy, and sweet meats, if you please." (Moxon 1764)

Minced veal kidney with spices, salt, currants, sugar and lemon, baked or fried in puff paste (Moxon 1764)

Claret boiled with cinnamon, sugar and breadcrumbs. "These are the sweet Sauces used for Hare, and all other Venison" (Bradley 1728).

Sweet white mixture, such as bread scraps soaked in milk, suet, boiled long-grain rice, currants, sugar, rose water and sweet spices bound with egg, filled into...

North American term for a variety of sweetened, mixed drinks including those based on tea, molasses or rum. The term has been used in England for sugared water ...

Sugar syrup of 'Gilliflowers' - a name for cloves, or, more likely here, for the flowers of the similarly flavoured Dianthus Caryophyllus, a wild carnation (Mox...

Poppy flower-heads boiled, commonly with raisins, liquorice, aniseed and sugar (Moxon 1764). A cough remedy or the basis of sedative drinks.

A sauce for game, eg. hare, made from the blood of the game with spices and ale, thickened with bread (Austin 1440)

Tandry is a familiar version of 'Saint Andrew', sometimes considerd the patron of lacemakers, in whose honour a type of whigg was made, most notably at Pavenham...

Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) is a perennial herb of the aster family with bright yellow flowers, formerly used as a flavouring for puddings and omelettes. Said to ...

A pudding or omelette of green leaf vegetables with fillers such as breadcrumbs, flavoured with tansy. Formerly popular at Easter-time.

Potato and bacon. Known from dialect glossaries of the19th Century.

A drink of almond milk with spices and wine.

Hot tea mixed with egg yolks and sugar (Digby 1669)

Breadcrumb, egg, sugar, milk and spice pudding boiled in a teacup (Francatelli 1852)

Tench stewed with lemon-peel, horseradish, herbs, cloves, white wine, anchovy, thickened liquor as sauce with shrimps. Garnish of fried bread soldiers, grated l...

Poultry broth with mushroom and almonds, thickened with breadcrumb, topped with poultry mince and grilled. Decorated with "Pomegranates, Pistaches, and Cocks-co...

Bacon fried with liver and chopped greens.

Milk or buttermilk boiled with flour. Repeatedly mentioned in newspapers and texts from the mid 18th Century as a food for the ill, or a breakfast for the poor.

A vinegar infused with various herbs, commonly camphor with rue, sage, mint, rosemary, wormwood, and lavender. Thieves' Vinegar is not traditionally a food ingr...

Stalks of the middle leaf of the Milky-Thistle.

Fruit preserve with breadcrumb layer then custard over, baked.

Paste of flour, butter and sugar, 1/3ins thick, cut square and slowly baked until crisp (Acton 1845)

Curry sauce over toasted bread. Known from several Raj period cookery books, including the 1864 'The Englishwoman in India' (p203), and here from 'The Curry Coo...

"Cut from a nice fat Cheshire, or any good rich cheese, some slices about½inch thick, and place them between some slices of brown bread-and-butter, like sandwic...

Meat and jelly from a pigs head, ears and feet with cayenne and cloves, herbs and pot vegetables (Acton 1845)

Open tarts of very thin paste, the filling unspecified (Moxon 1764), or with filling of egg, sugar and nutmeg (Eaton 1822).

Chopped dates, figs, raisins and almonds strung on a necklace-like thread and wrapped around a spit which is then rotated in front of a fire while wine-and-flou...

Beer made by fermenting treacle and water (Eaton 1822, Hammond 1819, etc).

A made-wine (qv) known from Wooley 1672.

Piece of bread used as a plate, whether a cut slice or a specifically-baked flat loaf. Commonplace in grander households from the 12th to the 18th Century.

The 'Trick-Madame' referred to as a salad in old texts may have been Stonecrop, Sedum reflexum.

A general name for light, cold, whipped deserts composed of cream with various ingredients, such as Fools and Syllabub.

Egg whites cooked to imitate tripe, from a time when tripe was a prized cut so expensive as to be worth producing an imitation of, like the Mock Turtle Soup or ...

Tripe boiled in mutton broth with spinach and lettuce, served on bread sops. Although the receipt here is very ancient (Huswife 1594) tripe alongside spinach ge...

Image: Unknown

Cream frothed with egg whites, rosewater and yolks added and cooked to a custard. Served over fruit (Wooley 1672).

"In the Spring (about the beginning of May) the flowry-leaves of Tulips do fall away, and there remains within them the end of the stalk, which in time will tur...

Strong white gravy with chopped celery, anchovies, lemon peel, cream, mace, wine (Moxon 1764)

A highly distinctive spring-like helix of formed minced turkey (or with pork) meat, rusk, binders and flavourings of tomato and smoke. c5ins long, 1ins diameter...

Pureed turnip in stock (Eaton 1822).

A creamed soup with onion (Acton 1845), or made using veal stock (Mollard 1802, Eaton 1822, etc).

