Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany - 170 Crab or Lopstere

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 © 2015 by Daniel Myers, MedievalCookery.com

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170. Crab or Lopstere
Take a crab or a lopstere stop hym at the vent with a lytyll sethe hym yn fayre watyr & no salt or els stop hym in the same maner & cast hym in the oven lat hym bake & serve hym forth cold sauce hym with venygger.

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This recipe is a match for recipe 105 from A Noble Boke off Cookry.

To dight crabe or lopster tak crabe or lopster and stop hym at the vent with one of the litille clees and sethe hym in clene water or els stop hym in the same manner and cast hym in an ovene and let hym bak and serue it with venygar.  [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)]

There is also a version in Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books.

Crabbe or Lopster boiled. Take a crabbe or a lopster, and stop him in the vente with on of hire clees, and seth him in water, and no salt; or elles stoppe him in the same maner, and cast him in an oven, and bake him, and serue him forth colde. And his sauce is vinegre.  [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)]

The Wagstaff version is made confusing by the omission of the word "claw". Oddly, the Noble version is the only one that doesn't say to serve the crab cold.