To fry smelts.
LAY your smelts in a marinade of vinegar, salt, pepper, and bay-leaves, and cloves for a few hours; then dry them in a napkin, drudge them well with flour, and have ready some butter hot in a stew-pan. Fry them quick, lay then in your dish, and garnish with fry'd parsley.
To roast a pound of butter.
LAY it in salt and water two or three hours, then spit it, and rub it all over with crumbs of bread, with a little grated nutmeg, lay it to the fire, and as it roasts, baste it with the yolks of two eggs, and then with crumbs of bread al the time it is a roasting; but have ready a pint of oysters stewed in their own liquor, and lay in the dish under the butter; when the bread has soaked up all the butter, brown the outside, and lay it on your oysters. Your fire must be very slow.
To raise a sallad in two hours at the fire.
TAKE fresh horse-dung hot, lay it in a tub near the fire, then sprinkle some mustard-seeds thick on it, lay a thin layer of horse-dung over it, cover it close and keep it by the fire, and it will rise high enough to cut in two hours.
CHAP. XX.
DISTILLING
To distil walnut water.
TAKE a peck of fine green walnuts, bruise them well in a large mortar, put them in a pan, with a handful of baum bruised, put two quarts of good French brandy to them, cover them close, and let them lie three days; the next day distil them in a cold still; from this quantity draw three quarts, which you may do in a day.
How to use this ordinary still.
YOU must lay the plate, then wood-ashes at the bottom, then the iron pan, which you are to fill with your walnuts and liquor, then put on the head of the still, make a pretty brisk fire till the still begins to drop, then slacken it so as just to
