SC - Chicken and Waffles (was Speculating...)

[Michael F. Gunter]

OK, a little faster than a day or two....

Hugh Plat
_The Jewel-house of Art & Nature_  1594


32.  How to grave any armes, posies, or other devise
upon an egg shel, & how to through-cut the same, with
divers works & fancies, which will seem very strange to
such as know not the maner of the doing thereof.


 Dippe an egge in suet being molten, first the one
halfe, and then the other, holding the same betweene
your thumb and forefinger when you dippe it, let the
same coole in your hand, and beeing colde, with a
sharpe bodkin or some other instrument of iron, worke
or grave in the suet what letters or portrature you
wil, taking away the suet clean, & leaving the shell
bare at the bottom of your worke.  Then lay this eg
thus engraved in good wine vinegar or strong alliger in
a Glasse or stone Pottinger, for some six or eight
houres, or more, or lesse, according to the strength
and sharpnesse of the Vinegar, then take out the egge,
and in water that is blood warme disolve the suet from
the egge, then lay your egge to coole, and the woorke
will appear to be graven in the shell of a russet
color.  Saepius probatum.  And if the egge lie long
inough in the vineger after it is so graven, and
sovered in suet as before, the letters will appear upon
the egge it selfe being hard sodden, or else if you
care not to loose the meate, you may picke out the same
when the shell is through graven, and so you shall have
a strange piece of work perfourmed.



This brings up a question for me.  How close was period
vinegar to the stuff I buy at the store?  I helped make
vinegar at a friend's house because I don't want to
mess up my yeast culture at home, and we had to dilute
the results with distilled water to approximate the
sharpness we are used to using.

- -Magdalena