To Alay a Felande

Do what with what, now?

The Booke of Kervinge, published in 1508, listed the various methods of carving meat. Each animal was given its own term for dis-membership:

To break a deer
To lesche (1) a brawn (2)
To thigh a woodcock
To sauce a tench (3)
To disfigure a peacock
To lift a swan
To sauce a capon (4)
To spoil a hen
To frusche (5) a chicken
To unbrace a mallard
To unlace a coney (6)
To dismember a heron
To display a crane
To unjoint a bittern (7)
To untache a curlew (8)
To alay a felande (9)
To wing a partridge
To mine a plover (10)
To thigh a pigeon
To wing a quail
To border a pastry
To timber a fire (11)
To tire an egg
To chine a salmon
To string a lamprey
To splat a pike
To sauce a plaice (12)
To splay a bream (13)
To side a haddock
To rusk a barbel (14)
To culpon a trout
To fin a chevin (15)
To tranesse an eel
To tranch a sturgeon
To undertranch a porpoise
To rear a goose
To tame a crab
To barb a lobster

The Booke is an interesting read and I might have to go through and make a list of the methods of dismembering that are described in it. Certainly we can conclude that, if you were wealthy enough, you could eat any type of meat you wished.

(1) Leach.
(2) Meat from a pig's or calf's head that is cooked and pressed in a pot with jelly.
(3) A doctor fish (they wear little fezes and bowties).
(4) A castrated rooster.
(5) Truss.
(6) Either a rabbit or a grouper.
(7) A short-necked bird related to a heron.
(8) A long-beaked sea bird.
(9) Not a clue.
(10) Small, wading bird.
(11) This might be a joke. A Dictionary of Archaic & Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs & Ancient Customs, From the Fourteenth Century gives this phrase ("tymbre that fyre") as "to supply it with wood. To timber-cart, to go with a team for timber."
(12) A flat-fish similar to a flounder.
(13) A fresh-water fish.
(14) A freshwater fish of the minnow family.
(15) A freshwater fish.