Gammon Pie Old Elizabethan
Recipe

To make a Pie of a Gammon of Bacon
Take a Westphalia Gammon, and boil it tender with hay in the Kettle, then take off the Skin and stick it with Cloves and strew it with Pepper, then make your Pie ready, and put it therein with Butter at the bottom, then cover your Bacon with Oysters, parboiled in Wine and their own Liquor, and put in Balls made of Sausage meat, then put in the Liquor of the parboiled Oysters, some whole Spice and Bay Leaves, with some Butter, so close it, and bake it and eat it cold, you may put into it the yolks of hard Eggs if you please, serve it with Mustard Sugar and Bay Leaves

Gammon Pie Old Elizabethan Recipe
The above Old recipe is taken from for Gammon Pie is written in totally different way to today's recipe books.

• There were no lists of ingredients - these were included as part of the text
• Food and ingredient measurements were extremely basic - quantities were not often specified.
• Temperature control was difficult and therefore not specified.
• Cooking times were vague - and left to the cook to decide.
• It was assumed that the reader would already have some knowledge of cooking

The History of the Recipe Book

• Some of the language might be referred to as 'Olde English'
• The art of cooking and the recipe was passed verbally from one generation to the next
• The first printed book ever to be published in English was in 1474.
• Most Elizabethan women were unable to read.
• The idea of a Recipe Book was an entirely new concept
• The first Recipe Books to be printed in England which included many old Elizabethan and Medieval recipes were called:
  • 1545 - 'A Propre new booke of Cokery'
  • 1588 - 'The Good Huswifes Handmaid for Cookerie in her kitchen'
  • 1596 - 'The Good Hyswife's Jewell'
  • 1610 'Mrs. Sarah Longe her Receipt Booke'

Gammon Pie Old Elizabethan Recipe

The above Old recipe is taken from the book by Hannah Woolley (1622-1675) printed at the White Lion in Duck-Lane, near West-Smithfield, London in 1672 entitled:

The Queen-like Closet
OR
RICH CABINET
Scored with all manner of
RARE RECEIPTS
FOR
Preserving, Candying and Cookery

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Gammon Pie Old Elizabethan Recipe

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