To Make Ye White Frigasee Of Chickens Or Rabbits

This elegant white fricassee recipe hails from the kitchen of Lettice Pudsey, circa 1675, a time when English country house cookery incorporated both native and fashionable continental influences. The dish exemplifies Restoration era tastes for subtly spiced white meats, enriched with cream and eggs—a mark of luxury. The inclusion of anchovy demonstrates the rising popularity of savory umami, blending the native and the novel at the English table. Cookbooks of this period often circulated in manuscript form among the gentry, treasured as personal household manuals. This recipe captures both practical know-how and a dash of 17th-century culinary flair.

Back in the 1670s, cooks worked over open hearths, using heavy wrought iron or copper pans and stew pots. Butter would have been clarified in a skillet set over coals, while a wooden spoon or paddle stirred the meat. The cream and egg thickener was likely whisked with a birch twig whisk, and the final mixture was carefully managed to avoid scrambling the eggs—no thermostatic stoves here! Mushrooms and lemons were sliced with a sharp kitchen knife, and serving was directly from the pan onto a trencher or platter.