Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany - 153 Plover Rostyd

Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany (Beinecke MS 163)

This manuscript is dated about 1460.

The 200 (approx.) recipes in the Wagstaff miscellany are on pages 56r through 76v.

Images of the original manuscript are freely available on the Yale University Library website.

I have done my best to provide an accurate, but readable transcription. Common abbreviations have been expanded, the letters thorn and yogh have been replaced with their modern equivalents, and some minor punctuation has been added.

Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Myers, MedievalCookery.com

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153. Plover Rostyd
Breke the nekke of a sarcell or of a tele pull hym drye draw hym as a chiken cut of his hedde his nekke & his whyngys & his fete rost hym [f.73v] reys his leggys & his whynggys as of a heyron & no sauce but salt.

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This recipe is a match for recipe 90 from A Noble Boke off Cookry.

To rost a plouer tak and brek his skull and drawe hym as a chekyne and cutt of his legges and his wings by the body and rost hym and raise his legges and his wings as a henne and no sauce but salt and serue it.  [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)]

There are also two related recipes in Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books.

Plouer rost. Capitulum Cxix. Breke the skulle of a plouere, and pull hym drye, and draw hym as a chike, and cutte the legges and the wynges by the body, and the heued and necke all-so, and roste hym, and reyse the legges and wynges as an henne: and no sauce butt salt.  [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)]

Plouer. Take a plouer, and breke his skoll, and pull him dry, And drawe him as a chekon, And kutte the legges and the winges as a henne; And no sauce but salt.  [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)]

I find the instruction to break the plover's skull a bit unusual.  It's the first step in all of the related recipes, where the method of slaughter is usually given, so I expect that was the preferred method for killing them.