The Accomplisht Cook

Turn the back downwards, and cut the belly flaps clean off from the kidney, but take heed you cut not the kidney nor the flesh, then put in the point of your knife between the kidneys, and loosen the flesh from each side the bone. Then turn up the back of the rabbit, and cut it cross between the wings, and lace it down close by the bone with your knife on both sides. Then open the flesh of the rabbit from the bone with the point of your knife against the kidney, and pull the leg open softly with your hand, but pluck it not off. Then thrust in your knife betwixt the ribs and the kidney, slit it out, and lay the legs close together.

Make the likeness of a Ship in pasteboard, with flags and streamers, the guns belonging to it of kickses, bind them about with packthread, and cover them with close paste proportionable to the fashion of a cannon with carriages; lay them in places convenient as you see them in ships of war, with such holes and trains of powder that they may all take fire. Place your ship firm in the great charger; then make a salt round about it, and stick therein egg-shells full of sweet water (you may by a great pin take all the meat out of the egg by blowing, and then fill it up with rose-water). Then in another charger have the proportion of a stag made of coarse paste, with a broad arrow in the side of him, and his body filled up with claret wine. In another charger at the end of the stag have the proportion of a castle with battlements, portcullises, gates and drawbridges made of pasteboard, the guns and kickses, and covered with coarse paste as the former; place it at a distance from the ship to fire at each other, the stag being placed betwixt them with egg-shells full of sweet water placed in salt. At each side of the charger wherein is the stag, place a pie made of coarse paste, in one of which let there be some live frogs, in the other some live birds; make these pies of coarse paste filled with bran, and yellowed over with saffron or the yolks of eggs, gild them over in spots, as also the stag, the ship, and castle; bake them, and place them with gilt bay-leaves on turrets and tunnels of the castle and pies. Being baked, make a hole in the bottom of your pies, take out the bran, put in your frogs and birds, and close up the holes with the same coarse paste, then cut the lids neatly up, to be taken off the tunnels.

Being all placed in order upon the table, before you fire the trains of powder, order it so that some of the ladies may be persuaded to pluck the arrow out of the stag, then will the claret wine follow, as blood that runneth out of a wound. This being done with admiration to the beholders, after some short pause, fire the train of the castle, that the pieces all of one side may go off, then fire the trains of one side of the ship as in a battle; next turn the chargers, and by degrees fire the trains of each other side as before. This done to sweeten the stink of powder, let the ladies take the egg-shells full of sweet waters and throw them at each other. All dangers being seemingly over, by this time you may suppose they will desire to see what is in the pies; where lifting first the lid off one pie, out skip some frogs, which make the ladies to skip and shriek; next after the other pie, whence come out the birds, who by a natural instinct flying in the light, will put out the candles; so that what with the flying birds and skipping frogs, the one above, the other beneath, will cause much delight and pleasure to the whole company. At length the candles are lighted, and a banquet brought in, the music sounds, and every one with much delight and content rehearses their actions in the former passages.