“The applause was followed by a course which, by its oddity, drew every eye, but it did not come up to our expectations. There was a circular tray around which were displayed the signs of the zodiac, and upon each sign the caterer had placed the food best in keeping with it. Ram’s vetches on Aries, a piece of beef on Taurus, kidneys and lamb’s fry on Gemini, a crown on Cancer, the womb of an unfarrowed sow on Virgo, an African fig on Leo, on Libra a balance, one pan of which held a tart and the other a cake, a small seafish on Scorpio, a bull’s eye on Sagittarius, a sea lobster on Capricornus, a goose on Aquarius and two mullets on Pisces. In the middle lay a piece of cut sod upon which rested a honeycomb with the grass arranged around it. An Egyptian slave passed bread around from a silver oven and in a most discordant voice twisted out a song in the manner of the mime in the musical farce called Laserpitium. Seeing that we were rather depressed at the prospect of busying ourselves with such vile fare, Trimalchio urged us to fall to: “Let us fall to, gentlemen, I beg of you, this is only the sauce!””
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Take a lobster being half boil'd, take the meat out of the shells, and mince it small with a good fresh eel, season it with cloves & mace beaten, some sweet herbs minced small and mingled amongst the meat, yolks of eggs, gooseberries, grapes, or barberries, and sometimes boil'd artichocks cut into dice-work, or boil'd aspragus, and some almond-paste mingled with the rest, fill the lobster shells, claws, tail, and body, and bake it in a blote oven, make sauce with the gravy and whitewine, and beat up the sauce or lear with good sweet butter, a grated nutmeg, juyce of oranges, and an anchove, and rub the dish with a clove of garlick. To this farcing you may sometime add almond paste currans, sugar, gooseberries, and make balls to lay about the lobsters, or serve it with venison sauce.
Sources: The passage is from Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon — Complete, tr. Firebaugh, W. C., 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 — plum cloth, boar stamp.