“We began with small glasses of kimmel, and then came caviare, made from the roe of the sturgeon of the Don, spread on thin slices of bread; then followed the fish--turbot and mackerel from the Black Sea; yellow-fleshed sterlets from the Volga, salted in oil; wild boar hams from the forest of Khutor-Mackenzie; mutton fed on the Tauridian steppes; pies of holy pigeons from the gilt domes I had admired at a distance; piles of Crimean fruit; the wines of Ac-metchet and Kastropulo, with Cliquot; and there, too, were London stout and Bass's pale ale, taken from some of our wrecks in the Black Sea.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Take a fresh jole of sturgeon, scale it, and wash off the slime, wipe it dry, and lard it with a good salt eel, seasoned with nutmeg, and pepper, cut the lard as big as your finger, and being well larded, season the jole or rand with the foresaid spices and salt, lay it in a square pie in fine or course paste, and put some whole cloves on it, some slic't nutmeg, slic't ginger, and good store of butter, close it up, and bake it, being baked fill it up with clarified butter.
Sources: The passage is from James Grant, One of the Six Hundred: A Novel, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from May, The accomplisht cook of 1660, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — moss cloth, grapes stamp.