Healths improvement: or, Rules comprizing and discovering the nature, method, and manner of preparing all sorts of food used in this nation. Written by that ever famous Thomas Muffett, Doctor in Physick: corrected and enlarged by Christopher Bennet, Doctor in Physick, and fellow of the Colledg of Physitians in London.

Pigg, Sowe, Bore, and Hogg.

Piggs flesh by long and a bad custome is so generally

desired and commended, that it is credibly (though falsly) esteemed for a nourishing and excellent good meat: In∣deed it is sweet, luscious, and pleasant to wantons, and earnestly desired of distempered stomacks: but it is the mother of many mischiefs, and was the bane of mine own Mother. A sucking Piggs flesh is the moistest flesh simply of all other; engendring Crudities, Palsies, Agues, Gowts, Apoplexies and the stone: weakning the me∣mory (for it is moist in the third degree) procuring fluxes of the belly, and engendring most viscous, flashy and cor∣rupt humours. Their flesh is hardly digested of a weak stomack, and their leather-coat not easily of a strong. The younger they are, the worse they are: yet some ven∣ture upon them (yea covet them) ere they be eight days old; yea the Romans delicacy was such, that they thought them dainty meat being taken blood and all out of the Sowes belly ere she was ready to farrow, eating them after a little bruising in the blood, no less greedily then some do the pudding of a bruised Deer. We do well in roasting our Piggs at a blazing fire, sprinkling them with salt on the outside: but if we stuft their bellies with a good deal of salt as well as sage, and did eat them with new sage, and vinegar and salt, they would be less offen∣sive. The Danes I remember (when I was at Elsenore) draw them with garlick as the French men do with lard: which is no ill correcter of their sliminess and viscous humour. The Bore-Pig is not preferred before the Sow-Pig: because it is strong and ranck.

Bores flesh (I mean of the tame Bore) is never good but 〈◊〉〈◊〉 it is brawn'd; which though Pliny avoucheth to be first invented by Servillus Rullus, yet by Plautus it seemeth to be a more ancient meat.

The best way of brawning a Bore is this of all other, which I learned first of Sir Thomas George, and saw

practised afterwards to good purpose. Shut up a young Bore (of a year and a half old) in a little room about har∣vest time, feeding him with nothing but sweet whey, and giving him every morning clean straw to lye upon, but lay it not thick. So before Christmas he will be suffici∣ently brawned with continual lying, and prove exceed∣ing fat, wholesome and sweet; as for the common way of brawning Bores, by stying them up in so close a room that they cannot turn themselves round about, and whereby they are forced alwaies to lye on their bellies, it is not worthy the imitation: for they feed in pain, lye in paine, and sleep in pain: neither shall you ever find their flesh so red, their fat so white, nor their liver so sound, as being brawned otherwise accordingly, as is before rehersed. After he is brawned for your turn, thrust a knife into one of his flanks, and let him run with it till he dye: others gently bait him with muzled Doggs. The Roman Cooks thrust a hot Iron into his side, and then run him to death; thinking thereby that his flesh waxed tenderer and his brawn firmer.

Sows Flesh is reckoned of Isaac, to engender good blood, to nourish plentifully, yea to be restorative if it be young. But an old Sow breedeth ill juice, is hardly concocted, and begetteth most viscous humors. The Heliopolitanes abstained from Sows flesh of all others: First, because (contrary to the nature and course of all o∣ther beasts) she admits the Bore not in the full, but in the wane of the Moon. Secondly they demand, How can her flesh be wholsom, whose milk being drunk, filleth our bodies full of leprosie▪ scurf, tetters and scabs? Yea a sow is one of the most filthy creatures in the world; her belly is never void of scurf, her throat of kernely imposthumes, her brain so heavy and moist, that she can∣not look up to heaven; or rather she dare not, being the

rooter up, and so bad an inhabitant of the earth. Ne∣vertheless I am of Isaacs mind, that a young Sow kept long from the Bore, sweetly dieted with roots, corn, and whey, and kept from filthy feeding and wallowing, may be made good and tolerable meat for strong stomacks, after it hath been powdered and well rosted.

Notes

• Sheep and Piggs, the younger the bet∣ter.
• Gal 3▪ de alim. ••ac.
• Plut. lib. de es. carn.
• Lib. 8. ••. 51. in P••n▪ & Bucc••.
• De diaet. par∣tic.
• Plut. l. de Isid.
• Plut 5 f▪ mp.