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.

Encrasicholi.

[ A] Anchovaes are but the Sea▪minoes of Provence and Sardinia; which being poudred with salt, wine-vinegar and origanum, and so put up into little barrels, are carried into all Greece, and there esteemed for a most dainty meat. It seemeth that the people of those hot Coun∣tries are very often distempered and distasted of their meat; wherefore to recover their appetite they feed upon Anchovaes, or rather taste one or two of them; whereby not onely to them, but also to us appe∣tite is restored: I could wish that the old manner of bar∣relling

them up with origanum, salt and and wine-vinegar were observed; but now they taste onely of salt, and are nothing so pleasant as they were wont to be: They are fittest for stomachs oppressed with fleam, for they will cut, ripen, and digest it, and warm the stomack ex∣ceeding well; they are of little nourishment, but light enough if they were not so over-salted; they are best drest with oil, vinegar, pepper, and dryed origanum, and they must be freed from their outward skin & the ridge∣bone & be washt in wine, before they be laid in the dish.