In Eaton 1822 a thin biscuit of flour, butter, currants, sugar and egg with lemon peel. The term has also been used for small cakes of dried yeast-and-flour, us...

Any soup made of the meat, and especially the fat, of the green turtle, long considered a great delicacy in England. Usually pieces of stewed meat and fat in a ...

Paste of butter, sugar, flour and a little salt. Rolled and formed into c2ins diameter rings. Boiled, rested overnight and then baked. A breakfast treat known f...

Meatballs of minced pork, egg, honey, pepper and herbs (Liber Cure 1430)

A drink made from water, barley with herbs, aniseed and liquorice (Huswife 1594)

A simple flour batter - occasionally with spices - cooked in front of the roasting-fire, under the meat, so that it collects drips of meat fat and juices as it ...

Very high dried fruit content sweet rich bread cake. Glasse 1747 uses seven pounds of currants to one pound of flour, plus nutmeg and butter.

A sort of hybrid mincemeat-lattice/omelette. Cooked dates, prunes, currant and beef marrow with sugar and cinnamon spread on a thin omelette made with yolks and...

Minced veal with whole oysters (Acton 1845)

Filling of veal, chopped parsley and cream. Known from John Murray's 'Devon and Cornwall' of 1865.

Minced veal with ham, egg and herbs, moulded and baked.

Original Receipt from 'Pot-luck; or, The British home cookery book' by May Byron (Byron 1914)

Mentioned in Izaak Walton's 'The Compleat Angler' (1653) as "a drink composed of sack, milk, oranges, and sugar, which, all put together, make a drink like nect...

Rice, eggs, milk, butter, beef marrow, currants, brandy, lemon and spices, stewed and filled into paste-lined dish. Baked (Mrs.B)

Skinned, chopped snakes, boiled with herbs. Known from several 18th Century sources. Snake also occurs in a Wedding Cake receipt from 1660.

Very light thin crisp cake of white wheatflour, baked between wafer-irons. Wafers were formerly often eaten with wine, now chiefly with ices, or as the support ...

"I must have Saffron to colour the Warden Pies"

Alternate layers of salted lean and fat pork in raised hot-water pastry (Mrs.B)

Wassailers toasting the orchard

Original Receipt in 'The Closet Of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight, Opened' (Digby 1669)

An obscure dish found in Liber Cure 1430. It seems to be ground pork packed into gut of some sort, roasted and then put in batter. Possibly an early toad-in-the...

Veal knuckle broth with onion, cream, pepper, mace, cayenne, almonds and vermicelli.

A 'whet' is something that stimulates the appetite, an appetizer.

A form of small bread cake of distinctive shape. Whiggs are one of the mysteries of traditional English baking as (like Wastel Bread) they are repeatedly mentio...

From the 16th to the 19th Centuries 'whim-wham' was used as the name given to a simple type of trifle.

"Take a pint of cream, seven whites of egs, one spoonful of flower, mingle these well together, set it on the fire, stir it till it growes thick, and strain it ...

Strong ale formerly brewed by the wardens as a Church fund-raiser at Whitsuntide, the seventh Sunday after Easter. Once widely practiced, especially in the Sout...

Soured milk or buttermilk, sometimes flavoured with herbs, as a drink, known from 1528 until the 19th century (OED).

18th and 19th Century name for broad beans. Usually served with butter and parsley (Mrs.B).

Carrots cut into neat cones, arranged upright and stewed in gravy with parsley or white sauce over (Acton 1845)

Breadcrumbs and suet with chopped apple, dried fruit, lemon and nutmeg, steamed. Widely referenced in newspapers and cookbooks (Eaton 1822, Cassell 1883, etc) f...

Shredded lean young pork with beef suet, red sage, pepper, salt, nutmeg, onion and egg yolks.

Lampreys in a sauce highly seasoned with anchovies and spices, the precursor of 'Worcester Sauce'

We can find no record of worms ever forming a part of English diet, though we do have several receipts for versions of Snail Water which include earthworms, but...

Old term for a mix of green vegetables, often with butter and oatmeal, known since the 9th Century. (Austin 1440, etc)

Thick butter-and-egg rich shortbread biscuits with caraway seeds. Known from 'The Complete Biscuit and Gingerbread Baker's Assistant' of 1854 as a variation of ...

Fresh, salted herrings, neither smoked nor dried. See Bloaters

Decorative shapes "according to the fancy" of butter-rich yeast-raised dough, baked on an iron griddle (Eaton 1822).

Treacle and vinegar, with a little black pepper, "eat the sauce with lettuces shred small" (Acton 1845)

7 or 8 layers of very thin paste sandwiched with treacle or golden syrup flavoured with lemon. Boiled.

An ancient dish of a pig stomach filled with spiced pork, coloured and stuck over with spit almonds to imitate a sea-urchin or hedgehog. The spelling 'Yrchin' i...