Paper prepared for the Shakespeare Association of America, 2001.
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A Compound Salad

 

To compound an excellent salad, and which indeed is usual at great feasts, and upon princes' tables: take a good quantity of blanched almonds, . . . as many raisins of the sun. . . as many figs, as many capers, twice so many olives, . . . a good handful of the small tender leaves of red sage and spinach; mix all these well together with good store of sugar, and lay them in the bottom of a great dish; . . . then take oranges and lemons, and cut them into thin slices, then with those slices cover the salad all over; which done, take the fine thin leaf of the red cauliflower, and with them cover the oranges and lemons all over; then over those red leaves lay another course [layer] of old olives, and the slices of well pickled cucumbers. . . then adorn the sides of the dish, and the top of the salad with more slices of lemons and oranges, and so serve it up.