[Sca-cooks] Help with a sallat from Markham?

[Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise]

I've tried, once, to make this compound sallat from Markham, and I have 
some questions:

The recipe:
Another compound Sallat.
To compound an excellent sallat, and which indeed is usual at great 
feasts, and upon princes' tables; take a good quantity of blanched 
almonds, and with your shredding knife cut them grossly; then take as 
many raisins of the sun, clean washed and the stones picked out, as many 
figs shred like the almonds, as many capers, twice so many olives, and 
as many currants as of all the rest, clean washed, 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 put unto them vinegar and oil, and scrape more sugar over all; then 
take oranges, and lemons, and, paring away the outward peels, cut them 
into thin slices, then with those slices cover the sallat all over; 
which done, take the fine thin leave of the red cauliflower, and with 
them cover the oranges and lemons all over; then over those red leaves 
lay another course of old olives, and the slices of well pickled 
cucumbers, together with the very inward heart of your cabbage lettuce 
cut into slices; then adorn the sides of the dish, and top of the sallat 
with more slices of lemons and oranges, and so serve it up.

Red sage-- is that just the redder type of sage, as we know it?
Also, cabbage lettuce vs. red cauliflower?  Can I use red cabbage? Red 
Kale? for the red cauliflower? Should I use bibb or similar lettuce for 
the cabbage lettuce?
Are Old Olives different from the regular ones? I'm assuming I am 
neither pitting nor slicing the olives. I was thinking of the olive type 
called 'dry' for the old olive.
in 1611-1615, would the oranges be bitter or sweet? What's the best way 
to slice these peeled citrus?

-- 
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net 
"I thought you might need rescuing . . . We have a bunch of professors 
wandering around who need students." -- Dan Guernsey