much the best done this way, though most people stew the oysters first in a sauce-pan, with a blade of mace, thickened with a piece of butter, and fill the shells, and then cover them with crumbs and brown them with a hot iron: but the bread has not the fine taste of the former.
To stew muscles.
WASH them very clean from the sand in two or three waters. put them into a stew-pan, cover them close, and let them stew till all the shells are opened; then take them out one by one, pick them out of the shells, and look under the tongue to see if there be a crab; if there is, you must throw away the muscle; some will only pick out the crab, and eat the muscle. When you have picked them all clean, put them into a sauce pan; to a quart of muscles put half a pint of the liquor strained through a sieve, put in a blade or two of mace, a piece of butter as big as a large walnut rolled in flour; let them stew, toast some bread brown, and lay them round the dish, cut three-corner ways; pour in the muscles, and send them to table hot.
Another way to stew muscles.
CLEAN and stew your muscles as in the foregoing receipt, only to a quart of muscles put in a pint of liquor and a quarter of a pound of butter rolled in a very little flour. When they are enough, have some crumbs of bread ready, and cover the bottom of your dish thick, grate half a nutmeg over them, and pour the muscles and sauce all over thee crumbs, and send them to table.
A third way to dress muscles.
STEW them as above, and lay them in your dish; strew your crumbs of bread thick all over them, then set them before a good fire, turning the dish round and round, that they may be brown all alike. Keep basting them with butter, that the crumbs may be crisp, and it will make a pretty side-dish. You may do cockles the same way.
To stew colops.
BOIL them very well in salt and water, take them out and stew them in a little of the liquor, a little white wine, a little vinegar, two or three blades of mace, two or three cloves, apiece
