Potted Swan
Bone and skin your swan, and beat the flesh in a mortar, taking out the strings as you beat it.
Then take some clear fat bacon and beat with the swan, and when it is of a light flesh-colour, there is bacon enough in it; when it is beaten till it is like dough, it is enough.
Then season it with pepper, salt, cloves, mace and nutmeg, all beaten fine; mix it well with your flesh, and give it a beat or two altogether.
Then put it in an earthen pot with a little clart and fair water, and at the top, two pounds of fresh butter spread over it. Cover it with coarse paste and bake it with bread; then turn it out into a dish. Squeeze it gently to get out the moisture … and when it is cold, cover it with clarified butter.
From The Compleat Housewife, by Eliza Smith (1758), as quoted in Jeffrey Kacirk’s Forgotten English calendar.
“Swan. It’s what’s for dinner.”