This is one of many manuals intended to instruct professionals in the arts of carving meat, fish, and fruit, and creating elaborate centrepieces from sugar-paste, butter, and starched and folded linens. These appeared in various languages all over Europe between the late 1400s and the late 1600s.

Two meat pies surmounted with a bird and stag and two plates piled with fish and fowl decorate the corners of the title-page displayed here, while the hands of a professional carver are shown beneath the title in the process of expertly carving a roast bird held aloft.

Royal College of Physicians of London