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.

Sawces for temperate Meats.

But for temperate Meats and speedy of digestion (as Pork, Mutton, Lamb, Veal, Kid, Hen, Capon, Pullet, Chicken, Rabbet, Partridge, Pheasant, &c.) we must likewise devise temperate sawces: as mustard and green∣sawce for Pork,▪ verjuice and salt for Mutton; the juice of Orenges or Limons with wine, salt and sugar for Ca∣pons, Pheasants and Partridges; water and pepper for Woodcocks; vinegar and butter, or the gravet of roast∣ed meat with Rabbets, Pigeons or Chickens; for if their sawces should be either too cold, or too hot, such meats would soon corrupt in our stomachs, being other∣wise most nourishing of their own nature. As for the just quantity and proportion of every thing belonging unto sawces and pickles, albeit Apicius took great pains therein, writing whole volums of that argument, yet few of those sawces agreed with most mens natures, and some of them perhaps (if we might peruse those books) were grounded upon little or no reason; wherefore I leave the directing of them to particular Cooks, who by experience can best aime at every mans appetite, and

know also sufficiently how to correct that flesh by Arti∣ficial preparation and appropriated sawce, which nature hath made queazy or heavy to indifferent stomachs.

Some have put the question, Whether there be any sawce but appetite? or whether it be good to use saw∣ces?

Notes

• Plin. li••. 8. & lib 9. nat hist.